I'm in the midst of performing my first overclock following the stickied guide. My system specs:

P5Q Deluxe
C2D E6400 2.13 w/ stock cooler
Crucial Ballistix 1066 (1Gb x 4)
PSU Antec TruePower Trio 650W
EVGA 8800 GTS

Here are my OC specs:

CPU Ratio @ 7.0 (6, 7, 8 available)
FSB @ 333 (2.36 Ghz - 10% OC)
DRAM @ 1121

Voltages (preliminary, haven't passed 24 Hour test yet, but seems stable during short term tests):

CPU @ 1.25675
FSB Termination @ 1.2 (minimum value)
DRAM Volt @ 2.0 V (Factory specification)
NB @ (I am currently minimizing this, still unstable)
SB @ Auto

Temperatures:

Idle -
System @ 38
CPU @ 34
Core 0 @ 47
Core 1 @ 45

Under Load -
System @ 39
CPU @ 45
Core 0 @ 58
Core 1 @ 58

I have a few questions. What is a reasonable speed I could expect to OC my ram safely? I bought it at Fry's and the guy there said I could OC it to 1200. Is that realistic? All four sticks have stock shields.

What is a reasonable maximum Core temp that I should stay under? I arbitrarily picked 60, but I was basically guessing. The stickied guide here says that 63 is a safe temperature. What do you guys think?

I guess basically what I'm getting at is, can I safely push my system further without improving my cooling?

Thanks in advance!

You need better cooling to go any further. I use 60C as my CPU temp limit. It's a little on the "play it safe" side of things, but then again I have never fried anything while OC'ing.

E8200 @ 3.6

I agree, stock cooling just won't cut it for overclocking. And it looks like a 10% OC is already taking it higher than I would be comfortable with. I would also check to see if your hs is mounted correctly and with the right amount of TM, perhaps you have too much tim or too little.

Read the other stickied guide. Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide

Don't focus on high RAM speeds the e6400 is not that sensitive to faster RAM speeds. All you will do is increase your heat.

The XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler with the XIGMATEK ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket works well and is relatively cheap.

Start out with more volts to the cpu, ram and NB.

You want to get to the speed where the cpu limits you via temp, not stay limited because it is not getting enough volts.

Think of voltage as the gas in your car. Takes more gas to go 90 than 55 mph. After you get to 90, start reducing the voltage to just a bit more than needed to stay stable.

Try 1.35 on cpu, 2.1 on the ram, and 1,4 on the NB.

I agree the ram speed is going to help you very little.

You should be able to get at least a 20% OC on that stock cooler. But as Zorg said, aftermarket cooling will let you go much higher, and is cheap.

^and before you put more gas into your car you need better radiator and air flow.

what i mean, dont oc with your stock cooler. not a good idea at all.

I agree, pushing your proc further at this point doesn't seem wise. Get those temps under control first.
Often too many volts can actually hurt your overclock. Like when you try to take your overheated car and do a neutral drop and it stalls in the middle of an intersection.

Slow down there, you should only increase voltages if they are needed. There is no reason to raise NB voltages at 333. I have a Q6600 at 3.2G 1600 FSB and RAM at 800 1:1 with no voltage increases except 2.2V RAM spec.

When you get the desired OC you should actually lower the CPU voltage until it is unstable and then bump it back up to the point that it is stable.

Thanks a bunch guys. So my take is that I shouldn't worry so much about the RAM speed as it won't make much of a difference anyway. And that I shouldn't be pushing it further without aftermarket cooling. That's pretty much what I was needing to know.

Right now I'm trying to get my NB stable. Prime quit both cores after 24 minutes on my last run so I'm on my next voltage increase iteration. It's already in the yellow though in bios according to the motherboard specs (the voltage number itself is yellow). I just bumped it up, but I can't remember what the voltage was. Doh!

stock cooling kills overclocks and cpu faster with overclocks stock sucks i have built many c2d systems to tell you intel is not that worried about there chips they all come with a basic mix of stock cooling all not very

What? Default your mobo and start over. Minimums and maximums aren't the recommended settings.

Eh? I'm confused Zorg. Who mentioned minimums and maximums? I was doing what the guide said to do: individually lowering my voltages until Prime gave me an error, than raising them until the errors ceased for an extended period of time. I thought I was there too...I had an extended run with no errors yesterday....

I came home today and found my computer on but no output to the monitor. Took a few very scary restarts before it would post and respond to the keyboard and mouse. BIOS reset automatically. I'm not sure what happened but it wasn't running anything overnight except for a scheduled virus scan and apparently a vista update. Otherwise it should have been at idle. The time it's taking to get the voltages right and the risk of burning something up isn't really worth a 10% increase in processor speed to me. I'm just gonna stick to stock I think.

This is the source of my confusion

If the mobo dropped the OC something isn't stable. I've also had a bad stick of RAM drop the OC, but that's easy to test with Memtest86+ and 99% chance it's not your problem.

A 10% OC isn't even an OC on the core 2. No I'm not going to make an AMD joke, but it was tempting.

You should not need to change any motherboard voltage settings, except RAM and/or CPU Vcore.

After you install an aftermarket CPU heatsink, I recommend the one above, try these settings:

Set AI OC Tuner to Manual.
Set the PCIe to 100Mhz.
Set the mobo base FSB clock to 333.
Set the DRAM frequency to DDR2 667. You can raise this later after you have a stable OC, the differences are negligible anyway.
Leave all voltages on auto except the RAM which should be set to the RAM spec, probably 2.1-2.2V, but verify the voltage.
If it is unstable then raise the Vcore [CPU Voltage only] by small increments and test. Do not change the CPU GTL or CPU PLL Voltages, leave them on auto.

This will give you:
CPU @ 2.66G
FSB @ 333
Ram @ 667 1:1

Probably done with no changes in voltage except RAM to meet RAM spec. After you are stable you can raise the RAM to 800 or tighten the timings, as you prefer, and possibly lower the Vcore.

Yes it's that simple.

^took the words out of my mouth...

Ah, I gotcha. I have the FSB voltage at minimum because that's what is stable (or so I thought), as per the overclocking guide. It said I need to minimize all of those voltages to reduce as much heat as possible. So I only need to mess with the CPU and Ram voltages? I checked the RAM and it's spec is 2.0 which is what I had it set at. So I should leave the others on auto?

I don't plan on getting an aftermarket cooler anytime soon. I actually plan on upgrading from an 8800 GTS to a 4870 today. I'll try to mildly overclock back to what I had it around 2.35Ghz using your settings and see if it works.