3.6 - 3.9
History and experience
I originally bought a Q6600 (B3) in 2006, and a few month after I heard rumors about the new (G0) with extreme cores. I then sold the old Q6600 (B3) which I could only manage to get to dissapointing 3 GHz with a zalman CNPS9700 aircooler. The new Q6600 (G0) 2007Q1 gave me new hope, cause it clocked easily up to 3.6 GHz and close to stable on OCCT on air. Then I bought a ThermalTake Kandalf Watercooling setup. I really liked the ThermalTake Kandalf chassis and cooling and it gave me stable 3.6 GHz with low CPU temperature, but after a year or something, the waterpump failed and the CPU went to 140c. To get a refund on the chassis I had to deliver the whole chassis with cooling back, and they couldnt give me a replacement, so got an plain old Cooler Master chassis instead, with an NorthQ 3580 CPU watercooler. I pretty much thought everything was broken after the watercooling failure, but a CPU can really take something and everything is still working. My experience is that you can really push overclocking much further than people say. Only memory voltage overclocking is dangerous, - I have toasted two pairs of Corsair on this setup so I have stopped adjusting memory voltage.
Facts
When I say stable, I mean really stable enough to play the latest games for hours, without annoying crashes.
Details:
Intel C2Q - Q6600(G0 -SLACR) and NorthQ Siberian Tiger 3580.
Asus Striker Extreme (bios 2002)
Asus Nvidia 470GTX
4 x Corsair 2.048 MB DDR2 @ 400MHz
ThermalTake Toughpower 850W
Software installed:
Windows 7, 64 bit
3Dmark06 from futuremark
Results: 2.4 Ghz (Stable)
3dmark06 (1.2) using Nvidia nforce 2.66.35 (beta) for Nvidia 470GTX
score: 12.193
sm2.0: 4.582
hdr/sm3.0: 5.988
cpu: 3.394
Results: 3.6 Ghz (Stable - highest temp during test 72c)
3dmark06 (1.2) using Nvidia nforce 2.66.35 (beta) for Nvidia 470GTX
score: 18.116
sm2.0: 7.010
hdr/sm3.0: 8.825
cpu: 4.895
adjustments in bios:
unlinked: QDR @1600 and memory @ ~ 800MHz
vcore: 1.45V
northbridge: 1.45V
disable intel speedstep
Results: 3.84 Ghz (highest temp during test 80c - unstable, but can handle 3dmark06)
3dmark06 (1.2) using Nvidia nforce 2.66.35 (beta) for Nvidia 470GTX
score: 19.146
sm2.0: 7.572
hdr/sm3.0: 9.201
cpu: 5.133
unlinked: QDR @1706 and memory @ ~ 800MHz
vcore: 1.52V
northbridge: 1.45V
southbridge: 1.7V
vtt: 1.45
disable intel speedstep
I think I have screendumps somewhere, but until I find them you have to make it up with these images.
Another adjustment to ~3.9 GHz - this screen just show the temperature after booting the system and starting up the few apps to measure temperature and overclocking. The machine kept crashing at the CPU tests, so I guessed I was on the limit of the aircooling setup.
Conclusion on overclocking:
The good old Q6600 (G0) cant really keep up with later series from Nvidia. I can only raise scores by raising the CPU frequencies. The CPU however is capable of doing a lot more if I could provide more cooling - as I wrote, It reach 80c in 3dmark 2006 at 3.84 GHz, and the Tcase is based on intel spec 71c. With real water cooling I am confident that I can tweak it to 4 GHz without any serious damaging adjusts.
BTW: It can be difficult to make the SIL3132 controller to work in Windows 7, 64 bit with e-sata devices. I used the driver below to get it up and running. Just unpack it in a folder, and let windows search the folder and subfolders to find a suitable driver. I have deleted all executes to make the file as small as possible.
Pictures of the hardware used:
