We study Higgs condensation H ∼tt in the top-mode standard model at the next-to-leading (NTL) order in 1/N c , by calculating the effective potential as a function of a hard mass term σ 0 of the top quark. We include the effects of the third generation quarks, the Higgs and the Goldstone fields, and the leading QCD effects, but not the effects of the transverse components of the electroweak gauge bosons. The resulting effective theory contains finite energy cutoff parameters (Λ f , Λ b ) for the fermionic and the bosonic degrees of freedom. Condensation is supposed to take place at energies Λ ∼ Λ f ∼ Λ b . The paper describes how to regularize the integrals over the fermionic momenta in a way free of momentum branching ambiguities and how to treat the terms of 1/N c expansion mutually consistently. This is achieved by the proper time approach, employing specifically the proper time cutoff (PTC) or a Pauli-Villars (PV) regulator. For comparison, we use also the covariant spherical (S) cutoff. On the other hand, for the bosonic momenta we have to use the covariant spherical cutoff.We discuss how to ensure the validity of Goldstone theorem. Demanding that the NTL contributions not "wash out" the leading ones, we obtain rather low bounds for the cutoffs: Λ = O(1TeV). The results for the corresponding cases with PTC, PV and S regularization differ only marginally. Thus, in the described framework, 1/N c expansion approach has a predictive power only if Λ = O(1TeV), a result largely independent of the regularization procedure.