Good/stable setups for Q6600 overclocking

[rebkell]

I'm looking into the Q6600 chip and I see a lot of systems are using P35 chipsets.

I want to put together a system that will be used for some encoding, and it will probably be running 16 to 20 hrs a day at least encoding x264 stuff and I would like to hear some recommendations on mobo, ram, cooling from the Q6600 overclockers, I'm not interested in pushing it to the limits, but I would probably like to run the Q6600 at least to 3.2GHz and just looking for some feedback on stable setups some of you have.

[check]

You are getting quite near the limits for a Q6600 on air cooling if you are hoping to sit stable at 3.2ghz at 100% usage.
There are a lot of anandtech/tomshardware/other sites around with large comparisons of many motherboards, which is far more useful than the personal experience of people here.

From the anandtech review, I am running a gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard and corsair XMS 800Mhz ram with my Q6600, that I can run stably at 3.0 for extended periods of time. I haven't really bothered going faster.

[rebkell]

You are getting quite near the limits for a Q6600 on air cooling if you are hoping to sit stable at 3.2ghz at 100% usage.
There are a lot of anandtech/tomshardware/other sites around with large comparisons of many motherboards, which is far more useful than the personal experience of people here.

From the anandtech review, I am running a gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard and corsair XMS 800Mhz ram with my Q6600, that I can run stably at 3.0 for extended periods of time. I haven't really bothered going faster.

Thanks for the feedback. So, you're pretty comfortable with the above board and the Q6600 and the Corsair DDR2-800 RAM at 3.0GHz. I've heard nothing negative, only positive about the board you're using.

I disagree a little on the reviews being a better source. I really would like to hear from the users in the field that use x264 day in and day out and how their systems are configured and what combinations of hardware they are using.

[ilovejedd]

How far you can overclock depends on the chip you get. Stepping, too. Q6600 with G0 stepping supposedly overclock better than those with B3, but almost all the Q6600 you can buy nowadays are G0 stepping. It's still luck of the draw, though. Not sure if prices for the Q6600 will go down a bit more in a few weeks. It already dropped $20 from three weeks ago. When I bought the parts for my new rig, price for the retail box version was $275, now it's just $255. Although, I think Intel is scheduled to make price cuts in April, if you can wait that long.

A guy on a forum I joined just built a PC with the ff:
Q6600 2.4Ghz G0 Stepping
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Corsair 520HX
Gigabyte P35 DS3L
4GB (2x2Gb) OCZ Reaper DDR2-800
XFX 8800GTS (G92) 512
Seagate 320Gb HDD
Samsung DVD Burner
Sunbeam Transformer Case
Windows XP Pro

He was able to overclock it to 3.6GHz stable and temp was 54-56C during load (Orthos & Prime 95). Dunno what fsb/multi/voltage he used, though.

I'm holding out a bit for the Penryn quads but if they don't come out by mid-March, I'm getting myself a Q6600, too, along with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro.

Current specs:
Antec P182
Corsair 550VX
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160
Gigabyte P35 DS3R
4GB (2x2Gb) WINTEC AMPX DDR2-800
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3450 256MB
Western Digital 7500AAKS 750GB x 4
Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7190A x2

I don't think Newegg has the Gigabyte P35-DS3R anymore, but there are several variants of it (EP35-DS3R, EP35C-DS3R, P35C-DS3R) all of which I'm assuming are new and improved versions.

[Blue_MiSfit]

The DS4 is a good bet too - that's what I've got, and I was 3.2 GHz stable with no problem whatsoever. My copy of the Q6600 was a bit hot (with a nice tower cooler) , even at stock volts at 3.2, so I decided to not even worry about it. 2.4 is still pretty damned fast!!!

~MiSfit