overclocking q9000

I wanna overclock my q9000 but i have no idea how to do it and i don't know how high it can go up to safely. Will this void my warranty if i overclock my processor? I have the All-Powerful M17x

 

From what I have seen so far you can safely overclock it to 2.4Ghz or so.

As for voiding your warranty, it shouldn't. They unlock the BIOS for a reason. They kind of expect people to OC them. And, if something does happen, you can always reset the CMOS and Dell will be none the wiser.

 

under your bios change your fsb to 1250 and that's all

 

The_Moo has a pretty good guide at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=408230 on how do do the overclocking. Its easy, boot into BIOS go to advanced, unlink, set your FSB and go.

I'm currently running at 2.4 as anything else gets really unstable really fast, although I haven't tried to go faster under Windows 7.

One thing to keep in mind, if you do OC it too far, and your system won't boot, simply remove the CMOS/BIOS battery and it will rest it to factory defaults. If you are in a RAID array, I'm not sure what this will do to you array.

 

can't be more clear than that

 

Having never OCed anything, I left the memory at the default 1066 and changed my FSB to 1200. Faster PC with no adverse issues so far. Others indicate that this number can be bumped up quite a bit still.

 

ok guys, thanks for the big help

 

o and btw, can you use nvidia system tools instead, is that safer?

and what does that mean?

 

NST is not safer and is more limited.

TheMoo is referencing changing your memory freq along with your fsb freq to find out how your system performs best. Lots of testing.

 

ok thanks. So 1250 for the FSB is stable?

 

Depends on your individual CPU and other components. You will have to test it yourself to find out. Mine was stable at 1226 with the first mainboard, and 1285 after the mainboard got replaced by a new one.

 

For me, 1230 was tops. Even 1240 would freeze the computer whenever I stressed the cpu at all.

I've mentioned this in a different thread, but it seems even 1200, or anything above default settings will freeze the computer for anything cpu intensive.

I briefly tried Nvidia system tools a couple of weeks ago on Vista 32 and it had the same issues. It seems the q9000 is not great for overclocking.

 

Were those all with just the FSB set to that speed or the memory as well? Better system stability seems to result from them both being the same speed.

 

Actually I've tried every manner of combinations. With the FSB and memory the highest I got was 1230; I could get it up to about 1250 but it would eventually freeze either a few hours or couple of days later. 1230 was the most stable; but even then, anything really cpu intensive would still shut it down.

 

I ran into an unexpected problem last night. I OCed my FSB to 1280. Computer started with out problem, with one notable exception. My web cam seems to have stopped working. I restarted, set the FSB to 1200 (previously, no issues with this setting) and the problem was still there. Backed it down to 1190 and all seems well.

I suspect that raising the FSB may lower the voltages somewhere and that didn't allow enough power to drive the camera. Any other ideas on this?

 

idk why but im scared that i will break my computer overclocking my processor

 

Is there adequate cooling for overclocking?

 

The cooling is more than adequate. My QX9300 at 3.18 never goes over 80c when running OCCT with not cooler and full tilt