E6600 Bios VCore fail, thermal glue fail (??)

[rschmitty]

Greetings everyone

In the past month I started to get BSODs and poor FPS in games. I upgraded my bios about a week ago thinking it might help along with all drivers I could think of. Some suggested overheating as the cause.

The new bios update put a logo screen up there and hid the post, so I never noticed this

"CPU 6600 @ 1.60GHz(266x6)"


So possible heat and CPU speed weirdness, I started poking around the bios since I did that upgrade. I've never overclocked before and never even went into the bios to change anything but boot order.

I looked through and saw this in my PC Health Status: Vcore Fail, Sys temp 49C CPU Temp 84C



My other bios settings if relevant
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/5337/advancedbios.jpg
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/8177/tweaker.jpg

Here is my temps idle for 10min


And here it is with World of Warcraft running (not exactly a graphically intensive game)


CPU-Z also showing my Core Speed at 1600MHz. When I try changing the clock ratio to 9x it always resets it to 6x, I can only assume its a safety measure from the heat.

I'm not doing any special cooling, standard bottom in, rear out. I heard the stock intel cooling was fairly decent compared to aftermarket


Do have to wonder how much the gfx card is getting in the way..but shouldnt make that big of a difference


So here I am, well above my head. Why is the Vcore listed as fail? Is my cpu fried? Just need to clean and do another thermal glue app?

Here is my hardware, most of it purchased Nov 2006. The PSU is about a year old

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80557E6600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115003

GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel P965 - I have Rev 1.0 running bios F13 http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Support/...ProductID=2295
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128323

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) - I have 4GB total
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145034

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139005

EVGA 896-P3-1267-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 - Powers monitors 1&2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130400

EVGA 256-P2-N429-LR GeForce 7200GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 - Powers 3rd monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130098

COOLER MASTER Wave Master TAC-T01-E1C
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119023

[FX5200]

Did someone maybe manually set voltages in the BIOS? Those are crazy temps. Something is definitely wrong.

Take off the cooler (When the PC is off, obviously), clean out the fins with compressed air or something, put new thermal paste, and re-install the cooler.

[rschmitty]

I have not manually adjusted voltage, it is set to auto I believe? http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/8177/tweaker.jpg

I will get some paste and try a reseat. While I'm there do I need to worry about anything with all those copper tubes on the Gigabyte board?

[FX5200]

No, the copper tubes are heatpipes, unless you want to do a bit more work, they don't really need new TIM.

[rschmitty]

Well I installed a new zalman fan with artic silver and my temps are lower, however my bios still shows Vcore FAIL. Running at full clock speed at least. Is the vcore fail thing anything to worry about? edit: I reset the bios/cleared CMOS while I had the motherboard out hoping it would reset vcore fail status..

idle


after 1hour of gaming

[RichieB9280]

Dude, with a core 2 set ur v-core manually, make it like 1.2XXX - 1.3XXX range if your overclocked. if its higher than that with a stock cooler ur gonna be buying a new CPU soon.

[EspoNation]

On the 65nm C2D's you can run up to 1.5v with adequate cooling. I am confused by this vcore FAIL thing. Also you need to crank the fan speeds up on your gpu. 89C, that could be the cause of the frame stuttering. When my 4870's get to warm they start to stutter.

[maxgull]

Set the voltage control to manual and set the CPU at 1.25, instead of the dashes.

I suggest that you do some reading on the overclocking a quad, there are other settings that are wron there. PCi-e frequency should be set at 100 and manual, RAM voltages timings need to be set, your multiplier is wrong...

[EspoNation]

The E6600 is a dual isn't it? But anywho what max said. I think you know what is wrong but the language is wrong in the presentation. Take a read in the beginnings section and that should help you out alot.

[RichieB9280]

Yes the E6600 is a 65nm dual core. The chip with adequite cooling can be pushed beyond that, but the stock v-core range is 0.85v - 1.5v. I have an e6600 in my dell. My E8400 ran @ 4.05 GHZ with 1.285 v-core. 1.5 isn't nesicary with his speeds, infact it's supposed to be 266 x 9, when he flashed his bios he reset his bios to fail safe speeds. My dell is 2.4ghz, 266 x 9.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27250

Specs above for the e6600

[BigE4u]

Love the partial thread title... "...thermal glue...".

Ever thought about reflashing the BIOS or perhaps go back to using the original... if it aint broke, dont fix it.

[EspoNation]

Originally Posted by RichieB9280

Yes the E6600 is a 65nm dual core. The chip with adequite cooling can be pushed beyond that, but the stock v-core range is 0.85v - 1.5v. I have an e6600 in my dell. My E8400 ran @ 4.05 GHZ with 1.285 v-core. 1.5 isn't nesicary with his speeds, infact it's supposed to be 266 x 9, when he flashed his bios he reset his bios to fail safe speeds. My dell is 2.4ghz, 266 x 9.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27250

Specs above for the e6600

Ran my E6320 at 3.4ghz at like 1.32v. Robust little chips.

[rschmitty]

Originally Posted by maxgull

Set the voltage control to manual and set the CPU at 1.25, instead of the dashes.

I suggest that you do some reading on the overclocking a quad, there are other settings that are wron there. PCi-e frequency should be set at 100 and manual, RAM voltages timings need to be set, your multiplier is wrong...

Just a note, I never overclocked this at all, the most I touched in bios was set boot order and date. I came to these forums since you guys have much more experience with CPU/mobos than a generic pc help place.

My multiplyer was wrong, it was set at 6x and stuck there, but since I replaced the thermal "GLUE" (hehe oops paste) my temperatures came down and my multipler went back to 9x. I'll read up on ram settings and pci frequency, right now Im just happy I got my cpu back to normal

Also today when I went back to look at some of the settings the others suggested my VCORE fail was now 'normal'

Thanks all for your help, I'm actually reading about overclocking this now since it seems to be popular with this chip and I'm finally back to normal/stock speeds

[RichieB9280]

Originally Posted by EspoNation

Ran my E6320 at 3.4ghz at like 1.32v. Robust little chips.

Yeah, Core 2 Duo's are awesome overclockers. I still couldn't beleive my e8400 was over 4ghz and under 1.3 v-core. To get this quad to 4.0 i need 1.4vcore

[EspoNation]

Originally Posted by rschmitty

Just a note, I never overclocked this at all, the most I touched in bios was set boot order and date. I came to these forums since you guys have much more experience with CPU/mobos than a generic pc help place.

My multiplyer was wrong, it was set at 6x and stuck there, but since I replaced the thermal "GLUE" (hehe oops paste) my temperatures came down and my multipler went back to 9x. I'll read up on ram settings and pci frequency, right now Im just happy I got my cpu back to normal

Also today when I went back to look at some of the settings the others suggested my VCORE fail was now 'normal'

Thanks all for your help, I'm actually reading about overclocking this now since it seems to be popular with this chip and I'm finally back to normal/stock speeds

Well if it fixed itself good! I still have no idea what you are talking about. I have no idea how replacing thermal grease reset your multiplier.

[rschmitty]

Well I must of had some setting that lowers the clock speed/multiplyer/whatever when the chip was too hot to prevent it from overheating/death in the bios, and mine was overheating as by pics in first post.

So to me, replacing the grease, which in turn lowered the temperature and allows CPU to operate in normal range makes perfect sense why it lets me run a stock speeds now.


Anyways...