E6600 - X6800 in disguise (sung to the Transformers theme tune)

[Izanagi]

So I did my very first proper bit of CPU overclocking today and I was so chuffed with the results that I thought you'd all be dying to know how it went (it's a 1000 post thing )

My rig:

E6600 2.4GHz B2 Revision
EVGA 680i SLI 122-CK-NF68-AR (P32 BIOS)
2GB Corsair XMS2 CM2X1024-6400C4
NVIDIA 768MB 8800GTX
2 x 320GB HD (I forget which ones) in RAID 0
Corsair HX620W PSU

I should point out the the goal of today's little play was not to secure the most blisteringly faster overclock imaginable, but to see just what my little E6600 could produce with the smallest amount of input. As I had decided to flash the BIOS on my rig for the very first time since the nice guys at Beast dropped it off I figured I would lose all the BIOS overclock profiles so I might as well get my feet wet.

The first thing I did was read every scrap of information I could find on overclocking to get a good understanding of how the process goes. The best overclocking advice is “If you can’t afford to replace it, don’t overclock it.”. I can’t actually afford to replace it, but I’m an idiot with a need to tweak.

Here are some of the best guides I found:

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/146820-intel-overclocking-redefined-guide-successful-overclocking.html

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=61146

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=222688

http://uk.gear.ign.com/articles/747/747671p1.html

and a list of a few others:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/overclocking-tweaking-benchmarking/182-overclocking-guides.html

Be warned I found the nvidia one to be a bit drastic to say the least.

“Apply all these settings and bingo your overclocking!”
Click
“Wow your board’s fried? Shame.”

The most useful thing was the recommended ‘safe’ maximum voltages as these were the ones I decided I didn’t want to have to use to get my overclock. So I came up with what I considered to be a set of safe voltages and ventured forth into the BIOS.