Having trouble overclocking a E6320

[Crimguy]

Here's what I have:
C2D E6320 (1.86GHz)
Zalman 7500 HSF
Asus P5N-E
2GB Corsair 800MHz

I cannot get this guy to overclock to save my life.

Anything above 2GHz I'm getting errors on Prime95. Above 2.5GHz I'll get BSOD's during games.

I have the typical settings checked. Ram unlinked. vCore has been boosted anywhere from 1.35 to 1.54 with no luck.

I have a couple days to swap out either the RAM or the CPU. Any suggestions? Anyone heard of a 6320 being this dysmal?

[Leonardo]

Crimguy, we need some information, please:

What PSU?
What voltage and temperature monitoring software?
Have you made any RAM and/or vCore voltage adjustments in the BIOS?
What about the computer case? Tell us about it's ventilation.
What thermal interface material did you use when you installed the CPU heatsink? How did you apply it?
Are you overclocking the RAM with the CPU, or are you keeping it close to specified frequency?

There are just way too many variables to begin troubleshooting at this point. With the information we asked for, we can make a logical start.

My first guess is memory voltage, but we'll see.

[Crimguy]

OK. I'm currently using a new Thermaltake 600w psu. I'm using speedfan for temp monitoring and cpu-z for voltage etc.

Computer case is an antec p160. Pretty well ventilated.

I'm keeping the ram at stock speeds. Using AS5 thermal grease. At load, the cpu gets to 35 degrees at stock speed, and overclocked to 2.6 it hit about 43 degrees. I'm not sure what "hot" is in the intel world, but my old Athlon would hit 65 degrees at load.

Crimguy, we need some information, please:

What PSU?
What voltage and temperature monitoring software?
Have you made any RAM and/or vCore voltage adjustments in the BIOS?
What about the computer case? Tell us about it's ventilation.
What thermal interface material did you use when you installed the CPU heatsink? How did you apply it?
Are you overclocking the RAM with the CPU, or are you keeping it close to specified frequency?

There are just way too many variables to begin troubleshooting at this point. With the information we asked for, we can make a logical start.

My first guess is memory voltage, but we'll see.

[Leonardo]

Temps are clearly not even with 20C of the danger zone. If you are running the RAM at greater than 800MHz, boost its voltage. BTW, what frequency is the RAM at?

[Crimguy]

800Mhz. When I boost the fsb, it seems that whatever divider mojo is going on with the board, it brings the memory to about 790MHz.

Since I'm not overclocking the memory, there theoretically is no reason to boost the voltage on the RAM, is there?

[Harudath]

Is your Northbridge overheating?

[Crimguy]

The NB heatsink is not particularly warm to the touch. Does speedfan monitor that? All temps on Speedfan are <43 degrees.

[Harudath]

Also, I have the ASUS P5N-E SLi version, overclocking + dual channel RAM don't go well together in my experience. Try running it in single channel or with one stick at a time (sorry for the dual post).

[Harudath]

I find that if I run my PC with single channel RAM I can OC my 2.6GHz C2D to 3.4 and with better cooling, I'm betting I could go higher. But if I run the RAM in dual channel my PC would crash if I even access my D:\ (C:\ to everyone else :P) drive

[Thrax]

That means you have a problem, and have not stumbled on some arcane advantage.

[Harudath]

Well, I haven't figured out what's wrong yet, but this post isn't about me :P Although we may have the same problem, so any input will, to be honest, benefit us both :P

[Leonardo]

Harudath, you are doing very well for your experience level, but in this case, please back off. Alright, my friend?

[Leonardo]

Crimguy, based on what you've presented in your posts:

1) I am fairly sure you do NOT have an overheating problem at this stage. Forgive me if I missed it, but would you please post core temps as read by Core Temp. (I've no experience using SpeedFan with Core 2 Duo processors as I've never owned that CPU. SpeedFan 4.34 v. beta 36 and 37 are 100% in line with Core Temp for Intel quad processors.)

2) Here's an important one: Do you have all CPU and power reducing settings disabled in the BIOS. These would be settings such as EIST and so forth. I don't know your boards BIOSes, but I do know that Abit and Gigabyte Socket 775 boards have settings in the BIOS that will automatically lower the CPU and system clocks in order save on power consumption.

3) A little voltage boost for the DRAM never hurt anything, unless you are running complete junk, which you are not. Quite a number of motherboards undervolt (less voltage than set) the DRAM. For now, go ahead and set your DRAM .05 or .10v higher than default. Even the cheap RAM has voltage increase tolerance.

[muddocktor]

Also, to minimize any ram related problems, try setting the ram manually to a 1:1 setting along with the ram timings manually. And try running Memtest86 on your machine when overclocking to see if you are getting any errors on your ram.

And for ****s and giggles, try overclocking with only 1 stick of ram and see what happens. I have a P5N-E SLI myself and I found that it is a tricky board at some settings. Right now mine won't even boot so I need to RMA the thing back to Asus.

[Crimguy]

Follow up - it was the ram. I found some settings for the Corsair sticks I had installed that stabilized things somewhat, but when the computer gave me a BSOD while idling this morning, I figured I should start stirring things up before my 15 day return policy was up.

Frys sold me a pair of OCZ sticks for $30 after rebate. The timings are a bit slower, but I was immediately able to clock it up to 2.8GHz without issue. Haven't bothered going further since it's plenty for my needs, and the temps hit 52 degrees at load. So I might shuffle it down to 2.6 or so.

Leonardo and others, thanks for the help. I miss your old avatar though ;-D