Upon entering the BIOS for the first time, I configured the RAM timings according to their specifications. This was accomplished under the Advance DRAM Configuration menu as illustrated in the screenshot below.
Advance DRAM Configuration
The next stop was at the Cell Menu, which allows CPU ratio, clock speeds and voltages to be maintained. The front side bus (FSB) was operating at a frequency of 1333MHz, while the memory was clocked at 800MHz. The D.O.T. and Intel EIST settings were both disabled to reduce interference with manual overclocking.
BIOS Cell Menu
The PCI-E frequency remained at the default of 100MHz. At the bottom of the screen are CPU, memory and FSB voltage adjustments. Voltage adjustments for the northbridge and southbridge are further down the menu.
OVERCLOCKING
Readings from the popular CPU-Z utility revealed a core clock speed of 3000MHz, a FSB of 1333MHz and core voltage of 1.312v. Further efforts to increase performace were unsuccessful as 1367MHz caused system instability. Further testing is warranted as this Q6600 processor has run above 3.6GHz on another motherboard and different memory.
CPU Information
Memory Information
Northbridge and southbridge temperatures hovered around the 40°C mark during testing. With the Thermalright Ultra-120 extreme, the CPU idled just below 20 °C. The SuperPI 32M test pushed temperatures up to 20°C while game stress testing is on the future agenda. I should mention that each of the 2GB sticks of Patriot PC6400LLK memory remained cool with their large finned heatsinks.
