Noob Overclocker

[Mr Wiggles]

I have read many forums about overclocking. I need some basic step by step guide to start me off right on my first Overclocking.

My setup is:
Abit IC7 MAX II mobo
P4 2.8c 800FSB w/HT
Kingston HyperX PC3200 2x512
Asus Geforce FX5900 Ultra 256mb
WD 7200 80gb Harddrive

From reading other post I figure I would probably get better results with a 5:4 ratio.

My CPU is at a temp. of 45 at max load and the sys and PWM stay under 30 usually both at 27 to 28. My Vcore voltage is 1.52 and my DDRVcc voltage is at 2.58. I honostly dont know much about the volts and whats to high or to low but I figured listing it would get me more accurate help. I would appreciate any help anyone can give me to start myself off. Also My 3dmark03 score was 4653. I thought I would get higher. Should my current setup be capable of Mid to High 5000 scores?

Thanks in advance for any help you all give me.

[crotale]

Here you got it all:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?postid=2393483#post2393483

[goliathvt]

Nice rig Wiggles. Let us know how it turns out. Hmm, I guess that's Mr. Wiggles to me... ;)

Goliath

[batboy]

Temps look good. Go into the soft menu section of the BIOS and change the CPU clock speed to "user define" as shown in Crotale's link. Set the PCI/AGP to "fix". Now raise the FSB (frequency) to 229 to see what happens. With a 2.8C that should give you an easy overclock of 3.2 gig. If this works and the CPU load temps don't exceed low 50's and if it's stable, then you can try a little at a time to go higher. Only raise vcore if you run into stability trouble. I would not go above 1.6v with stock cooling. Don't raise vcore if your temps get high. Good luck. Look over that link that Crotale gave, it gives good info.

[Mr Wiggles]

Thanks for the link and info you all gave me. I put it up to a 229 FSB and at max load it got up to 53 degrees. I want to get the FSB to 250 which will put my ram running at 200 which is max speed for pc3200. I think thats it anyways. What will happen if the system is unstable will it warn me or just crash? What should I look for when testing this? Also what is a good heatsink and fan for my setup that will get my cpu temp down more so I can reach 250FSB?

Thanks for the compliment on My setup Goliath:) . It my first system I built on my own.

[goliathvt]

Some good heatsink/fan combos are: The Zalman 7000A-Cu (see sig) and the Thermalright SLK900A or 947 with a 92mm Vantec Stealth or 92mm Panflo fan. Personally, I find the Thermalright solutions to be too loud, but it's up to personal preference.

3DMark scores are largely dictated by video card and memory performance. You have an ok video card, so you may be able to get some better scores by tightening the timings on your memory.

First, though, you want to make sue that you have stable memory. Grab a program called memtest from here:

http://www.memtest86.com

Disable Legacy USB Support in your BIOS. Then run memtest for a while (overnight would be good). If you get zero errors and can get through all tests, you're in good shape.

With your board, to tighten memory timings, you go to the SoftMenu config and then to the "Advanced Chipset Features". Your memory is pretty decent, and I've heard of people getting pretty tight timings with it. I suggest starting with loose timings and lowering one setting at a time, testing for stability, and repeating the process. Memory burn-in takes some time, so be patient.

Prime95 is also a great utility for testing stability. Just remember to run two instances of it so you test both processors. :) (I think you add "-a0" to the command line to get 2 instances... haven't done it in a while).

Good luck!

Goliath

[batboy]

If your system is not stable, you'll have lock-ups, crashes, BSOD, restarts, etc. That is how your computer warns you.