k7n2 and 2600+

Hey all,

i dont know much when it comes to O/C so i hope someone can help me. recently i have bought K7N2 mobo and 2600+ processor aswell as 512mb of ram. Now what do i do to get most out of it. When i got to My Computer > Properties it dosnt say anything about my system, but only about how much ram i have. when its booting its says that my ram runs at 266mhz when it was over 400 before.

Could you guys direct me to a webpage that has some information how can i overclock it, or help me with it.

Ps. I have no idea wht voltage should i apply etc.

thanks in advance

Go into your bios and check the setting for the FSB. Also, on the K7N2, check the J10 jumper and make sure it's set to 133mhz.

well that last bit depends as 2 of the 3 xp 2600 use 166 as a fsb

The J10 Jumper on the K7N2 has two settings: 100 and 133/166.

hi, thanks for ur replies,

I have set J10 to 133/166, and went to bios and have chosen "high performance' now my cpu runs at 1.92 Ghz.

i dnt have any cooling other thn a fan that came with the cpu. can i o/c a bit more without better fan, or should i buy new fan first

cheers

Whether or not to buy a new heatsink/fan first depends on your temps at idle/load. Have you stability tested it yet? (Run Prime95 torture test for a few hours.) Do you have a program to monitor temps?

What are the specs of your RAM and Power Supply? Which vid card do you run? How many case fans do you have? Is your chip a Mobile 2600+, or a desktop 2600+?

Basically, this is how I got mine overclocked:

1. Start at stock speeds. Run Prime95 torture test.
2. Reboot. Enter BIOS setup.
3. Set RAM/FSB ratio manually to 1:1.
4. Increase FSB by 5MHz in BIOS.
5. Boot up and run Prime95 torture test for an hour and monitor CPU temp.
6. Reboot, enter BIOS setup, and repeat step 4.
7. If Prime95 fails, reboot, enter BIOS setup, and increase CPU core voltage by 0.5 volts, then run Prime again.

You may also need to mess with your RAM timings, but I can't give you a suggestion for that without knowing what your RAM is. If you got a good CPU, you should be able to hit 2.2-2.3GHz with stock voltage or not much over that.

If your CPU temp gets much over 50º C while running the Prime95 torture test, you need to seriously consider a different heatsink and some good thermal interface compound (Arctic Silver 5 or Ceramique are the best). Thermalright makes the best heatsinks around, but you will have to get one that doesn't bolt to the motherboard. I run the Thermaltake Volcano 12+, which works good for me, but some folks around here don't care for their products. Others are available as well, that while may not be top-of-the-line, will definitely be better than the one that came with the CPU.

Good luck. Give it a shot, post some specs, and let us know how it goes.

Also this probably doesn't have to be said but the driver on the CD for the MSI temperature monitor doesn't work properly, apparantly reading the wrong sensor, so you'll have to update it or better yet skip it altogether and use MBM. That entire MSI driver CD=