Why cant my 700 go past 966?

[surfinguru]

Hey all, it's been a while since I've posted but I'm looking for some input to my o/c. I've got the P3-700 cC0 stepping slot1 with Crucial c2-133 ram (see sig for other stuff). Got the Alpha3125 hs and decent cooling. Problem is I cant seem to get it stable past 966 (138fsb). Ive booted up at 1015 (145fsb) but it crashes or locks up after a minute or two.

Possible reasons:
1. i've reached the limit of the chip (maybe?)
2. memory is at its max (doubtful but cant rule it out)
3. pci card not wanting to play nice (my best guess is the DSL modem)
4. maybe one of the h/d's (seagte 8gig isnt listed in sig, sorry!)

Thanks to all that respond. This board is the best!

[funnyperson1]

to rule out the pci cards try running the fsb at like 124 or something like that to see if they still work with the bad pci divider....also run the ram at cas3......

[batboy]

That's actually a real decent overclock for a P-III 700. I'd say the chip is at the limit or you need better cooling. Are you using Arctic Silver thermal paste? Do you have case fans? Do you have a fan on the northbridge chip? Lots of little cooling mods you can try that don't cost much. What CPU core voltage are you using? If it's not too high yet, then better cooling will allow another increase which might be the ticket to stability? What's your CPU load temps? We need more data.

[Yodums]

What's your temperature full load?
And your case fan specs your case needs good even circulation to have cool HSF cooling, you'll have to be more specific...

[[OC]_SR20DE]

surfinguru got a dud cC0 700E chip. sorry 2 hear that. Cooling don't matter that much if the particular CPU don't feel like get cranking up.. Maximum air cooling will not cut it. you got a dud chip. With a peltier cooling, you **might** be able to crank it up a little bit higher. I just don't think it's worth getting a pelt to force your chip.

I have tested my system again.. with this 600E this time.
it's running at 912mhz (152mhz fsb) CAS222 on a BE6-2 mobo. The CPU has a cheap skinny HS with no fan. Vcore: 1.75 V and have no problem running office apps. I haven't played game yet without the fan. This is amazing.. that is why I like Intel chips so much. :rolleyes:

[surfinguru]

Ok....
1) Using AS-II with the Alpha3125 with the screamer fans.
2) Did the standard case mods to improve air flow. (removing "mesh" like areas around intake in the front of the case as well as the rear.)
3) Using 2-80mm fans for intake and two for exhaust with the additional fan from the p/s.
4) Idle temps off the top of my head are around 38 with full load up to 48 or so.
5) V-core is at 1.75 but have increased up to 1.95 which causes too much increase to temps to be stable for my setup.
6) I've tried every fsb from 100 to 145 with stability only failing after going over 138.
7) Since im using a BE6-2 and a slot1 with that big ol' h/s, there's no room to put additional cooling on the Northbridge. (Unless im missing something?)
8) Ive tried all the various cas settings for the ram, 3-3-3, 3-3-2, 3-2-2, etc. No difference. Still craps out past 138fsb.

Have i missed anything? I've thought about going towards water cooling, but i think ill save that project for my next rig which could be awhile from now.

[mikecrof]

I've read alot about cooling the "northbridge" chip alot in overclocking forums. What is this and how would I locate it on my mother board (picture attached).

[stompah]

mikecrof, the Be6's chipset is located directly under the the CPU fan... its a slot based board. The most you can do is to Use some AS2 or change the HS to a better quality one. If you get lucky you may be able to squeeze a slim fan onto the HS.

Hey surfinguru, feel lucky before I broke my cBO 700 I got it up to 135fsb stable. Now I can barely fun it at 120fsb. ANd I have tried the voltage all the way up to 2.3v just to try to get it to fully boot at 133 again.

I may try to find a p3 700 with a 133fsb just to check out the capabilities of my Be6 board. Too bad that requires $

[[OC]_SR20DE]

Here!

[[OC]_SR20DE]

it's not working again... this is my last try and if still don't work, i give up.

[mikecrof]

Excellent! Thanks for the info. Do you think a spare generic cpu cooler will work OK on this chip, or does it have special cooling needs?

[surfinguru]

well, as Stompah stated, I'm using a slot1 based m/b and with that meaty Alpha, there's no way im getting a fan on the Northbridge. Remounting the green h/s with a better thermal paste is about the only improvement i can make. (unless someone can show me a pic with fan on the N/B WITH an Alpha) Oh well, such are the risks we take in our o/c efforts. Good stepping doesn't always dictate a "great" o/c. FWIW - im not all that unhappy with what i've accomplished so far. Just always looking for that little bit more....

[batboy]

Here is a pic of one of my mobos with cooling mods. Forget about putting a sink on the southbridge (left side of pic) because it really didn't do much. I added a little 40mm fan onto the northbridge greenie sink, fits perfect. I also added a tiny sink onto my ICS clock generator (lower right red arrow). My CPU cooler is a GlobalWin FOP with a high output 80mm Sunon fan mounted onto it.

http://www.fiero.nl/uploads/mobo-mods.jpg

[stompah]

Gentlemen... please re-read my prior post. Your disregard for my post has made me post yet again and I am now frced to dig through Abit's website to get a pic so you may SEE what I/ surfinguru are talking about.

[stompah]

Area in red square is where the HS of the CPU would be.

With some pretty hefty HS mods you could place a fan on the chip. Or yo could be dumb and put a fan on the side of the CPU HS and blow through the HS to the NB's HS. I would not recommend either and the latter caused one side of my p3 700 to become chipped.

With some skillful ducting you could make a cooler for the NB but at that point after all the trial and error yo could have bought either a faster chip or a newer socket MB.

My 2 pennies

[stompah]

If someone wants they could fix my attachment for me cause now I have to go night-night


Goodnight all!

[Yodums]

eheheh batboy nice comp :)

[surfinguru]

stompah, thanks for setting it straight. yeah, ive doinked around with trying to duct some additional air flow towards the NB. didn't gain any additional stability out of it though. At this point, winter's just around the corner and the ambient temps will be lower so maybe i can pull a few more fsb out it. if not, oh well, its still a good o/c. maybe when the northwoods come out and the 478 is the defacto standard for intel, ill look into doing the mobo/processor upgrades. until then, looks as though my chip has reached its potential for my rig. (unless someone cares to donate some water cooling equip:D :D )

cheers and thanks all who responded.......

[stompah]

My brother is in machine shop at his high school maybe I should get him to make an offcenter CPU HS?

Though I think ducting some air to the HS would be more easy than trying to get the offcenter CPU HS to work.

[Falkentyne]

Surfinguru, this is what I want you to do.

First, go download CPUBURN from http://users.ev1.net/~redelm/
Crank your CPU to the first FSB speed (138?) where you start noticing some instability.

Then, I want you to run these two programs in this order
1) BURNp6.exe
2) BurnBX.exe

Let each one run for 10 minutes.

If you can boot into DOS mode, grab a VERY GOOD Dos ram tester called MEMTEST. This program is awesome. It loads the RAM controller and memory subsystem VERY heavily....and can weed out instability when you would think you were rock stable in windows normally... Note that BurnBX does the exact same thing, although it simply "Exits" upon detecting an error instead of reporting an error occured continuing.

BurnP6 heavily stresses the CPU by running some assembly loops that maximize the heat output and cpu resources. This program is capable of making your 45 C (under usual heavy load) CPU heating up to over 60 C. It's a great cpu tester.

Post your results.
If BURNp6 crashes (this will ALWAYS cause a hard lockup, instead of an exit), then you know that it is the CPU holding you back.
Increase the voltage, then try it again.

If burnP6 does NOT lock up in 20 or more minutes, then you know it is NOT the cpu holding you back.

If BurnBX exits, then you know something is up with the memory subsystem. (probably NOT the ram stick itself). Go into DOS mode and run MEMTEST. (i recommend version 1.03, so you can use the /PREHEAT option (heats up the memory chips). Version 1.04 would crash under the "system check" optoin. Note that version 1.03 REPORTS as version 1.02 in the exe, but /preheat is a new option added in 1.03. Let MEMTEST run for at least 5 passes

If you are getting errors here too, then you will have to troubleshoot your memory subsystem.

Lets assume its the memory holding you back. Everyone knows what to do if the CPU is unstable, but not if its the chipset that's unstable.

First thing to ask is, do you have a greenie on the heatsink? If you do, then you can improve temps GREATLY by removing the greenie, applying some arctic silver II plus a (really small) drop of super glue in 2 corners and then **QUICKLY** reapplying and pushing down hard (this will help the heatsink to make better contact. Having a fan on the greenie helps slightly but not much... the air movement from your other fans is useful here too.

On my OLD OLD BH6 1.01, I got blue screen crashes and other errors on my Celery 300a @ 450, until I applied radio shack thermal compound to the greenie (that was more than 2 years ago :)

If you do NOT have a greenie on the heatsink (if you had to remove it, for some reason), THEN PUT ONE ON, at least put the greenie on that came with the motherboard. There is NO EXCUSE for not having one on, including using an Alpha heatsink.

If the alpha is actually making you remove the greenie, then get rid of the alpha and use a slightly smaller profile heatsink. You will be glad you did.

There are some small heatsink+fan units you can buy that can actually completely replace the greenie (though again you will need super glue here) and fit under a large heatsink such as an Alpha..... AOC Has one of these. I had to go back to the greenie when I went to a 1 ghz CPU, since on the MSI 6905 slotket, the (bigger) retail heatsink/fan prevented the CPU from being all the way inserted. Try one of these tiny HSF's (AOC has them under "chipset cooler, i think), they only cost a few bucks anyway.

Here are some other things you can do on a BX board.
Dowload WBXTUNE (BX chipset tuner), you can find it on google. A Reg code is also floating around if you look hard enough.

In WBXtune, set the "Memory buffer strength" to 3x, from 2x. This does not slow performance at all and may improve stability slightly (or sometimes, greatly) at high FSB speeds. I think that this is a similar tweak that is availablle on other VIA boards that can increase stability (MOTHERBOARD DRIVING VALUE?)

Set the idle pipeline dram leadoff from 0 to a higher value. 0 gives you even more memory bandwidth but can cause instability.

Set leadoff command timing from 3 to 4.

Try all of these and then see if burnBX quits or not, and if your system is more stable. If it is, then congratulations. Mess around with more overclocks. If it isn't, then at least you tried :)

You can also try using Rivatuner or Powerstrip or NVMAX (if you have an Nvidia video card), to change your AGP speed from 2x to 1x, and disable sidebanding (LEAVE SBA enabled if you are going to AGP 1x).

After you've done all of these things and achieved a stable system, download and try Prime95 for a real world test, as well as test some games.

[stompah]

Falkentyne all I can say is :-)