Overclocking

[Akos]

Hi I am new to the list, and I think this topic has came up several times, but pls help.

I have a Athlon 800, ABit kt7 Raid, PC 133 memory I would like to overclock it with the pencil trick, but I do not really understand what do I have to do. Pls provide a brief instruction of the proceedure. (with pics if possible)

Thank you very much

Akos

[Rob Cork]

Take a pencil (I use HB), sharpen it as much as you can, and use it to draw across the L1 bridges on the cpu ceramic. What are the bridges? They're the little copper dots/lines you can see on the surface. They're arranged in groups, labelled things like 'L1', 'L2', 'L3' etc. - you want the ones labelled L1. There should be four, and they'll look like copper dots - they start off as lines like some of the other bridges, and if you look closely you can see a burn mark where they're broken - AMD uses a laser to cut them at the factory. What you need to do is rejoin the bridges, to get four parallel lines like this: I I I I. Go over each bridge four or five times at least to get a good coating of graphite to make sure it conducts well enough. I also find it helps to draw the blade of a craft kinfe between the lines, to remove any extra graphite that might cause the bridges to short across each other.

Here's a couple of links, one with good pictures and one with a good explanation - ignore the rest of the article in Tom's Hardware, you only need to join the L1's: http://www.athlonoc.com/unlocking.htm http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000711/index.html

[dgk]

Rob did a good job. Just get yourself a magnifying glass. Those little suckers are hard to see. When I first tried it (just last week) I used a jewler's loupe type thing. Then the pencil point was just huge compared to the L1 bridges. So I got a mechanical pencil and that was a bit easier. Worked just fine, and you can always erase it.

[overdosis]

May I suggest instead using a "rear-window" deffoging kit, used for fixing the defoggers on cars. You can use that type of conductive ink and it will work great.. or so I head. I actually soldered my bridges with some good ol' lead.

[Akos]

Thank you all for your info. I have tried it and I could carry my Athlon 800 as far as 960MHz, but Windows won't start at this rate, but I think it's steady on 942Mhz.

I strange thing occured: I can not use the multiplier, no matter where I set it, it always stays on 800Mhz (8x100). eg I have set it to 9x100 and it stayed at 800Mhz.

[TechnoFile]

so you've set the FSB to 117.75Mhz? wow... I wish mine would do that. If the chip still says its 800, then the bridges may not be unlocked properly.