E6420 Overclcoking Help

[sacred]

Hi ive recently added a E6420 to my pc and would like to overclock it but not go mad like some people have so i would like to know a safe speed to set the FSB to my specs below

Asus P5N-E SLI Nvidia nForce 650i SLI / Intel E6420 @ 3.0 GHz / 2 X Seagate baracuda (RAID Striping )/ ATI X1900GT / 2 GB Corsair XMS / Gigabyte Rocket Pro Heatsink / OCZ 700 Watt Game X Stream PSU / Windows XP Home / 3DMark06 Score 5859

any help would be great :D

[Thrax]

500x6, if you have PC8000, make sure it's a 1:1 divider.

[Your Amish Daddy]

Damn Dr.Thrax. Pulling out all the stops?

[Thrax]

650i should be able to do it, unless the board is crappy.

[sacred]

the boards fine i had it @ 3 ghz and stress tested it with orthos for 20 mins my maz cpu temp was 49 mobo was around 42
i dont want to get into voltages just overclcok the cpu a little
multiple of 8

got 2 fans one on the side of my case and one @ the rear

so its ok @ 3ghz ?

how long would your recommend testing @ full load for ?

[Thrax]

Yeah. That's a really good standard OC for a C2D. :)

[sacred]

kool just got a bit worried @ the temp im new to overclocking a dont want to push it to hard

[Thrax]

Those chips are safe up to about 65C at full load. :) You're fine.

[muddocktor]

Instead of pushing the fsb to 500 X 6, I would suggest that you go with 428 X 7 instead. The P5N-E SLI northbridge and southbridge both run on the hot side and running a 500 fsb will just make the situation worse. I also suggest that you remove the heatsink from the northbridge and apply some Arctic Silver 5 or Ceramique for better heat transfer and it will also help if you install a fan blowing across the nb heatsink. And I would also add a heatsink on the southbridge too as it tends to run on the hot side also. With the P5N-E SLI, you can unlink your ram from the fsb speed so you aren't bound to a particular ram speed at a given fsb speed; it's more flexible than an Intel chipset in this respect.

If you haven't guessed, I have a P5N-E SLI myself. But I am having some real weirdness with it and I am about to RMA the damn thing. It just won't stay up and running stable for beans. It will start out looking stable then over the course of a few days goes to locking up and finally a no boot situation. But if I leave power off of it for a day or so after this happens the whole cycle starts over.:rolleyes2 Hopefully when I RMA the board I will get back a fully working one as a replacement (heard some horror stories on Asus RMA lately). Other than the weirdness I've had with mine, I have liked the board and it's tunability.