I just ordered a Q9550 Core 2 Quad which I know has an awesome ability to be overclocked, figuring it starts at 2.83Ghz and I could up it too 3.0Ghz after I get my fans and coolers hooked up. Coming with a Zotac GeForce 9300 motherboard which is also apparently an excellent motherboard for overclocking (considering it is Zotac, I almost went with the XFX GeForce but the heat dispersion sucks on the XFX board).

Anyone have any experience overclocking a Core 2 Quad processor? Is it easy? I have had my current Core 2 Duo overclocked but it was admitting too much heat so I took it back to factory standard (which still runs at the max heat for the proccesor).

I understand the fun in doing so but I personally have found little value in doing so most of the time.

It's easy as pie. I have a 9550 at 3700 stable 24/7, max 4200 on air. I'm more of an LN2 guy though if it's under 5000 I'm not happy lol. Let me know what you need to know and I'll help you out.

stable for the next 4 months then poof, you OC at that rate you better get water cooling..trust me been there done that...

I almost never overclock, as doing so can void the warranty on your CPU. Besides- with the prices for processors being as cheap as they are at present, you'd probably be better off just springing for the faster CPU in the first place.

If you're still getting major heat issues even with your processor being at stock clocks, chances are that you didn't seat the heatsink/fan assembly properly. Either that or there's either too little (if any) thermal paste squeezed on. I'd check to see if the fan is properly seated and those little pin-like fasteners at the corners of the fan/heatsink are pushed down far enough to keep the assembly attached to the processor.

Yeah, 3700 is max comfy temps for on high-end air, TRUE washer modded with panaflos, temps and voltage are fine. It will be fine. It's running at 100% load crunching for a year no degradation, I have a cherry chip, low vid and all.

By the way, the stock cooler is plain awful. Never use it, I don't trust them at stock. S1283s, TRUEs, etc. are the way to go. Water for anythng above 4000 and phase for 5000+.

If you really want to talk overclocking check out xtremesystems forums or OC forums. Folks are always willing to help you out. Great group of ppl over there.

you know you are getting old when you read something you are pretty sure is English ... yet you have no idea what it is saying ...

reminds me of being lost in London and asking for directions in a Cockney area

I agree with a previous post. In the last few years I have found little value in overclocking and have seen more risk than reward.

Back in the olden days you used to be able to overclock by significant factors.... 50% or more on some old AMD's that I used to play with. Now days it's not worth the extra 10% you get, considering the potential damage that I'm sure I could do.

One thing I have noticed on my quad core, overclocking is not needed in 99% of the video editing and rendering apps I have, the quad cores can handle it pretty near realtime anyway, overclocking would not give enough of an enhancement to warrent the shorter life of the chip.

I'm old and understand it... and it's not english, it's geek..LOL

Bingo!

Anyway, I've been tinkering with this chip since I got it. Haven't overclocked the stock settings yet, running it to see if the heat goes up or stays the same. Three days running and it is still at 45 degrees celsius, I think I can get more juice out of this badboy.

Probably end up heading over to OC forums and get some help from there.

Well, let me backpedal a bit ans say the overclocking is not for everyone this should be obvious. The gains today in most apps are minimal to worse, i.e. corruption of data. I do it for a hobby and compete in OC events now and again plus I review components so I'm paid to push things to the edge. If it breaks I just get a new part sent to me. This isn't true for 99.999 percent of people. A nd yes I have gotten 30 percent to 50 percent overclocks on air and water. LN2 much higher depending on a golden sample.

The real apps that benefit from OC'ing are the DC apps that are used to solve real world problems. A lot of medical research is done this way to find new drugs to fight cancer and aids. This is what I do and I hope other people will contribute tot the projects.

For example a Q6600 at stock might do 8,000 WCG points running 24 hrs. a day. An overclocked Q6600 at 3600 will do 16000 WCG points in a day. So here the overclock is extremely beneficial. To each his/her own.

BTW the avg cpu lifespan is 20 yrs at stock or so, a safe overclock will shorten the lifespan to maybe 10 yrs. I've never kept a cpu chip that long, lol. And yeah, it really helps to buy boards designed to overclock.

Well... the computer component fab companies should be engineering robustness into their designs anyway to make sure their stuff actually works the way it should. However, since the vast majority of companies out there don't even test their products to any real degree (as I found out when the south-bridge chip in a SOYO motherboard literally exploded as I powered up after a build- and yeah... it was a serious design defect), the chance that anyone would actually engineer any amount of durability into their products is pretty much nil.

And -like I said- the way prices are falling for CPUs nowadays, you'd probably be better off just buying a higher-clocked chip. Or- with quad-core CPUs essentially taking over the roost that dual-core chips had the last year or so- just go THAT route, as the whole point of multi-core CPUs is to get performance upgrades WITHOUT having to overclock.

And I manage to get some pretty decent temps out of my stock Intel fan/heatsink. Sure, it's not like strapping on some monstrous Thermaltake or Zalman unit or even going liquid-cooled for your cooling purposes, but I manage to stay between 42 and 45-degrees C even when ambient temps are pushing into the mid-nineties.

I just think overclocking is just a lot of work with little payoff, at least nowadays, that is. If you were to get at least double the clock speed out of a processor with jump of a couple of bins, then fine... but i just don't see enough benefit especially when knowing of the consequences.