Legit Reviews

So, I bought a heatsink and succesfully booted up my computer with a Q6600 at 3.6Ghz! However, it took some time to get it to boot up, and I'm worried that I might be using too much voltage. I had to set my VCore to 1.525, although it shows up in CPU-Z as 1.488V (Vdroop?), in order to boot up. In CoreTemp, it was idling at 37C at that voltage, but when I ran Prime, the computer crashed right away. Obviously, not stable, even at that voltage. Is that voltage too much even though it booted up?

I'm pretty new to Overclocking, and this is an ambitious overclock, I know, but now I have the heatsink for it. What do I need to do with the voltages and memory timings and so forth to try and arrive at a stable system? I know it will boot up now, but what's the best way to get it to stay booted up? I feel like I'm missing something.

My VID is 1.325, G0 stepping, Ultra 120 Extreme True Black heatsink with Arctic Silver 5, Q6600, P5E Motherboard, 1066Mhz G.Skill DDR2 RAM.

Did you slowly ramp up the Ghz or did you just shoot straight for 3.6Ghz? If you jumped in, then it could be things like the northbridge or memory (or memory controller) needing more voltage for the stability.

But the fact that your Q6600 starts off at 1.32v is rather unfortunate, as it is the highest stock voltage that Q6600's have, meaning that it will need an unsafe amount of voltage to run anywhere high for regular use. My E6600 was the same, and I had to settle for 3Ghz as 3.6Ghz needed somewhere around 1.6v.

I would use a maximum of 1.4v to 1.45v on air, even if the temperatures are playing nice for normal operation, the voltage itself can burn out CPUs if not cooled properly.

If you want a complete overview on overclocking, and what settings do what, then you can check out a very good guide, over here:
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about10789.html

Once you've read that, if you have any more questions, then feel free to post back.

Dan