Can any one Help me OC my Intel 400Mhz MMX chip

[Smooth_Mover]

Hay there,

I have been on the case now for a while, trying to find a decent URL with tutorials on OC, most of them just provide you with performance ratios etc. I've checked BIOS to see if you can increase the percentage (I've also updated the BIOS version) but nothing, I opened the PC and changed the jumpers around but nothing, I first suspected that Intel blocked the chip hmmm, not really sure.

There seems to be some pretty experienced OCing masters out there so if any of you can provide me with any useful info, it would be much appreciated.

[AmbientFiction]

Ok can you give us the make of your Motherboard and things such as that a full system run down and we should be able to help.

[Smooth_Mover]

OK, My system board is an SE44OBX-2, PII, 256 RAM, TNT Nvidia G'Card.

I'm not sure if the above is going to help you in any way, i'm still at work so i'll update you this evening on any more indepth spec around GMT 18:00.

I have been searching the net today and found some usefull information, i set the jumper to Config which gave me the a few options but were very limited, i'm sure there's a way around it.

If you need any more info just reply and i;ll see what can do.#

Thanks a lot

[NeoMoses]

I too have been wanting to find a good source of info for O/Cing my PII, but seemed to get no decent replies. If you find anything out, let me know, please.

[dude]

That mother board was made by Intel. The only way you can overclock that setup is with software, like softfsb.

[vimal]

In the wonderful world of Intel, you need 2 main things to overclock:
1. A good heatsink/cooling setup
2. A good motherboard that supports variable (incremental) FSB settings and preferably core voltage modifications.

Now your PII-400 on SE-440BX2 has 2 problems:
1. The PII processors are in SECC packaging, which introduces another layer of metal between the processor die and heatsink. PII retail versions also have heatsinks installed on them (very very poorpy designed heatsinks, I might add)
2. The SE-440BX2 is a good motherboard for ordinary people, but not for the overclocker, cause it does not support things like variable FSB settings and voltage. You are stuck with either 66MHz or 100MHz, and since the PII-400 runs at 100MHz FSB, you have nowhere left to go.

Possible solutions:
Problem 1. For the cooling issue with PII's, it is absolutely imperitive that you crack off that damn SECC casing. Please be careful and gentle about this. If you don't like being delicate and patient, do not try this.
http://www.1coolpc.com/install/p2.htm
I followed these directions to the letter, and took off the case for both a PII-266 and PII-400.

Once you crack off the casing and stock heatsink, buy a decent sized heatsink (not an ultra-expensive one, whatever you get in CompUSA for Socket 370 or Socket A will do just fine), remove the fan from the top, and mount it to the core with the aid of a good-sized C-clamp (
carefully centered, not too much pressure) and some thermal compound (wipe off that gray stuff Intel uses, it is terrible. Use regular silicon paste, or Artic Silver if you can afford it)

Remember that old heatsking I said was worthless? Well, don't toss it just yet. Whip out the trusty hack-saw (dremels are for wimps - j/k) and cut a chunk of it to fit over the cache chips (yes, they should be kept cool as well, very important) Find a way to mount those as well (some people use super-glue on the corners of the chips - it should work well. I just use another smaller clamp.

Now, find a way to mount fans so that there is a steady (and reasonably powerful) stream of air moving over both the cache heatsing and the main CPU heatsink.

Congratulations, you have just constructed the Ghetto-PII-cooling-rig (tm)


Problem 2: Well, this is less ingenuity and more experience and cold, hard cash. Browse the forums and look at the motherboards people use for overclocking (especially the ones with Celerons, cause they should be older->cheaper) I use both an Abit BH-6 and Asus P3B-F and am quite happy with them. Browse auctions, computer shows, classified ads, etc. and see what people are selling. Read reviews. Search google. Before buying anything, look it up (or feel free to ask about it in the Intel motherboards section of the forums)

Alternate soultion to problem2: There was a post mentioning SoftFSB. This is a really nifty program which actually hacks directly into the clock generator chip of some motherboards, allowing you to change FSB settings on-the-fly. Now, i'm not sure whether the SE-440BX2 motherboard has a clock generator chip which is compatible with this program, so it may not work for you. But, it doesn't hurt to give it a shot. (And if it does work, please let me know cause I have a SE-440BX2 board that is in the closet right now cause it sucks for overclocking (and I don't have anything extra parts for more systems))


Once you solve problems 1 and 2, you are ready to do some overclocking, of which there are many guides and tutorials about.

Yes, you don't need to crack open PII's to overclock, but my 400 only did 496 (unstable) with stock heatsink, it now can chug at 533 stable.


Good luck, and welcome to the overclocking world. (i'll admit, it takes guts to start with a PII. I started with two Celeron 366's, went through 3 PIII's and a K6-2 before I started experimenting with the PII)

(sorry for rambling - I'm a management major, I can't help it - hey, stop laughing, it's not polite)

[vimal]

Hard-core-EE alternate solution to problem 2 (Note: this is highly theoretical. I lack both the funds and the resources to validate any of these theories): So, this clock-generator chip takes in a 14.318MHz crystal pulse, and generates all the necessary clock signals for the system. These clock signals include FSB (66 or 100), PCI (33), AGP (66), USB, and some other misc ones. You could try popping out the 14.318 MHz crystal and soldering in a higher frequency crystal (like 16MHz) but that would throw all the other signals (USB, etc) out of whack, and most likely system will not work. Alternately, you could buy one of these clock generating chips (or maybe get www.ti.com to send you a free sample) and wire that chip up to a 16, or even 18MHz crystal. Give that chip Vcc and GND, take the FSB, PCI, and AGP outputs of the overclocked clock generator, and wire those into your motherboard (detaching the corresponding pins on the original mobo's clock generator) and now you have normal clocks for everything else, but FSB, PCI, and AGP are all overclocked (note that FSB PCI and AGP MUST be overclocked together since they depend on each other) I believe there is a hardware module called Turbo.pll which essentially does just what I described.

[Smooth_Mover]

NeoMoses (Jul 18, 2001 03:31 p.m.):
I too have been wanting to find a good source of info for O/Cing my PII, but seemed to get no decent replies. If you find anything out, let me know, please.


I have found some info, depending on what Mother board you have, you should have a particular jumper on the system board which is the bios config jumper (You can find this on the Intel.com). When your PC starts up quickly take note of the mother board number, visit the site Intel.com and select Support at the top. Somewhere in this page you'll find a diagram of your system board, it might take a while but is worth the efforts, it's very interesting. Once at the Diagram you'll be able to locate where the Bios jumper is on your system board and how to change it to Maintenance.

When you start your PC with the new jumper settings, it will boot straight into the bios displaying another option 'Maintenance', now sometimes the processor is already set at its "Legal" Mhz speed but more often than not it's not.

This may not be of much help to you at all and I’m sure there’s a lot more to find out, but hey I’m getting somewhere.

Again, if you hear of any cool info, let me know.

See ya