Help the noob overclock an E6400!

[leetkyle]

I haven't done much overclocking at all, but I do want to start overclocking my new CPU! (Arrived yesterday, woohoo! ) I'm on air-cooling at the minute (although will be moving onto water-cooling once I get the cash) in a well-cooled Antec P180 Case w/ good cable management etc and stock cooling.

I'll be using the Asus P5W DH Deluxe and 2GB Corsair XMS2 5-5-5-12 PC2-6400 (CAS5 I'm pretty sure..). I found this fantastic guide for overclocking the E6400 to 3.0GHz on aircooling, as I don't want to spend too much time tinkering in the BIOS:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=6&t=10706

Is most of what's on the GB BIOS the same on the ASUS? I don't want to o/c it too much and will of course download programs to run it at 100% for about 40 minutes to see what temps go up to (what's the highest i should be going on air?)

I'm assuming all the bridges etc should be able to handle that.. and when I push it to 3GHz, will I need to replace them with fans or anything? Never done it before.. ;P

I will probably only bring it up to around 2.7-2.8GHz until I get some wc installed!

So, your challenge is: Make an idiot-proof "overclocking an E6400 to 2.8GHz Stable" for the leetkyle! Who knows, if it is amazing I might send you $5 ;P

Thanks.

 

[Jet]

Lol, no $5 for me.

You will have to spend a considerable amount of time in the BIOS, since all overclocking utilities that run in windows aren't too good.

Just raise the FSB by 3-5 Mhz at a time, run SuperPi 4M everytime, and Prime 95 for half an hour every 0.1 GHz, until you get errors.

A great guide for getting a better overclock:
Burn-in Guide

 

[fade2green514]

first thing i do when i overclock is set the lowest memory divider, and raise memory timings to the maximum, just to eliminate it as a possibility for instability. then, raise fsb 5-10mhz until it won't boot anymore. then, lower it 20mhz and try to boot it. run prime95 and sure, superpi like jet suggested. run prime95 for at least two hours. if its unstable (one of the above will return an error) then lower the fsb 3-5mhz until you can run prime95 without an error. then, once this is done raise the memory divider a bit to see what speeds you can reach. run prime95's memory test, and memtest86. that'll test for memory stability. run memtest to... say around 300%, the more you run it though the more stable you know that it is. personally i would run one of them and just walk away for awhile.
stock cooling should do just fine as long as you don't overvolt, overvolting is what REALLY adds the heat. frequency does some but not enough to really matter as long as you have a fan on it.
water cooling is unnecessary. a good air cooler like the big typhoon or the tuniq tower 120 would be a better choice just because air cooling is low maintenance... and cooling won't really help you gain a whole lot on an overclock. phase change cooling would be much more efficient than either, just because it can lower temps below room temperature, whereas air or water cooling cant do that. (phase change = -20C lol)