# Overclock E8400?



## bnporter (Aug 15, 2009)

I'm trying to overclock my Intel E8400 to 4Ghz. I can get to 3.6Ghz, but after that, it crashes. Should I adjust the voltage. 

My Specs:

Cooler Master Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler
Intel E8400 3.0Ghz Wolfdale
Gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G MB
8GB G SKILL RAM
EVGA GTX460 1 GB VIDEO CARD

After I installed the new ram and video card I got P3481 3DMarks on 
3DMark11. I saw others getting over P4000 3DMarks.

I had 4Gb of Kingston VRam installed and also a PNY 9600GT Video Card installed before I upgraded the ram to 8gb gskill and the video card to the evga GTX460 video card. When I went to refresh my Windows Experience Index score, it didn't change at all. I'm not sure why it didn't change. 
Any info is greatly appreciated.


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## ravingDIODE (Feb 21, 2008)

Is your power supply strong enough?


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## ravingDIODE (Feb 21, 2008)

read up here as well, says that you need to have a good gfx and maybe in SLI/Crossfire as well etc.. 
Motherboard and RAM for Overclocking E8400 to 4.0ghz - CPUs - Overclocking

E8400 Overclocking potential - Overclockers Forums


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## bnporter (Aug 15, 2009)

I'm using a Corsair TX650 PSU.


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## ravingDIODE (Feb 21, 2008)

ah it should be fine.. Yes it seems you will def need to adjust the voltage. I havent overclocked so much before but to be able to carry on overclocking furhter you will need to adjust the voltage to keep up.. start with a small increment and see if it boots up or crashes.. then increment again bit by bit but dont go too far as you dont want to damage the CPU. You need to play around with small adjustments until you get the desired results.

Thats all I can help you with atm.. hoped it helped a bit!


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Windows Experience is just numbers. Some improvement should be seen with the GTX 460 GPU. What are the specs of the RAM? 8GB of RAM won't make any difference since no games and few apps can utilize over 3GB.
Do you actually see any improvement?


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## bnporter (Aug 15, 2009)

I do see improvements in games, that's because of the graphics card.

This is the ram I'm using.

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

The important part is that you see the increase in performance of your upgrade.


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## LateShow (Nov 30, 2008)

bnporter said:


> I'm trying to overclock my Intel E8400 to 4Ghz. I can get to 3.6Ghz, but after that, it crashes. Should I adjust the voltage.
> 
> My Specs:
> 
> ...


If you haven't upped your voltage so far then you ought to give that a try and see if you can oc any higher. Be careful with this and make sure you look up your CPU's rated voltage first and don't go above that! Small increments, just like ravingDIODE says.

You said you can get it to 3.6GHz, but is it stable at 3.6? If so, how did you verify stability?



> When I went to refresh my Windows Experience Index score, it didn't change at all. I'm not sure why it didn't change.


Don't worry about the Windows Experience Index... The reason it didn't change is because the final score is ultimately determined by the slowest component in your hardware.
Instead, use benchmarks such as Aquamark (old but still useful for bench purposes), or any of the 3D Mark series. Run a benchmark at stock settings to establish a baseline first, then after oc'ing, run it again and you will see the numbers go up.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

Windows experience means nothing, dont even bother with it.

I have an e8400 cpu at 4GHz.

This is how you overclock

Raise the FSB by 10MHz save and boot into windows, if everything is fine go back and do it again.

Once you have raised by 60MHz stress test for one hour using prime95, OCCT or Orthose whilst monitoring the temps with real temp. You do not want to go past 60c

repeat until you get to an overclock your happy with.

You will notice that your ram speed either goes higher or lower depnding on the FSB settings (I would suggest you get a faster speed of ram such as 1333MHz and there is no need for more than 4GB).

You have 8GB ram which could be limiting things plus you have 8GB which there is no need for.

If you were running 1333MHz ram you would not want your ram speed to go above 1333MHz or below 800MHz bceause you are running 800MHz ram I would thing this is causing your issue.

Back to the overclocking even if its not neccesary it is wise to raise the voltage even if slightly to give the cpu a bit of room to breathe. once you have raised the FSB to what you want raise the voltage to the next available one and see what happens if you get into windows and the temps look fine stress test for 6+ hours whilst monitoring the temps. Again make sure you do not go over 60c


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