Windows 7: My New Computer. Impressed with the O/c.

That's very true...I have my avi movies running at 48 FPS, and it looks a lot more natural, especially during high action scenes.

Dannyboy, you need to listen.

You WILL melt your CPU. Turn down the OC, and voltage.
And do some research about how to OC first, since you obviously don't know how to do it correctly.

~Lordbob

All the settings are set back to Default , nothing like 'wearing the chip in' lol

More like "wearing the chip OUT". How long exactly did you have it running at the higher settings??

lol. About 20 hours

Then hopefully you've avoided any permanent damage.

I'm a little late to the party, but what good is that performance if it kills the chip in a month or so. Not much to brag about there.

Well, the processing of the chip and it's ability to run stable is what makes it the CPU it becomes. When Intel runs these off the line....chips that perform better are rated with higher speeds...while those that don't perform as stable get a lower clock speed. At least that is my understand. Thus, a Q9650 and a Q9550 might have come from same line..but one handled 3.0ghz better and the other is set to 2.83Ghz.


Not sure about that. I run a Core 2 Quad Q9550 at home with a minor overclock 2.83ghz to 3.2ghz (no voltage increase, just moved FSB to 400 and dropped from 8.5x to 8.0x). On the stock Intel cooler, I run low 30's at idle and mid-upper 50's under load. No liquid cooling needed.

My CPU is definitely either messed up, or I have bad sensors. My idle temps sit at about 52C...

That is with a non-stock cooler too.

~Lordbob

They don't call them "suicide runs" for nothing.

Hopefully with only 20 hours at 1.5 you did no lasting damage. Your first indicator that things weren't going as planned should have been your first benchmark. Yes, you were able to idle at 4.4GHz, but when you actually asked the cpu to do something (linpack), because it was so hot, it scaled itself back to 3.8GHz... thereby tossing out the window the theory that you would be "sacrificing performance" should you scale down from 4.4; you were never really there anyway.

There's a sticky at the top of this forum, you should read it, three or four times until you dream about it and can spit this stuff out without thinking. Then proceed to clock back up, at default voltage, to see how high you can go. You might be pleasantly surprised with the results.

... and yes, one does not need water cooling just because you want to clock a quad. There are many after market coolers which provide excellent cooling.

Testing with Prime Blend would not get nearly so hot although you will still need a better heat sink. That much Vcore won't work long term either. Four passes of IBT isn't even close to being stable, use Prime Blend test and run it 10 hours if you want it stable. Luckily your CPU throttled down the GHz to save it from being cooked although it still got way too hot. These are just the standard beginner mistakes, no harm "hopefully" no foul. Consider this a learning experience.

Overclocking has it's safe limits but you are well beyond them at this point. CPU Vcore isn't the only required adjustment for overclocking the i7. QPI and CPU vtt voltage play a major role here as well, getting those settings correct will allow you to lower your Vcore considerably. I would keep it under 70C although some guys go to 80C on the i7 while stress testing only.