help newbie with oc

my rig= 1.6a p4 523 rdram. th7-ii mobo. and a quadro 2 pro. my heatsink is a sunflower. i jus want to put my rig to a good 2.0 mhz that is all. i'm not an extreme oc... how do i do it.... which setting do i use in the bios...

thanx in advance chad

First disclaimer, overclocking does raise the temperature, so you should have above average cooling before attempting any overclocking.

Ok, go into the Soft Menu III part of the BIOS and arrow down to the "CPU operating speed" then use the page up or page down keys to scroll through the options until you find "user define". When this comes up, you'll notice the next 3 settings will no longer be grayed out. Arrow down to the "external clock" which is the FSB. To reach your goal of 2 gig, this will need to be set at 125 MHz. Leave the multiplier at 16X and set the "AGPCLK/CPUCLK" to the "fix" setting which forces the AGP and PCI bus to stay in spec. There you go, it's that simple.

wow that is great .. but where did u learn all of this info. may i have the url i would like to read a some info about oc when i'm at work

Its more a less trial and error guardianx. You cant really goto any websites and learn how to overclock and properly tweak your system because each setup varies from the other. Your best bet is to keep fooling around with your system and see what comes out of it. In due time you too will know all this stuff like the back of your hand!

Have fun.

it looks like i said thanx too soon because after the bios set up windows 2000 pro won't boot it hang

guardianx, go back to your BIOS and set your FSB down lower, like 105...go up in steps of 4 or 5 FSB at a time, until it will no longer boot, then drop back a notch or two. This is what you will be able to run, until you adjust voltage as well. You should have a voltage adjust on the mobo also. Go up in .25 increments, and up in FSB 5Mhz at a time, only after you have went as far as you can go on stock voltage.

If you want to read the beginner's guide on overclockers.com (follow the front page links on the left of the page), you will get a lot more info there, also

then what voltage should i set it to if i want a 2 gig system>???

ok thanx for the help taiwa second question about cpu temp... mine is currently running at 2 gig and the temperature is 37 c is that good or bad??? i'm using the sunflower with their stock thermal paste should i get artic silver??

I didn't learn any of that from an article. I learned it from trial and error and from the help of others here at the forum, like Woofer and Turbo. I probably should not of told you jump straight to 2 gig, Takiwa is right, you should go a step at a time.

I didn't mention the voltage thing, because increasing voltage raises temps, but it's sometimes needed to get your system stable when it's overclocked. There is no set rule about voltage, use only enough to get your system stable.

A full load temp of 37 degrees sounds great. Unfortunately, that's probably not full load temp. You need to work your CPU with a program like Sandra Burn-in Wizard, Prime95, or other stuff like that and then monitor your temps. Those Sunflower cooler are fairly good. You'll probably notice at least a couple degrees drop in temps by switching to Arctic Silver.

what is the critical temperature for the p4a?? for the amd it say 90 c...

by critical temperature you mean that the CPU will burn out? if this is so the Intel's can go up to around 150Celcius or even higher, as Intel's reduce the performance at high temperatures so that the CPU will not get destroyed

I like staying under 50 degrees for good stability and longevity when I have my Northy cranked up to the max.

Researchers actually tested Pentiums without a heatsink and fan and they were able to boot to windows and they played quake 3 (at 4 frames a second )
They tried the same with AMD's and they fried up within 10 seconds of turning on the computer

yeah you should look for below 50 or even 45 on full load, run toast for 5 minutes and see how high it goes