I Crush 4200MHz and More
01.06.07 - 12:21am
I like to pretend that I am some sort of Super Hero when I sit down to do a benchmarking session. I guess benchmarking is one of the few things that you can do in which case only your tweaking talents matter. It is sort of like a chess-match and since I am terrible at chess, this is what I chose to excel in. Over the last 3 days I have spent countless hours insulating and tuning my newest single stage phase cooling device and the initial results were promising. Can anyone say -49 Celsius?
Cooling
This newest unit is no doubt the strongest unit I have created. I have seen previous temperatures in the lower -50’s with other builds but this one does an amazing job of handling heat loads in excess of 200 watts. My previous builds would have keeled over with the amount of heat my current processor is dumping. During load testing and tuning I got the system to hold my E6400 at 4000MHz with 1.55 core volts at a chilly -37 Celsius while idle and an amazing -22 Celsius with both cores of the E6400 100% loaded. The cooling capacity is simply phenomenal and it is a great match for the Core 2 Duo processor.
The Feats
I was incredibly impressed with how well these new Intel chips respond to cold temperatures. My old Athlon64 would hardwall at temperatures below -25 celsius but the C2D just screams for more. I started my overclock adventure at a lofty 4000MHz which is a 87.5% overclock from the default 2133MHz that my processor ships at. I easily broke 4000MHz and steadily climbed up to 4200MHz and then I hit a wall. After fiddling with my memory subtimings I managed to break 4200MHz and continue my trek down to 4248MHz. From here I took a break and tried to figure out how I could go even further as I had once again hit a hardwall. Why continue you might ask? Well 4248MHz is a 99.15% overclock and I wanted atleast a 100% overclock. Yeah, it is just a number but there is something special about reaching 100%. After multiple tweaks and resets I convinced myself that 1.6 volts was safe for the processor and pushed for it and achieved the following.
The End
For now I can say I am happy with my 102.7% overclock. The last 3 days were worth the effort and best of all my hardware managed to escape this episode relatively unscathed. It’ll be a while before I can convince myself to put my equipment under this amount of strain but when I do I plan on doing a bit of benchmarking and hopefully aim for the clockspeed worldrecord with the E6400. I have a feeling I’m going to need an even stronger unit than this one though, time to make plans for a 2 stage cascade. I hope you guys enjoy the pictures and numbers, this is a great way to kick off the new year. I’m back and it is time to get this show back on the road.
Relevant Links
Lean Machine Build
Wow; you’re so talented!
Awesome work, Chris! Thanks for taking the time to continue to publish a very “cool” project.
Thanks guys, it’s been a blast doing stuff like this. Now I need to focus on less extreme projects and finish my redesign!
Yes!!! It is very good result!!! So to hold Chris!!!