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Looking to breath a little life into my old 780i FTW. Recmmend a Processor

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jmike00
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2017/06/28 00:56:21 (permalink)
My grandmother's house took a hit from lightning, coming in through the telephone line and her i7-860 PC did not survive. I scrounged up some spare parts this evening and came up with THIS Q6600 build which would serve her usage no problem. I'll need to find some DDR2 since hers didn't survive and those 4 sticks are 2 1GB(512x2) kits and thought I'd see about upgrading the CPU. Oddly the GTX 570 did survive but not sure if I'll chance swapping it in. My old Q6600 never OC'd well and needs a good chuck of VCORE to hit 3.0.
 
Like I said, as it sits now it would be ok for her. I'd love to say she's a simple user that just does Facebook, email and the occasional office document. However a few years ago someone showed her the basics of Photoshop which lead to her buying multiple Photoshop for Dummies type books and she'll happily spend hours just doodling on an image she snapped. That's why I'd like to see about getting her a CPU that will go over 3ghz.
 
A buddy is fairly sure he has a x5842 at work but he thought I might not be able to overclock it on a 780i board due to a lack of the right voltage adjustments. I was thinking Q9550/9650 for ~$30 if he's correct about the 5842. I'm happy to entertain other ideas.
 
edit: Typo x5482 but I'm guessing you already saw through that.
post edited by jmike00 - 2017/06/28 11:33:24
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    bob16314
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    Re: Looking to breath a little life into my old 780i FTW. Recmmend a Processor 2017/06/28 02:37:49 (permalink)
    First of all, you'd need to mod the Xenon to make it work.

    There's plenty of voltage adjustments for overclocking in the 780i FTW BIOS along with VDoop Control (which helps immensely).

    Q6600's are normally outstanding overclockers, especially the G0 stepping chips..I had one in a 790i FTW running at 3.6GHz, but that's extreme, and with about 1.5V Vcore if I remember correctly..Getting one into the 3.2GHz to 3.4GHz neighborhood should be fairly easy with sufficient cooling..What Vcore are you running the Q6600 at 3.0GHz?

    A stock Q9550/9650 would be a little better than a stock Q6600 of course, and an X5482 would be a lot better than even an overclocked Q9550/9650..Depending on the frequency, an overclocked Q6600 may be better than a stock Q9550/9650..The absolute best thing for performance would be to update the 780i BIOS to SZ17 (which you should anyway if you haven't) and mod the Xenon if you're into it..Otherwise, you could roll the dice and maybe get a Q9550/9650 that would overclock better or the same as your Q6600, but I don't think even then it would make any real huge difference..You need to increase the FSB frequency and unlink it from the memory to overclock a CPU that doesn't have an unlocked multiplier, but you knew that.  
    post edited by bob16314 - 2017/06/28 02:42:49

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    quadlatte
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    Re: Looking to breath a little life into my old 780i FTW. Recmmend a Processor 2017/06/28 09:41:16 (permalink)
    bob16314
    First of all, you'd need to mod the Xenon to make it work.

    There's plenty of voltage adjustments for overclocking in the 780i FTW BIOS along with VDoop Control (which helps immensely).

    Q6600's are normally outstanding overclockers, especially the G0 stepping chips..I had one in a 790i FTW running at 3.6GHz, but that's extreme, and with about 1.5V Vcore if I remember correctly..Getting one into the 3.2GHz to 3.4GHz neighborhood should be fairly easy with sufficient cooling..What Vcore are you running the Q6600 at 3.0GHz?

    A stock Q9550/9650 would be a little better than a stock Q6600 of course, and an X5482 would be a lot better than even an overclocked Q9550/9650..Depending on the frequency, an overclocked Q6600 may be better than a stock Q9550/9650..The absolute best thing for performance would be to update the 780i BIOS to SZ17 (which you should anyway if you haven't) and mod the Xenon if you're into it..Otherwise, you could roll the dice and maybe get a Q9550/9650 that would overclock better or the same as your Q6600, but I don't think even then it would make any real huge difference..You need to increase the FSB frequency and unlink it from the memory to overclock a CPU that doesn't have an unlocked multiplier, but you knew that.  


    +1, the mod is easy to do and gets you a much better cpu.

                                   
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    jmike00
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    Re: Looking to breath a little life into my old 780i FTW. Recmmend a Processor 2017/06/28 11:09:34 (permalink)
    bob16314
    First of all, you'd need to mod the Xenon to make it work.

    There's plenty of voltage adjustments for overclocking in the 780i FTW BIOS along with VDoop Control (which helps immensely).

    What Vcore are you running the Q6600 at 3.0GHz?


    1.425v is stable. Dropping below that will BSOD within 20min in P95 and quicker with Intel's Burn. It's a B3 chip unfortunately. I can get 3.2ghz stable but at that point I'm feeding it 1.5v and honestly with the AIO temps are fine. I just didn't want to set vcore that high on such an old chip that won't be in my possession. Especially if for a minimal investment I can do better.

    This board has a neat story for me atleast. It's the first thing I ever overclocked and at 1am on a Saturday night roughly a decade ago, I thought I'd fried something. EVGA had 24/7 phone support and I didn't have much hope that time of night but the tech was great. The phone call ended after the sun was up, having called me back a few times to attend to other customers but he took the time to teach overclocking in detail to a novice. I don't remember much else other than he was disappointed it would not OC higher. I tried over the years of it being in use to get it higher but never had success.

    Modding the chip isn't really a concern, in fact some of the ones I've seen have already been done. My friend does indeed have that XEON and he thought he remembered reading there are voltage adjustments needed that are available on the 790i but not on the 780i. He didn't know what they were and I haven't been able to uncover anything so I'm going to say he's remembering something else and is just being cautious.
     
     
    edit: About the Mod. I've only ever seen the use of stickers. Couldn't I just make my own out of Kapton tape and 2 drops of solder?
    post edited by jmike00 - 2017/06/28 16:29:28
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