Odd problem overclocking a PIII

[CrunchyWater]

Alright.. first time posting here, excuse my ignorance of overclocking in general. Here's the deal:

I decide, today, that I'm gonna overclock my poor PIII 733 mhz cpu to something a bit beefier, since I'm running into a little financial trouble... So I just went into the BIOS, and it had a convenient menu where I could select my CPU speed.. so I set it to 934.. heh

Anyways, long story short, when I boot up, everything runs fine but I find that my D drive (C: is the windows drive.. D has my games.. and E is work) is this when I double click it from My Computer (Running win2k service pack 2)

"Disk drive not formatted"


I understand that there are these kind of problems that can happen.. but why just my D drive? (WHY MY GAMES! :eek: ) Is it just a random occurance that now my computer can't access the D: drive, can't chkdsk it, can't scan it with norton..?

A long time ago I found a program for the Mac that read corrupted file systems etc.. but no such luck for the PC. Any suggestions? Save me!
:confused: :eek:

[CrunchyWater]

BTW.. computer runs fine at 933 mghz. Before this post I had been messing with the demo of Q3 I had on the E drive, runs great.. played for about 2 hours with no overheating. Runs idle at Board: 24 C and CPU: 15 C.. Maxes for about 40C. Here's how I cool it: Took off the cover that goes on the sides of the CPU, stuck a big oscilating desktop fan next to it, set it on medium. Works well.. for now..

Watch 10 minutes later my motherboard melts and oozes onto the carpet :p

[deez]

Do you have 1 drive partitioned or 3 separate drives?

What speed are your PCI devices running at?

Are the drives just on regular IDE channels, or are they ATA100 or SCSI etc....?

[William]

Umm, You are on a 170 mhz. bus? I doubt the computer can handle that speed that well. How exactly did you overclock it? Can we get some board specs?

[Xaeryan]

a 733 at 934!!!! Yikes! my 733 wouldn't go past ~ 860.
That's...... 170 FSB!!!!

[Yodums]

What are your temperatures like?

Try running it at default speeds again seeing if it works.

I think your PCI Bus is running way out of spec if not using the 1/4 divider because if your using the 1/3 dividers that 57 PCI bus speed!!!!

[CrunchyWater]

(Answered post by post, sorta)

-My temperatures are ok from what I've read.. nothing above 40 Celcius. And I've tried running it back down at the default 733 mghz and my D drive is still in RAW format..

-3 Separate HDs

-Ok..

512 mb sdram.. 133 mhz bus on both 256 meg sticks

Motherboard is an ASUS CUSL2 ACPI with BIOS 1003

SiSoft says my FSB IS running at 170mhz, and it says my FSB speed range is 60 - 200mhz. And it runs very well, no lockups at all.

Just restarted after posting and checked my BIOS again.. it says my SDRAM:PCI Frequency ratio is 133:100:33
and that my FSB/SDRAM/PCI frequency is 170/138/43 and that I'm actually running at 935! Ahhh I never type the right speed!

Currently, running just norton and a few other things my temps are

Board: 25 degrees Celcius
CPU: 15.5 degrees Celcius
I guess you could call those idle temps.. later I did the SiSoft Sandra Burn-in tests 15 times and..nothing happened so I take it that's good

Cooled with an oscilating desktop fan from Office Depot! Yes! (Outer CPU case taken off to let air flow.. of course)

Here's how I overclocked my poor PIII:

I turned on my computer
I hit the delete key to enter the BIOS setup
I went over to advanced, and selected the menu "Clock Speed"
I choose from either Manual setting, or a range of speeds that went from 733 to 1.14 ghz
I choose 936 (I think I typed 934 before.. doh)
When I choose the speeds, it automatically set the FSB speeds for me..


Ok, new question! How do I reformat a drive that claims to be in RAW format? I've reformatted my C: drive 100 times in win 98, but never in win2k and never a drive in raw format. I tired FDisk from the command prompt, no luck cus it didn't exist in win2k. I tried format D: and then it asked for some /FY switch that determined what file structure and I didn't know what to put so I tried all sorts of things involving NTFS.. didn't work. I also tried the windows formatting utility and it didn't work.. it completed but it said it failed to do it right.

BTW the HD is a western digital.

Thanks =)

[Yodums]

Your temperatures aren't right buddy..

Your CPU Temperatures should be always above your case temperature..

Unless you have peltier and water cooling or some sort?

[Xaeryan]

wait... 733 @ 934 with stock voltage (1.65) ???
CPU @ 15 degrees Celsius ??!??!?
not to be a skeptic, but this doesn't sound right.

[CrunchyWater]

I'll post some screenshots of what SiSoft Sandra says.. she knows all. BTW, someone help me out with formatting my drive, lol. Format D:... then it asks for a /fs switch? What is it?

http://stump.iwarp.com/images/screen1.jpg

http://stump.iwarp.com/images/screen2.jpg

http://stump.iwarp.com/images/screen3.jpg

[Xaeryan]

I'm still befuddled... only 1.68 to get 170 FSB??? I couldn't go past 138 FSB with stock voltage - same motherboard. As for your temperature readings, what BIOS do you have? CUSL2s are known for odd temp. readings, but a newer BIOS may help. I know Sandra is telling you 15.5 C, but, well, that's basically impossible. In my case, the BIOS and MotherBoard Monitor are telling me 36 C, while Sandra tells me 24.5 C, so something may be fishy with Sandra. Anyway, you can pick up a newer BIOS here if you want: http://home.epix.net/~rrcehock/

[Yodums]

I suggest you run it back to default speeds now, since you don't know the temperatures of that thing and it might blow any second.

Go get the lastest bios update and get Motherboard Monitor Sisoft is inaccurate.

[Godfodda]

Originally posted by tsunami
I suggest you run it back to default speeds now, since you don't know the temperatures of that thing and it might blow any second..

For once I agree with Yodums, or Blinkie, or tsunami, or George, whoever you are this week. :) The information doesn't jive with experience. Might be best to back it down a bit to see what's going on.

BTW, Crunchy, the screenshots didn't post.

[CrunchyWater]

bah.. they should work, they did for a friend. They're hosted on my old Ultima Online website www.stump.iwarp.com, click the photos page, ignore the captions and look down the left side, should be the first 3.

Anyways, it turns out overclocking it corrupted block 0 of my old D: drive.. so I'm just gonna remove it since it was only 4 gigs anyways and blow it up or something. I brought my cpu back down to 733, even though it was running at 934, overheating or not. HOWEVER, I'd rather have a processor that worked than a fast one that worked for a day then melted =P

[William]

You had that bad block because the PCI bus is so out of spec.

[Pecos]

Well, I may not be running a 170+ MHz bus, but according to Sandra, my CPU temps are lower than my mobo temps too!

(Boy, how I wish that was true...)
http://www.ameritech.net/users/pecos1/cusl2sand.gif

MBM was showing a CPU temp of 35C at that time...

[funnyperson1]

Sandra does the same thing for my dads TUSL2-C, said my mobo was at 32C and my CPU at 16......i just assumed they were backwards...

[Yodums]

Originally posted by Godfodda


For once I agree with Yodums, or Blinkie, or tsunami, or George, whoever you are this week. :) The information doesn't jive with experience. Might be best to back it down a bit to see what's going on.

BTW, Crunchy, the screenshots didn't post.

George? I never recall being George! ;)

hehe Yes I change my name alot lol its good its like everyday you change your clothes I hope :)

[ataxy]

for my part i have only been able to oc mine using cpucool and 144mhz fsb and i have never been able to tweak the vss pin to change the vcore it simply doesnt seem to be working

[CrunchyWater]

Lol

I must have told the forum to email me everytime I get a response.. Since then I've bought a whole new processor and moved on =)