newbie trying to overclock

[nexus]

i have a P3 550 not o/c and a vh6-2 mother board
i increased the multiplier from 5.5 to 6 and the pci bus from 100 to 109.
sisoft sandra 2001 says my cpu temp is 36.4 C. is this to high? this is the temp when i'm surfing, and have icq, zone alrm running, not much else.it goes upto 41 C when i'm playing diablo 2 for about an hour.
i have no extra cooling, and i dont know if i need it yet
any suggestions?

[Phil]

that temp is pretty reasonable. If changing the multiplyer from 5.5 to 6 actually did anything then you are very lucky and have an unlocked chip. More likely it was just ignored and the chip ran at 5.5X instead as intel chips are locked and the multiplyer can not be changed. you only thing you can change is the fsb. Depending on which 550 you have you will either be able to get to around 600mhz or 733mhz, there are 2 differant 550's, one is the katmai based chip, it is in slot 1 and runs off 2v with 512k external cache, this will get around 600mhz, the second is the coppermine, this is either slot 1 or fc-pga and runs off 1.65v and has 256K of internal full speed cache. you will need to use a utility like sandra or wcpuid to find out which it is.

[nexus]

ok ic ,
well sandra says its a P3 550E with copper mine
and that the multiplier is 5.5 and a socket 370?????.so i guess it did'nt do anything, but its at 601 mhz so far (well its a start) thanks

[outhouse]

It's always best to keep your PC cool it would not hurt to throw in a couple of case fans and that would help to get your temps down 36Cseems a little high to me if my PC did that it would freeze up instantly. you can get quite a bit more out of your proccesor and MB but before you do you will nedd to get your temps down first. Lapping the HSF and a decent thermal compound will help allot too, as well as having a quality HSF replacing the greenie HS on your northbridge would not hurt either i'm running the vh6-2 and i'm pushing it through its paces and its been a good MB to me i'm sure you'll have fun with it.

[nexus]

great thanks alot, maybe i should reset it back to normal for now till i get another fan, and better heat sink fan :O)

[Phil]

You have a really good chance of gettig to 733mhz then, as long as your memory will handle the extra speed. to start with find out how to reset the bios on your board incase the settings don't work. I would think that you should be able to get to 733mhz with standard cooling and possibly only 0.05-0.1v if you even need extra voltage, first try with default voltage, if this doesn't work then slowly up the voltage but keep under 2v.

[Mictlan]

I also have a PIII 550E chip and I could oc to 733MHz with almost no problem. The Vcore remained at 1.6.....check Intel data only Cumine of 750 and up need 1.65V. When I was fooling with my chip I saw with MBM that at 100MHz I needed only 1.45V, at 120MHz 1.5V, at 124MHz 1.55V and at 133MHz 1.6V but I manage to decrease the Vcore to 1.55 and I'm planning to decrease it to 1.5V to test if it's stable.

I'm still running with the Intel retail HSF with a big 120mm fan blowing right above the CPU. My temperatures have remained at 40-45 at full load.

[nexus]

well, i uped my FSB to 112 at 1.6 volts and it seems good so far, temps at 99 F though, but its in the sun to (i think i should move it) i'll leave it run a day or so to see if its ok, but it was stable running Diablo 2 for 1.5 hrs on line
thanks alot for the help

[Mictlan]

After you have burned your processor for one or two days at your highest FSb, try to decrease the Vcore. That way you'll generate less heat. :)

[nexus]

great thanks, i will, i take it 1.6 is about the lowest?
or how low did you get yours down to?
Do you mean burning my processor with sisoft's burn-in?

[Phil]

If you plan on trying to burn in (the effects of which are very debateable) they I recomend staying at 550mhz and putting the voltage up to 2v and running the sandra burn in wizard with cpu, multimedia and memory tests and also have prime95 running in the background (picks up all the spare cpu cycles from sandra) do this for about a week or so. I must admit it does seem to let you use lower voltages but I haven't seen any evidence of it letting the cpu run at higher speeds (other than them now working at lower voltages

[nexus]

so, lowering the voltage to 1.6 would'nt really accomplish anything, if i stay at 112 FSB for now?

[Phil]

From what I have seen and read burning in works better with high voltage low temp, I did my celeron 600 cCO (1.7v default) at 600mhz 2.2v and after a while I could run up to 750mhz with 1.3v and 900mhz only needed 1.55v, but I have added and changed a lot of components which now means I need 1.65v for 900mhz so I think that something is done to the motherboards vrm and not the cpu (I don't have another motherboard to try it out on yet) of course I blame my psu as well as it is only a 235W model

[batboy]

I don't know Phil, setting it at 2.0v without any cooling mods, even at default FSB? Sounds a little high to me, but maybe I'm being a weenie.

[nexus]

ok, ic so how long should i burin for? 24 hrs?
and what does burning in do (i thought i knew, but i see now i have no idea)
and you mentioned to set it back to 550 and raise the voltage to
2.0? was that right?