q6600 overclock bad idea?
q6600 overclock bad idea?
my friend has a q6600 based setup with 4gigs of ddr3 ram, a digilite motherboard running a gt 710, and a 10$ psu 450w. i gave him my old r7 250 which is working well for playing league dota or games like paladins. after installing the r7 270, the system started shutting down randomly due to cpu overheating. i applied thermal paste, and now everything is functioning properly. can you explain why the cpu overheated when he added the r7 270 (which only needs 450w) while his gt 710 was working fine? also, does applying thermal paste help with overclocking the cpu?
It seems the Gt710 was likely limiting the performance of the Q6600, so it was handling things more efficiently now. With the Q6600's age, applying fresh thermal paste makes sense, and cleaning the fans quickly can help. Overclocking to 3ghz is achievable on budget boards if the case cooling is adequate, though a basic $10 PSU might cause issues.
It could be that when he opened the case to install the new GPU, he could have knocked the CPU cooler enough to break the seal between CPU and HS. If he can now run a stress test (eg prime95) and memory test (mem86) then there is no reason why you cant try. see ultimately though you are not going to gain much.
It seems the Gt710 was likely limiting the performance of the Q6600, so it was handling things well. Now with a more powerful GPU, the CPU needs to match its effort. Considering the Q6600's age, applying fresh thermal paste makes sense, and cleaning the fans quickly is advisable. Overclocking to 3ghz becomes feasible on budget cases if the case cooling is adequate; however, a basic $10 PSU might cause issues.