i3 540 overclock help

ballpark?....1.25-1.55V
VTT mostly matters if you're pushing high DMI/memory speeds

All those questions are answered in my guide.....I thought you read it

I read the same thing:

I do not recommend exceeding 1.4V.

I'd say that would be the max he would recommend.

EDIT: Great guides btw Miahallen

That's impressive. Nice chip.

That's your problem. These chips have huge voltage and overclockability variances, so it's nearly impossible to give advice until you work your way up slowly and get a baseline for how it likes (or doesn't like) to clock.

3.8ghz at 1.32v is pure insanity unless you've got a chip with a 1.30v VID. Most chips can do 3.6-3.8ghz at stock or near stock voltage. Most need a little more juice for 4.0ghz. Most need a lot more juice for 4.3ghz and above.

I did 3.8ghz at stock voltage, 4.0ghz at like 4-5 ticks over stock voltage, and 4.4ghz at like 30 ticks over stock voltage. I'd say that's on the lower voltage side of average.
Edited by AyeYo - 11/22/10 at 7:09pm

So no, I do not list a specific value. This is because I believe it varies based on your cooling capacity For instance, I recently built MAX11L (the rig in my sig) and I was using an H70 for cooling. My best OC with the i5 670 CPU was 4.8GHz with 1.475V which hit 101C while running LinX....see the screenshot below



If you have extrodinary cooling, like a high end custom water cooling loop, you're unlikely to become tempurature limited with Clarkdale. In that case, I would be hesitant to run these chips much past 1.5V. If you are running sub-zero cooling like a single stage phase change, maybe up to 1.6V would be OK.....but this isn't an exact science. Below was my best 24/7 type OC with the same chip with a custom water loop.



As you can see in the screenshot, I was keeping the chip near 1.5V despite the fact that my temps were well below the 105C cap. In this case, I would base your max voltage on the behavior of the chip and the way it is scaling with the voltage you're giving it. What I mean by that, is when you increase voltage, at lower speeds you should see significant speed increases with small voltage increases, as you start nearing a particular CPU's limit, you'll notice a drop off of the speed increase given similar voltage increases.....when you reach the point where the CPU doesn't want to speed up much, even with a large voltage increase.....and it seems like you're hitting a "wall".....that's because you're hitting a "wall"

In this situation, there is diminishing returns for voltage increases, and these high voltages are more likely to damage the CPU despite sufficient cooling.

So, I'm not explaining all this to change my suggestions....just trying to provide a bit more insight into my reasoning

Thanks Dave