Cooling/Temperatures/Overclocking?

[Final Maxim]

ok i have an c2d e6600 @ 2.4 gig, 8800gts 320mb and 2 gig of ram.

My CPU - temp on stock cooling is 33 degrees
My Case - 38 degrees.

first of all, do these seem about right? low? high?

secondly, overclocking. im interested in doing it but im getting a few people saying ill blow my cpu up, ill blow up the gpu, it wears down the life of components 10x faster etc.

Then im getting other people say overclock it but upgrade your cooling.

So im after guidance really and horror stories or nice stories with experiences with overclocking. is it safe? is it difficult? risks in blowing stuff up?

thirdly, what cooling would you recommend to overclock (not massivly) and im on a pretty tight budget so cheap as possible really but MUST be silent or very very quiet.

cheers for any help

 

[Andy.]

I just experimented with mine, with a decent aftermarket CPU cooler you can't really fudge it up. The P5B is good for it too. I got mine to 3.2 stable and the core temp did not go above 50 under full load, it was low 30's at idle... apparently 65 is getting risky.

You will be limited with the standard cooler though. I did not make great gains with the GPU overclocking so have stuck that back to standard.

Your base temps sound about right to me... mine is currently 29-30.

 

[Andy.]

The Alpine 7 Pro is a damn fine cooler... not too loud and cheap! Scythe are also a good brand from what I read.

 

[Final Maxim]

where did you buy your cooler from mate? also you got a link to overclocking info, i looked on ocuk but theres so many threads. i just want a guide on how to overclock lol

 

[Andy.]

I used this as a basic guide to get started:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=103676

The cooler I got from an online Dutch shop... not much good for you I'm affraid!

 

[Andy A]

With a C2D the standard cooler is fairly decent, you can achieve a good overclock using it. Your Temps seem about right yes, perhaps the case is a little up, thats down to the case, cable management and fan layout, so without changing all of that its hard to get it down, its nothing to worry about though as long as it doesn't sky rocket when your benchmarking.

To add on, i've never had any bad experiences with overclocking, i'm currently still using an AMD opteron, thats overclocked from 1.8 to 2.85ghz.

Overclocking with reduce the life of your components yes, however thinking logically, a CPU's life span is normally given about 8 years, by overclocking you may even half that at worst. However I can't ever imagine myself keeping the same cpu for four years, i'll definately upgrade in that time.

So in the short term there are many benefits for it.

 

[ViolentJ]

Case seems a bit warm to be honest. Mine hovers around 30C and it's in front of a window. I do have 9 fans though lol

 

[Andy.]

Case seems a bit warm to be honest. Mine hovers around 30C and it's in front of a window. I do have 9 fans though lol

Must sounds like it is about to take off!

 

[ViolentJ]

Case seems a bit warm to be honest. Mine hovers around 30C and it's in front of a window. I do have 9 fans though lol

Must sounds like it is about to take off!

Actually it doesn't, it's a decent case and is pretty good at deadening the sound

 

[Andy.]

Result then.

 

[Andy A]

For a very comprehensive guide to overclocking, the best feature I have ever read was in issue 30 of Custom PC. If you can get hold of it i'd read that. It explains everything you need to know.

I reccomend reading into it a lot before you try any overclocking, just changing random frequencies and voltages before you know what you are doing can be risky

 

[Final Maxim]

quick question.

how do i check i have the latest bios for my motherboard?

and also, when i went into bios the last 2 times, when i clicked Hardware Settings(?) it came up that it may take some time to read the cpu fan speed but ive waitied 5-10 minutes and nothing happens, ideas?

 

[Andy A]

Very odd that your temperature sensores aren't reading, download a windows based temperature program to check that your motherboad temp sensors aren'y faulty, if they work in windows environment then they are fine. If you can't find a decent temp program let me know.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
to find out everything you need to know about your RAM, Mainboard and CPU

Fantastic program, if you need any other information drop me a PM, I usually forget to check the threads

 

[Final Maxim]

yea i downloaded Motherboard Monitor to get my temps that i first posted.

But tbh, since i built this system, i havnt touched a thing in bios, nothing has been installed for the motherboard, no drivers or anything, just plugged and played lol

ill check that site now cheers

 

[Andy A]

Yeah, you have to download the program, its at "download letest version" at the top left.

Read up on the BIOS as well, you can make your PC boot up quicker by turning off unneccesary features, such as serial ports, parralel ports and any unused IDE & SATA connections. Your PC won't try to detect them and therefore will boot up that little bit quicker.

 

[Final Maxim]

sweet cheers. another question (sorry lol)

i have a asus P5B mother board. on the box its got various other numbers and that but on the actual asus site theres 14 or 15 different ones.

do you think mine is just the very basic P5B motherboard?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-037-OK&groupid=701&catid=339&subcat=

thats the mobo

 

[Final Maxim]

Use Update using Aflash BIOS Update Procedure

1. ASUS Online Update (Download from ASUS WWW) for latest version BIOS and save it on a floppy disk.

2. Use the floppy disk as described in above to boot.

3. In A:\ DOS mode, please unzip AFLASH.EXE.

4. In MAIN MENU, please choose Update BIOS Main Block From File. Please refer to 2. Update BIOS Including Boot Block and ESCD] .

5. After the procedure has complete, remove the disk from the floppy drive and shutdown the power.

6. Reboot, hold down key and enter BIOS menu. You must choose "LOAD SETUP DEFAULTS" to activate the new BIOS, then reconfig other items in the BIOS menu.


what about if i dont have a floppy drive? lol

 

[Andy A]

It is just the bog standard P5B yes, iirc correctly the other versions aren't a million miles off, just have wireless as standard and other materialistic features, it is a good board though.

 

[Final Maxim]

It is just the bog standard P5B yes, iirc correctly the other versions aren't a million miles off, just have wireless as standard and other materialistic features, it is a good board though.

ahh kk thanks for clearing that up

 

[Andy A]

Use Update using Aflash BIOS Update Procedure

1. ASUS Online Update (Download from ASUS WWW) for latest version BIOS and save it on a floppy disk.

2. Use the floppy disk as described in above to boot.

3. In A:\ DOS mode, please unzip AFLASH.EXE.

4. In MAIN MENU, please choose Update BIOS Main Block From File. Please refer to 2. Update BIOS Including Boot Block and ESCD] .

5. After the procedure has complete, remove the disk from the floppy drive and shutdown the power.

6. Reboot, hold down key and enter BIOS menu. You must choose "LOAD SETUP DEFAULTS" to activate the new BIOS, then reconfig other items in the BIOS menu.


what about if i dont have a floppy drive? lol

If I were you, I wouldn't use that method, your motherboard driver CD should have an update utility on it, all recent Asus Boards i've used have got the utility with them.

It has a one click update feature, where by it recognises your board, downloads the latest relevant BIOS and automatically updates it.

 

[Andy.]

Yep, you can download it from the Asus site too if the CD does not have a vista compatible program on it.

 

[Final Maxim]

just fucked up the bios on main pc.

put in the motherboard disc, it reset my pc and came up with this

a make intel ICH8 32 bit AHCI/RAID Driver Disc
b " 64 bit "
c Jmicron JMB36x 32 bit AHCI/RAID Driver
d " 64bit "
e JMICRON JMB36x 32 bit VISTA AHCI/RAID Driver
f " 64 bit "
g freedos command prompt.


dunno which one to pick so i just took out the cd and rebooted and its telling me to pick a booting device.

inserted CD, tried E, it says insert floppy boot disc

tried C, asking the same.

now what :S

 

[Andy A]

What does the screen look like that you're getting?

Did you actually run the update utility and then it reset itself?

 

[Final Maxim]

phew, i dunno what happened, but i went downstairs to use the pc down there for 20 minutes, just came up to write out what it says , turned it on and its booted up now :S

 

[Andy A]

LOL, thats ok then, my PC throws a wobbly sometimes, won't boot with a second HDD plugged in, just does nothing and "computer says :nono:"

 

[Final Maxim]

right, reading through the mobo manual just found that apparantly i have to explore the disc, go through folders and manually run autoupdate, this installs latest drivers via the internet. if i just autorun the .exe it does it via dos/floppy >.<

updating now lol

 

[RichMcc]

temp's seem fine. I find cpu cooling is a bit like induction kits on cars... you think it does something.... its cooler... it must be faster or sommit! but it doesn't lol
Dont think about watercooling either, I had one once.... the pump failed, water in the CPU block boiled, cracked the case and spewed all over my computer
Overclockings overrated too imo, its rare you'll use the CPU to its full capacity these days

 

[Andy A]

I also had watercooling for a time, kept it fantastically cool, it was just two unnerving having two litres of water swimming round in my £1200 PC, I have an Antec P180 so without a side window I couldn't even see what was happening.

Got the better of me in the end and I reverted to a Freezer 64 Pro