3.8GHz was stable, though at 1.6 volts on the CPU we wouldn’t want to be running it every day. Further tweaking may find you achieving this at closer to 1.5 volts. We’re also not on the best cooling solution around; while we’re a lot better than an air cooler, the Corsair Nautilus500 while being a very capable cooling solution doesn’t have anything on serious setups with 3x 120MM radiators which give you the ability to run higher voltage settings over a longer period of time. Unless you’re in Antarctica we wouldn’t recommend you venture to 1.6 volts unless your CPU has a bit of a death wish.
In the moment of high clock speeds we were feeling a little bit crazy and thought we would go for 4GHz.
…..and we got it!
1.66 volts later and a whole lot of time we managed to break that magical 4GHz mark. I don’t consider myself a hardcore overclocker but for this little achievement a pat on the back was well deserved!
We almost hit 16,500 3DMarks which is almost 500 up on the 3.8GHz run so the speed increase could continue to be seen in 3DMark06.
We ran our Crossfire cards at complete stock so no doubt we will soon be going back to 4GHz and clocking one of the cards up, since we can’t do them both just yet.
