Overclocking Adventures: Dry Ice Party

As with any great adventure, there are always mountains to climb, ours was that of time. So much hardware, a cooling method that disappears every moment it’s left idle and the need to painstakingly prep every motherboard/CPU combination.

First thing was first, it was Friday night and a combination of relaxation and sleep was needed!

The next day – ZOMG!!! Where’s my dice gone? We lost 2kg over night due to the dice subliming and joining the surrounding atmosphere, but we planned adequately for this occurrence. We now had 8kg left. None the less, this was going to be a tight one!

The Atomic Overclocking madness – 8kg dice, excessive amounts of hardware, 1 day of insanity.

Ripe for the picking and looking so sweet, I rushed straight for the X6800 – unlocked multiplier lovin’!

Overclocking Platform:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
• ASUS P5B Deluxe (VDroop pencil mod used)
• TEAM Xtreem PC2-8000 5-5-5-15 2GB kit
• Samsung HD080HJ 80GB SATAII
• ASUS 8800GTX
• Hiper Type-R 730w

I wasn’t giving this X6800 any breathing room. As such I launched into the P5B Deluxe BIOS and set the following settings:

Advanced
AI Tuning:	manual
CPU Frequency:	391
DRAM Frequency:	488.75
DRAM Divider:	4:5 divider
PCI Express Frequency:	120
PCI Clock Synchronisation Mode:	33.33
Spread Spectrum:	disabled
Memory Voltage:	2.35v
CPU Vcore Voltage:	1.7v (1.62v real)
FSB Termination Voltage:	1.45v
NB Vcore:	1.65v
SB Vcore:	1.60v
ICH Chipset Voltage:	auto

Processor Configuration
Modify Ration Support:	enabled
Ration CMOS Setting:	11
C1E Support:	disabled
Max CPUID Value Limit:	disabled
Vanderpool Technology:	disabled
CPU TM Function:	enabled
Execute Disable Bit:	enabled
PECI:	disabled

North Bridge Chipset Configuration
Memory Remap Feature:	disabled
Configure DRAM Timing by SPD:	disabled
DRAM CAS# Latency:	4
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay:	4
DRAM RAS# Precharge:	4
DRAM RAS# Activate to Precharge:	4
DRAM Write Recovery Time:	4
DRAM TRFC:	25
DRAM TRRD:	10
Rank Write to Read Delay:	10
Read to Precharge Delay:	10
Write to Precharge Delay:	10
Static Read Control:	disabled
Initiate Graphic Adapter:	PEG/PCI

The processor booted up straight to 4.3GHz. From a processor series such as the Core 2 Extreme X6800 under a dry ice cooling solution, this was somewhat to be expected, but always a pleasant experience. For a very quick check on what the frequency could do, we went for a whirl around the wPrime 32M benchmark and scored a comfortable 20.343s result, not to shabby and something to be proud of, yet we wanted and needed more!