After years of contemplating this, and about 6-8 builds from the Win'95/98 days until now, I have finally tried overclocking. I have a Q6600 on a GA-X38T-DQ6 with 2*2 Mushkin 991601 (DDR3) , rated at 1600 MHz and 7-7-6-18.Today I tried my first OC in stages, raising the Host f to 333 (from 266), PCI bus to 100 MHz, and 3.20 initially on the memory to give 1066 (incidentally shown also as SPD, I don't know if my BIOS is reading the memory correctly?). All went OK., temps in the low '60's with FSX running, Cessna Mustang loaded (about the biggest resource user there is I think :) ). VCore is set manually at 1.30000v. (I also have an after-market cooler on the CPU- Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme 775 )Next, I tried kicking the memory up to 4.00, that gives me the max of 1333 MHz at the 333 clock. Still OK- but I notice that in CPU-Z that the memory settings (on Auto) are now 9-9-9-25. So, thinking that I know how to fix that, I set the memory settings to manual, and 7-7-6-18. Now the PC will POST but either freezes up loading XP/32 or gives me the BSOD after POST. I have reset the memory to auto (which yields again 9-9-9-25 in CPU-Z).All other settings are at Auto.I figure there is something here that I'm missing, I would appreciate any suggestions, as I am totally new to this stuff.Thanks, Bruce.

G'day again Bruce,Still having a go, eh? That's great. I don't know how much reading you've done or what you've seen, but here's a couple of links to sites that got me on the right path to OC'ing my Q6600 to 3.30GHz: "TweakTown Forum" and "AnandTech Guide"I have a similar mobo to yours so you should be able to follow these guides as easily (or not) as I did.Cheers,

You may need to set your memory voltage manually as well. Looks like that RAM needs 1.85-1.95V to reach its stock speed and timings.

You may need to set your memory voltage manually as well. Looks like that RAM needs 1.85-1.95V to reach its stock speed and timings.

Thanks Owi and TechGuy,I looked at increasing DDR3 volts tonight. Everest or CPU-Z do not state any info on current memory voltage, and all that my BIOS does is offer incremental steps of 0.05V, but from what? There is no actual specific info on voltage that I can find anywhere. Is there somewhere that I am not looking that has this info?I have also read the links to OC this mobo, thanks Owi- good info, I have clipped most of it to a .doc.Thanks, Bruce.

first thing to do. change everything from auto and set it manually. you can easily find what the defaults should be in your manuel or on the internet.

Default DDR3 voltage is 1.8 so if you can't set it manually and only have the option to add voltage to the default setting I'd suggest trying a +.05 setting to begin with, working your way up to +.15 if necessary.

Default DDR3 voltage is 1.8 so if you can't set it manually and only have the option to add voltage to the default setting I'd suggest trying a +.05 setting to begin with, working your way up to +.15 if necessary.

Thanks, this is what I was looking for. Thanks to everyone for the helpful information.Bruce.

You may need to set your memory voltage manually as well. Looks like that RAM needs 1.85-1.95V to reach its stock speed and timings.

Hi again,I have raised DDR3 voltage now by 2 steps (which would equate to 1.9V, if the standard is 1.8V), with my relatively mild OC of 3GHz on a Q6600 (DDR3 at 1300). I still have trouble using RAMSET to get the CAS latency below 9 (Memset won't go below 9), although I can get the other 3 settings into 7's and 6's, and of course command rate is at 2T and won;t go any lower on memset.Prior to commencing the OC, I had the mem settings all at AUTO, and noted that they were all in the 7's, and command rate was 1T. I understand why I may not be able to get those timing settings with higher clock peed, but is there any value on under-clocking RAM (I don't know if I could even slow the RAM down enough to make it think I was still in a pre-OC mode) to get better timings at the expense of RAM speed, while still OC the CPU?Thanks, I'm learning a lot- like most things, you have do actually do something and not just read about it :)Thanks, Bruce.

I've never had good luck using Memset on any recent Intel platform I've owned. Since you've upped the RAM voltage, have you tried changing the RAM timings in the BIOS or have you just been using Memset?

I've never had good luck using Memset on any recent Intel platform I've owned. Since you've upped the RAM voltage, have you tried changing the RAM timings in the BIOS or have you just been using Memset?

Just MemSet. I did try manually setting values in BIOS before I had upped the voltage, that's wehat led to this thread. I will try again- and I still have another 0.05V step to et to 1.95V, although with such a mild OC I expect that I would be seeing something now. Maybe I need to tweak the NB volts too, not sure.Thanks, Bruce.

You may need another .05 or .1V on the VMCH to handle the higher FSB.