Help overclocking good ol' Core2Quad

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Nikkel

New member
Hey guys, would like some help, if possible, overclocking my 4+ year old Q9400 2.66ghz Core2 Quad setup...

This setup served me very well over time and I'm starting with upgrades soon (replacing with newer mobo, ram, i5/i7,gpu and psu... already bought new case Thermaltake Chaser A31:love:)

The rig:)
Thermaltake A31 Chaser Mid Tower
Intel DQ45Cb mobo
Core2Quad Q9400 2400 @2.66ghz
4gb Apacer 800mhz ram (Win 7 Pro 32bit so only seeing 3gb ram:p
MSI N250 GTS 256 bit gpu
Gigabyte 600W psu
Liteon Blu Ray player DVD writer combo
2 x 1tb Seagate 7200rpm hdd's (1 OS, 1 Storage)
Some pics...

Good old Coolermaster Elite 310 in the background from which the innards came in the background:p

I recently filled all available fan mounts with 120mm fans (2 front intake, bottom intake, rear and top exhaust) and idle temps is 26deg gpu and the 4 cores runs 29deg (core 4 running 34deg:confused:)

The Intel mobo doesn't give me much options to play around with in BIOS (Updated it a week ago)...

So is there anyone who can help?

Would love to see if there's any last hoora left with this setup by overclocking before it gets taken out starting end of September

I'm not really a fan of 1st person games and love playing games with the wireless Microsoft Xbox controller...
 
The Q9400s were based on the 45nm process, so its going to be cool even on the stock heatsink. 29 degrees, if you're measuring this at idle in the BIOS, isn't bad at all. That'll probably max out at 55-60 degrees under a heavy gaming load.

The bad news is that your motherboard won't allow for much overclocking. The DQ45CB was better suited to workstations and home servers, not catering to enthusiasts. Overclocking in those days was done through the FSB on locked chips and Intel boards wouldn't give you more than a 200MHz boost at most. Having tried it myself, I wouldn't waste the time doing it.

In the meantime, have you replaced your thermal paste since you last installed your processor?
 
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