PIII700@875 - windows haning up sometimes!

[MisterMark]

system specs:

PIII700 coppermine OEM with abit slocket adapter @ 875
300watt power supply
Abit BE6II mobo
256 mb of 'generic' ram
voodoo5 (not overclocked)
soundblaster pci 512
realtek network card
20gig maxtor hd
8gig samsung hd
windows98

cooling:

p3 Monster (heatsink and fan combo - supposed to cool 1gig chip)
additional generic heatsink and fan combo on back of chip (did this by modifiying the slocket adapter)

i set my fsb to 125. windows hung on most occasions, but when computer did boot everything was fine. temp doesn't seem to be an issue - 32 celecius idle.

read somewhere that the bus speed over the agp slot could be the problem. with a fsb of 125, that makes the agp bus speed 83 (well over 66). also read that upping the i/o voltage as well as the cpu voltage could bring back some stability to the system. i upped the cpu voltage to 1.7 (was 1.65) and the i/o voltage to 3.8 (was 3.3). windows still locked during boot from time to time.
is something wrong here? i've seen many people with similar systems getting way past 875 with no problems. did i not up the voltage enough? how far can i go with the i/o voltage? how far with the cpu voltage? could it be the ram? (wansn't sure about pc133 ram - as i understand it, abit be6II won't use it's speed). am i expecting too much? is the occasional failure of windows during bootup the price overclockers pay? what is stepping? how do i find mine? lots of questions i know - sorry, i'm new to o/c.

help please,

mark

[junk30]

ya need to increase the volts if you have good enough cooling up the volts I go as high as 190 if cooled enough cooling is a big part but i also remember something about maxtor hdd not being very good for oc.ing good luck

[Tim-]

Too true- many times Maxtor drives have been identified as the culprit- although usually I think they accumulate corrupted data or give registry errors at boot up when they have problems.

You may find that 3.8v for the I/O may be too much. I have seen some posts where the I/O being too high is a problem in itself. Usually 3.5-3.6v is adequate if it helps to begin with. Increasing the I/O voltage will make your video card run hotter, and this may cause it to hang the computer.

[Allan Nielsen]

I would go higher with the CPU voltage, and lower with the I/O voltage... maybe 1.75/1.80 and 3.4/3.5

Have you set the RAM to CAS 3-3-3? I don't know of any problems with the BE6-2, when handling 133MHz RAM. Where did you hear that?

There are different steppings for most CPU's. You have to check your CPU for a code that is printed on it, such as "SL453". Then go here:

http://support.intel.com/support/processors/sspec/p3p.htm

and find you CPU in the chart. There you can see, which stepping your CPU is. Not all steppings overclock well.

The average overclocked speed for a 700MHz P3 is 949MHz, according to the CPU database, but who knows, maybe you are just unlucky?