My old chip was a Q6600. Why was I upgrading at all you may ask? Well, my Q6600 could only hit about 3.2GHz, I wanted some more power plus the extra cores is a nice touch. Generally speaking, the Phenom II X6 is close to the performance clock for clock of my old Q6600. I also snagged a deal on frys.com where the processor + motherboard was only $260. I combo’d that with $80 DDR3 Corsair XMS3 ram (after rebate) from tigerdirect, and picked up a H50 cooler at retail price from newegg. ($80) I also intend to sell my old parts on eBay in the near future to help recoup some cost.
specs:
GA-890GPA-UD3H
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333
Corsair HX520w PSU (If you don’t think this is enough.. I’ve done the calculations and even with the processor at 4GHz at max I’ll hit 480w or so, with everything fully loaded, 100%. Corsair PSU’s are slightly under rated, and will deliver 520W continuously without issue. I don’t intend to keep my CPU at 4GHz though so there really is no issue, or “pushing” the limits.)
1055T (stepping: CCBBE CB 1015BPMW)
ATi Radeon HD5850
Corsair H50
1x 320GB 72k drive
1x 500GB 72k drive
1X 1TB 72k drive
Overall, pretty cheap upgrade. Let’s start off by saying this was not exactly an “easy” venture. I thought it would be, but it in no way ended up that way. Starting from the beginning, I had to remove my old LGA775 motherboard with a Q6600.
That was pretty simple. Mounting the H50 was also pretty simple. The rest of the process was also simple, and what I’d expect.
So I power up the system, install windows, boot into windows, and all of a sudden… BAM my pc won’t start up. I keep pressing the button like an idiot and smell something burning. My worst fear was that the power supply was dead. I proceeded to disassemble my entire build, that I just put together. I took the power supply to a nearby computer to test if it worked. It worked without issue. So what’s the problem? I have to take out all my components to find out what is causing the problem. I take out the H50 radiator and fan and put it on top of my case.
I power on the system like this, and guess what? The H50 fan starts smoking and making sounds like it’s burning up! Immediately I power off the PC and take out the fan. I replace these fans with my antec fans I’ve had for quite some time. My antec 900 came with a bunch of them. No problems.
This whole process took awhile to sort out and set me back time wise substantially. Anyway, with this sorted out I went to begin overclocking my computer. I hit a wall at around 3.75 GHz, northbridge needed some more juice.
Then my ram timings/speed were getting messed up even with the highest divider. My motherboard is sensitive to the timings on ram for some reason, so I couldn’t boot with certain timings. Not cool. After struggling with the ram timings, speed, northbridge frequency etc, I was finally able to start booting at above 3.75GHz, and eventually was able to hit 4GHz. To make it stable, I had to run a lot of prime95 and ram tests. Prime stability came in at 1.5V. Worth all the hassle? Maybe not since I don’t think I’ll be running my CPU at 1.5V. I can get 3.8ish at around 1.38V. Extra 200Mhz for .12v doesn’t seem worth it. Of course, I just had to push it to 4GHz because it’s “magical” or something 
3DMark06 run: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=13861077
Well, that’s that. I’m just adding some finishing tweaks to my setup and figuring out what the “best” overclock would be for performance, energy consumption, and heat. Probably about 3.8GHz, 4GHz turbo, with C&Q enabled.
This processor is noticeably faster than the Q6600, so I’m happy with my upgrade.
UPDATE: I settled on 3.5GHz @ 1.28V. Should be close to stock watts, at 4GHz it’s a 93% increase.. 93% increase for 500MHz isn’t what I’d call a good deal considering the cost of electricity here. I leave my PC on 24/7 so I don’t want to burn up too much. Haven’t figured out turbo yet, doesn’t seem to work correctly. Only bumps voltage to 1.32v which isn’t enough to do much with. Of course, I have saved the 4Ghz profile in my motherboard in case I need it for something
Again, my Q6600 ate close to 200w at 3.2GHz so I never ran it there much. I try to keep my overclocks a little energy efficient.
I tell most people who want to buy a PC to build it themselves. Of course, I often forget that these people aren’t equipped with the knowledge I have. There is still hope, however. Building a PC is really quite easy, and could be learned in no time. If these people really want to have a solid PC they must consider buying parts and putting it together themselves.
New chips are out, but it doesn’t seem like pc enthusiasts are paying much attention, including me. Why? Well, prices are too high right now. Also, I just built this PC what, about a half year ago, I don’t think I’m ready for an upgrade quite yet. Most people are sticking with their Core 2 Duos or Core 2 Quads, since with those overclocked, there’s not much of a difference between the i7 at stock. Of course, the i7 should be able to overclock further, but who needs that kind of speed right now anyway. Last time I checked, my Q6600@3.2GHz was not having any trouble with current games. I rarely even see my processor go more than 50% use, except when I’m encoding video, where it goes to 80%. Booting up windows etc only puts my processor at about 5-10% use. I see no reason, wouldn’t even use the power. That’s why I don’t think there’s a big fuss over the Core i7′s in comparison to all the fuss made over the Conroe architecture when that came out. GPU’s are behind processors nowadays so no one sees a need.