hello all, I've been getting alot of advice on my ASUS Maximus MB and my INTEL QX9650, however what I really need more than anything is a view of others who have this combo and their BIOS specs. THAT WAY I HAVE AN IDEA WHAT WORKS FOR OTHERS AND WHERE PERHAPS I MAY BE GOING WRONG.There are several of the posters who have given plenty of advice, (alot of it very good) but most of all I need to see what is making YOUR system run so cool and high in CPU speed. Someone, please give me some assistance here.Best to all, Clayhttp://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...ers/Dopke01.jpgClayton T. Dopke (Clay)Major, USAF (retired)"Drac"

Clay,The only bios settings tha are going to have a major effect on your system temperature are your FSB, your multiplier and vCore. The higher you try to clock the system the hotter it is going to run (because you will need more vCore and thus have more heat to dissipate). All QX9650s ARE NOT THE SAME and each chip will behave differently (require more or less vcore for a given speed, run hotter or cooler at a given vcore and speed etc...).I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for. My particular system running at 4GHZ (vcore 1.4v, 400MHz FSB, 10x Multiplier) at idle runs at 44C and at full load it runs at 75C. Not sure if I would call that cool but its to be expected on air and even on some water cooling.What I can tell you for sure is that when raising vCore to achieve a stable overclock temperature will increase, you will get to a point when raising vCore that the temperature will exponentially take off.You really have to experiment will your particular chip and find a spot that is acceptable to you. The QX9650s are really not any different than an other CPU when it comes to overclocking in that there are good performers and there are poor performers.What works for one will not necessarily and more than likely not work for you. Each chip is unique.

Thanks Sarg,True. Everyone's system is different, however you have validated my starting point with a reference and that is what I really needed, so I could see I was on the right track.Thanks, as you are the ONLY one so far to give me some specs and try to help. System idle's at 22C at 3.45GHz, and runs at 36C with FS9 under full load and all sliders full right....with FPS set at unlimited, I'm getting some silly numbers like 160 FPS....unreal.Anyways, thanks for your help, now I can take my time and really learn what all that stuff does.Best,ClayBest to you and yours, http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...ers/Dopke01.jpgClayton T. Dopke (Clay)Major, USAF (retired)"Drac"

when you OC, make sure your RAM is set accordingly.what speed of RAM do you have? PC6400?Some RAM overclocks better than others so you'll probably have to use a divider, but I could be wrong, last time I OCed it was a single core AMD, with DDR ram hehe

Hello Ryan,The RAM is listed as DDR2 1066. and it seems to do a good job, as the system oc's easily if necessary.http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...ers/Dopke01.jpgClayton T. Dopke (Clay)Major, USAF (retired)"Drac"