My Very First Post!!!

[Boy]

First of all just like to say this is a great forum with a great group of people.

-Abit IC7-Max3 mobo
-Intel 2.8c SL6Z5 Costa Rica w/ Thermalright SP-94 and 92mm Tornado fan
-Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series (512x2) DDR PC-4000
-Antec 480w Trupower psu

My question is what can I do with this setup? What would be a "safe" overclocked speed and what would be pushing it? Thanks everybody in advance.

[raven]

Welcome to the forums!

It all depends on your chip =) put everything together and then crank it all up! i would say, safe would be somewhere where u dont have to raise the voltage of anything.. so see how far ur rig will go on stock voltages, and then run prime95 to see if its stable or not.

with a 2.8 m0 stepping ( the sl6z5 ) people have overclocked it anywhere from 3.0 - 4.0 GHz. im guessing you'll beable to get it to atleast 3.2GHz. at stock voltages and that will be safe.

Just make sure you monitor your temperatures and keep everything running cool and u should be cool! just remember that any overclocking, isnt safe. You always run the risk damaging something. Just that with no voltage increases and not too high speeds, and good temps, the chances of something happening is low.

So enjoy your nice setup! and let us know how u fair!

Happy Overclocking


Raven

[DaveSauce]

Welcome to the forums!

To me, that's the real joy of overclocking....DISCOVERING how far you can OC while remaining safe.

You can get a lot of good guesses from here, but you really don't know how far you can overclock until you try it. The amount of an overclock depends entirely on your system, and surrounding conditions. Obviously, people living in the desert with no A/C can't overclock much at all. While people living in say the depths of canada using air ducts to pump in cold air can OC pretty far. Those are extreme examples, but I think you get what I mean.

It also depends on how well your hardware is working together...what BIOS/drivers you have....it really depends on a lot of things. With that setup, you should get a pretty good overclock out of it.

Also, some overclocks that seem stable, i.e. have been running prime95 for 24 hours without error, can really be unstable in other applications....I know a lot of people come by saying that they've primed their system to be stable, but it still crashes in games, but mysteriously everything works fine when they drop the overclock. Stability is a relative term....for someone who doesnt play games, what do they care if their comp crashes during UT2k3? But to someone who's a hardcore gamer, that would be the limiting factor to a "safe" overclock.

What I'm trying to say is we can help give you an idea as to how far your setup can go, but you won't get the best performance out of it until you push the limits yourself. :D

[jtjuska]

I agree, thats a nice setup and many people have taken those chips to a good overclock but it really depends on the chip the average, not saying this means anything, is 3.49. So like everyone has said before its up to you to figure out how far it will go. Hope all this helps.

[Redstone]

For not knowing a lot about overclocking you got yourself some quality equipment that should allow for fun experimentation.
RESEARCH, RESEARCH, REASERCH.


Without getting into the memory changes, I agree with raven regarding the voltage changes. I consider a safe overclock as bumping the FSB as far as possible without increasing vCore voltages and being stable. Just start overclocking the FSB until you cannot boot, then back it down to that bootable overclock. If it passes the stress tests listed above you are good to go. I do a conservative safe overclock at over 3.0 with no changes to the vCore. New P4's are great that way.

[Boy]

Thanks guys. I'll let the thermal paste break in before I try anything. I chose those components from the reading I did on this forum. Again, this place is great!