An OC'er Reborn...

I remembered our first computer, a Packcard Bell 486SX-33 w/ 4MB RAM and a tiny monitor. Computer technology had entered our house in 1994 or so and my wife and daughters had fun with it. I wouldn't touch it, yet... bah! Who needs technology! My car ran, I can build a house with a hammer and nails, and I can catch fish every evening.

Then it happened. Funny things happening on the monitor. Then some programs won't work. She did this, she did that. Then, phft! Nothing works. Frozen pictures. Now, where we live the nearest repair techy was 1 1/2 hours north or south of us. 5 miles east or west I could have taken the daggone computer fishing with me and left it in the Atlantic Ocean or the Chesapeake Bay here in Virginia. Repairing that computer was going to cost more than that surf fishing rig I was fixing to get! In fact, that darn thing cost more than my work car!!!

So the idea hit me. If I can build, fix, or remodel a house, why not fix the computer? So, off came the cover... hmmm, what's this sticker looking thing? 'Void If Rem... so, there went the warranty! YEOWW! What the hell is all that in there? Well, a week later, the wife comes home with all these books for Dummies. I must have stood there and gave her one of those dumb looks 'cause she laughed. Well, after buying better books with more technical details and two months of crammed knowledge, I got the sucker running. I bought more ram for a total of 12MB. Got the latest 9600 modem and went online with AOL. I was starting to hog that computer.

Then in 1996 I bought a Micron Millennia 200MMX with a 17" monitor. I was riding the bull. Being online gave me even more knowledge than I could handle. I had to fend off the rest of the family from using MY computer. ('NO! Go use that other one.') Then one day, I found Overclockers.com. At the time, P3's was around. The more I read the forums the more I wanted to try this overclocking. After doing a lot of reading and research, in mid 1999 I had built a PC with a Soyo SY-6BA+IV BX motherboard, a 550E P3, 256MB PC133 Sdram, nVidia TNT2 video card, SB Live! soundcard, handmade rounded IDE cables shrouded in black plastic looms, Alpha heatsink... the case has 7 fans! My own baybus fan controller w/ LED's made with parts from Radio Shack! OC!!! WHOOHOO!!! Almost 850Mhz!!!

My daughter met this kid in college and he and his friends were into computers. My daughter tells him what I did and he wants to see this thing. He's never heard of overclocking and so I explain. As we entered The Room he is awed. He looks inside the case and he is amazed. I showed the BIOS and how the CPU can be manipulated to think it is a speed demon. But why all the fans, he asked. 'Better to cool with, son.' (note: 3 years later he becomes my son-in-law).

Well, as time went on, all was well with me and my Baby. Oh yeah, my family, too. My future son-in-law wires up his house for networking for gaming with his friends and they have fun. Unbeknownst to them, I've been playing Unreal Tournament and Quake II on my own for a while. I finally made it to my son's (yes, I love this youg man enough to call him my son) home with my Baby to play UT with them. Needless to say, this older person kicked some young asses. I was happy with my rig and OC'ing had come to past with me.

Early of this year I was starting to read with interest of this new P4 CPU. Could I afford it? I had 2 daughters in college, one had gotten married, and two still in high school (yes, all daughters). Well, I decided to buy things slowly. In late spring I bought the Lian Li PC60. I read a lot about case modding. After deciding on a design, out came the tools and masking tape and hours later a dragon head was cut into the panel on the motherboard side. I spray painted the backside of the motherboard tray black and used a tinted and clear acrylic w/ amber/red glowire around the edge of the acrylic to give the dragon head a glow. On the other panel, I cut out a smaller flying dragon and a 92mm intake fan hole to be covered with clear acrylic. Other things done to the case was cut a 120mm blowhole on top, cut out the built in fan grill in the back, cut out the front fan holes on bezel and filter cover. Painted the filter cover black. Used black fan grills and Panaflo fans all around. So far, people who have seen this case thought it was custom made at a machine shop. No, it's a stock case that was modified in my backyard.

To date, I have collected Lite On's 16X DVD and 48X CDRW, and Corsair XMS3000 512MB DDR. This week, I decided to try a GEIL 512MB PC3500 and that should be here Tuesday. Yesterday, I went to a computer show in Norfolk and bought a P4 2.26B and a Swiftech cooler. Thank you, Intel, for that last price cut! Next purchase will be the Abit IT7 MAX2. After that, 2 WD or Maxtor 80G harddrives. Last will be the video card... ATI 9700 Pro. I figure this setup will keep me happy for a couple years. The last one did! Baby will be passed on to the desk across The Room when I finish the Silver Dragon. Yes, I let the family and others play games on Baby now and I don't mind. But, look out! I'll be soon riding the Dragon!!

So, how was your journey to OC'ing? Sorry for the long post but I'm proud to be 'official' on this forum after reading it for many years!

Five daughters? Send that man a double of Maalox and put it on my tab.

I got my first system about the time you did, my first OS was Windows (3.1) for Workgroups and I ran that until the OSR2 release of Win95.

I got into overclocking with a Celeron 300A system I built for a friend. This was his first system and he wanted to overclock it, despite my strong recommendations that he go with a P2 instead. I got it to 400 and discovered this was kinda cool. (Said friend experimented on his own and fried it two weeks later. He since become one of the most annoying Apple owners I've met, the moron often cites smoking his first rig as proof that Apple's are better.)

Anyway, I still have a bag of jumpers from those days of tweaking 440BX mobos. Moved to AMD with the Athlon. Loved overclocking them but came to despise VIA's pathetically unreliable chipsets. If I blow it up that's one thing, but if they can't get it to work at base settings that's something else.

Been out of overclocking for the last year and a half or so. The 845E and P4 is drawing me back. I'm in the process of building a new game rig and I can't wait to tweak it.

Thanks for the chance to reminiscence, and welcome to the forums!


BHD (a fellow old school geek...)

My first overclock was actually a P90@100, so I've known about the possiblity of overclocking for quite a while. However, I didn't really get into it untill I started looking for a replacement for my AMD K6-233.

After doing some research on the net, I learned that some overclockers were pushing Celeron 300A processors as high as 450, which was actually faster than the fastest processor Intell sold at that time for a fraction of the cost. The prospect intrigued me enough to spend a little extra on an Abit BX6, some good RAM, and a Celeron 300A. Once I saw the BIOS post at 450, I was hooked.

My family had a Commodore 64 since before I was born. Then when I was in 5th grade I got my first computer, this was like in early 95 or so. Packard Bell P75, 16 megs ram, Win 3.1. It was a real power house for its time. I kept that computer for like 5 years. By the time I was done with it, it wouldn't boot up half the time. One day I decided to take it apart. I took the heatsink off, because I wasn't really sure what was under there. Turned the computer on and realized that the CPU gets really hot really fast As I started looking around in there I started to realize how everything worked. I had a friend who had a P120 laying around and he said I could have it. Well I put it in wrong the fist time and bent a pin. Well I guess when 2 pins are touching and you try to boot the computer it will make the chip turn orange and start to smoke. Haha I like to think that I am one of the innovators of the burn in process on a cpu (joking of course). After the expriences taking that computer apart I have always been into computers. I built my first computer a few years ago. Began overclocking it and now I just finished water cooling the system I have now. Its pretty much addicting. But its a good thing!!!

LOL
67 Nova 350small Block 780 Holly...Whoops this isnt a car forum!

PB Pentium 166 few jumper changes presto pentium 200!
(Powerleap 233 with mmx wow)
She still runs prfect. Wish things were still that simple I still havent figured out memory settings lol

First build:
Coolermaster Wavemaster case
P4C800-e delexe P42.8c@FSB220
Bfg5900@444 950 coolbits
WDRaptor 74GB 10000rpm
Liteon burner,Pioneer A06dvd burner
Crucial 2sticks 512 3200Ram
Antec380 Win XP home

*Tear* My first overclock was on this baby...*Pats his 2.4b* Thing must be good if it can handle my mistakes! Damn this place is a drug! I've already gone through 2 computer chairs just reading the forums!!!

my first overclock was a AMD k-6 350mhz to 400mhz i thought my comp so fast i wanted everyone to see it but my REAL baby came along when i got my athlon 850mhz overclocked to 950mhz i love her to bits i wouldnt let anyone on it

My first true overclock was an old 486SX/25. . . . This came in the form of a prebuilt PC I bought at some computer no name store. I got it home and learned as much as i could about it. I had an old 8088 and understood the basics etc. so it was a matter of learning about the new hardware. Needless to say after learning what i had it was junk lol. but anyway this 486SX/25 was actually soldered to the board and supposedly you could plug in another chip and disable the onboard. I dont have the rig anymore and have NO idea what board was in it. Im a radio operator and understand electronics and radio systems well. This being said I realized this SX/25 had a 50mHz 4-pin oscillator crystal. This controls the clock speed of the CPU. Now back then this oscillator was inserted in a socket then zip-tied to avoid it being removed. I thought "What if replaced this 25/50mHz oscillator witha 33/66mHz?". So After some reading where I learned that the chips were for the most part identical I acquired the said 33/66mHz oscillator and went to town. Low and behold it WORKED. it ran a bit warm so i used some JB Weld and attached a heatsink. It never failed me and was sold a few years later still running at 33mhz. . . up from 25.

I once replaced a similar oscillator in an old 8088. . used an 8mhz up from 4.77. . . does that count??

I started old but at least I was young. I did my first oc on my first system. I build a 1ghz tbird for my 13th birthday after I fell in love with first person shooters and gaming in general. 3 months later I had my tbird l1 bridges hand painted to unlock it. Before I knew it I was up to 1.45ghz and I had become intoxicated with overclocking. Every system since then has been overclocked. 1800 ( 1.53ghz @ 2.3ghz ) 2500 barton ( 1.8ghz @ 2.2ghz ) 2600 mobile ( 2ghz @ 2.53ghz ) and now I'm planning on switching over to the darkside and trying out a P4 2.8c. Planning on hitting 3.5ghz with it. Wish me luck.

LOL talk about a thread being reborn, look at the date on the first post.

hehe, just what i thought... september 2002. didn't look at the date till i noticed pcbytes is talking about P4 2.26B and Abit IT7 MAX2

wonder, how's he doing now?