• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

What helps raise FSB?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Lazlo Panaflex

Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Location
Mean Streets Of Orange County CA
Ok i Was wondering if getting a water cooled chipset, bigger waterblock for cpu would do anything to help the FSB to be stable at a higher rate? I didnt think so but wanted to check with u guys. Its all about ram Right? Thanks
 
Sure watercooling always helps... however, it's not necessarily going to make your rig stable at higher FSBs. In raising fsb, you have to keep in mind the divider, vdimm, vcore, timings (cl, etc.), etc. Though I see that you've already raised your vcore and vdimm. You also have to take into consideration your RAM. If you're having trouble reaching over 160 FSB it could be because of your RAM. What kind of RAM do you have? Corsair, Crucial, and Mushkin are all good brands of RAM...
 
Raising the FSB should really not have much to do with heat. From what I've read, that doesn't produce any extra heat. Making things cooler always helps overclock higher, but I don't know if that helps FSB OCing or not. The most likely culprit that could be hindering FSB adjustments are PCI devices or RAM. RAM is the most crucial part as that will put a limit on everything else. Most PCI devices will tolerate mild to moderate overclocking without trouble. As the above post said, you need good name brand RAM and higher than PC2100 is preffered for good FSB overclocking, but sometimes you get lucky. Chipsets do get hot, so having a water cooled chipset might help make things more stable, but I don't know if they would help raise the FSB either. If your processor is unlocked, the best trick would be to lower the multiplyer and go .5 lower and see if you can raise the FSB higher. That will tell you if it's hardware related. If you can go higher, then it's your processor. If you can't, then it's PCI devices or RAM, because lowering the multiplyer should reduce heat too.

Z
 
Heat is bad.

That said, we all know that the cpu is the hottest part, but there are other areas that need attention too:
Northbridge is one. Years ago, the nb on a mobo wouldn't even have a passive heatsink on it, yet nowadays even cheap ones do- and the best boards have a fan on the sink;) One of the first mods I do is to remove the nb heatsink, lap it and reinstall using nylon nuts and bolts (from the nearby hardware store) and thermal compound.

It may not help a lot, but from my informal testing it does help; at least one or two mhz worth on the fsb, and maybe more.

Keeping cool air flowing over your ram seems to help as well. Neither of these components get as hot as a cpu, but cooler running is higher speed/better satbility and or longer life.

A high case temp hurts as well: it keeps all the components warmer- target for my case temps is within 2 or 3 degrees c of ambient, and if I'm not less than 5 or 6c I get annoyed with myself:D

I am also not scared of voltage when overclocking;). My water cooled rig runs cou vcore @2.05v and ram @3.4v. High, but I keep lots of cool air circulating, and I keep the case temp WAY down.
Only thing I water cool is the cpu- case temp is cool enough to take care of the rest.

If the temps and 5v line are good, then it will probably be a pci device stopping the fsb from going any higher.
 
Back