overclocking guide burried somewhere in the sticky
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=207088
Disclaimer: Overclocking, if done to extreme measures or if done with little knowledge of your computer can cause hardware damage that may be irreversible. I am in no way responsible for anything that happens as a result of your overclocking adventure. Make sure that you read this guide in its entirety so that you know what you should be looking for that could cause problems.
I have seen many newbie's asking for assistance in their first overclocking adventure, and I thought it would be nice to have a guide for them to be able to visit, so they can figure all of this stuff out. If you see anything wrong, or mistyped let me know and I will be sure to fix it.
Ok let’s start off with the definition of overclocking. Overclocking is turning you computer components up faster than they were supposed to run out of the box, so that you get more out of what you paid for, and have a faster computer. There are many ways to go about overclocking, but there is one really reliable way. Many of the newcomers to the forums ask if there is software to overclock, and yes there is. I do no trust these third-party overclocking utilities though. It is much more reliable to change all of these settings in the BIOS, and it is a lot easier than you may think.
There are also many different things that you can overclock in your computer, but the two I will be focusing on in this guide are the CPU and the memory. To overclock the CPU you will need to overclock the ram also to gain the best system performance that you can. To do this you will be changing a few main settings in your BIOS. The Front Side Bus (FSB), the CPU Multiplier, and different voltages. The FSB is the speed that the memory talks to the northbridge, which then in turn talks to the CPU. The CPU multiplier is a certain number that multiplies the FSB to give it the overall CPU frequency. Example: 10 (Multiplier) x 200Mhz (FSB) = 2000Mhz or 2Ghz.
Note: The motherboard, CPU, memory, and the PSU are generally the most important things in the system when overclocking. You do not want to skimp on these items.
Currently the nForce2 motherboards are the best because they offer a lot of features like the PCI lock that so many overclockers are enjoying at the moment, since they can reach FSB speeds of 200Mhz or higher. PCI lock basically locks the PCI bus speed at 33Mhz so that you will not have to use dividers and worry about your PCI bus speed causing problems like hard drive corruption and other known problems that come along with running your PCI bus too far out of spec. My preference in the nForce2 boards that are out right now are the Abit NF7-S Revision 2, the Epox 8RDA+, the Chaintech Zenith, and the Epox 8RDA3+. All of these boards have confirmed PCI locks along with the Asus A7N8X and the MSI K7N2 Delta-L (The older MSI nForce2 motherboards do not have a confirmed PCI lock). The nForce2 motherboards that do not have a PCI lock are the motherboards that are manufactured by MSI (The older boards, the K7N2 Delta-L and newer have a confirmed PCI lock), and Leadtek. They all seem like a good deal, but stay away from them, if you are going to spend the money on a motherboard with the nForce2 chipset, you will want PCI/AGP lock...at least.
The current AMD CPU's that are holding the highest overclocks and the best price/performance ratios are the thoroughbred B 1700+, the thoroughbred B 2100+, and the newer Barton core 2500+. Some of the higher rated Barton core CPU's are also performing very well, but they are expensive so they do not fare well in the price/performance ratio.
You also will want to outfit yourself with a good high wattage power supply, try to avoid the no-name brand ones that claim that they will offer 350W or 400W, because most of the time they will not, and will cause you instability problems along the way. The names that I trust the most are the Antec, Sparkle, and Fortron power supplies. They will all last a long time and give all of your components a good, steady supply of power. I have used an Enermax power supply for a good amount of time, and have had no problems out of it, but I have read from quite a few other forum members that they can be unreliable and their customer service is not up to par. You can use one, and they are a well know company, but apparently people have been having some trouble with their products. Use them at your own risk.
You should also be looking for good high-quality memory to support the FSB speeds that you want to be able to reach. There are many good brands of memory that will allow you to get to the speeds you want with some tight timings. The corsair XMS series, Kingston HyperX, and TwinMOS memory with CH-5 Buffalo Chips are doing to best at very high speeds. You do not want to skimp and go for a low rated stock speed like PC2100, PC2700, but want to look into some high-speed memory like PC3000, PC3200, or PC3500.
Cooling: It is a very good idea for you to invest in a cooler other than the stock one that comes with AMD processors. The stock AMD heatsink, as many people here on the forums say is nothing better than a paperweight. When you begin to overclock and mess with your voltages, the on-die temperature of the CPU is going to begin to raise pretty quickly, and you are going to need something adequate to cool it off. If you want to stick with air-cooling instead of going exotic, or if this is the first time you are building a computer, I would recommend looking into the Thermalright heatsinks. In my opinion the SK-7, the SLK800, and the SLK900 are all doing the best for the amount of money they cost. You will need to couple these heatsinks with a very good fan with a high CFM (preferably more than 50CFM). A really good choice in fans is the Thermaltake Smart Fan 2, because it has variable speeds for up to 75CFM, and offers a reasonable noise level. The Thermaltake Smart Fan 2 also offers more static pressure than the Vantec Tornado, which make it easier for the fan to push air through tightly finned heatsinks like the Thermalright SLK series heatsinks. If noise is not an issue, the Vantec Tornado is the highest CFM fan in the 80mm range, but is very very loud (It almost sounds like a jet engine taking off inside your case).
Another thing to look at is the air movement inside you case. You will want to use up all of the available bays that accommodate fans so that you will have a good cool ambient temp inside your case. when positioning your fans, most people will suggest that you put the exhaust on the back of the case toward the top, and the intake in the front of the case toward the bottom. The reasoning behind this is that heat rises, and the higher the exhaust fans are, the more hot air they are pulling out of the case. You will also want to clean the inside of the case pretty regularly, since dust will build up in there. Dust can accumulate and cause your temperatures to go up, or can absorb moisture that will slowly cause problems in your computer. I tend to keep 5 fans in my case, 3 intakes and 2 exhausts. The two intake fans are moving about 68CFM of air and the two exhausts are moving in the low 30CFM range.
FSB vs. Multiplier: Generally a higher FSB with a lower multiplier will give you better overall system performance than a lower FSB and a higher multiplier. This is generally the case because the faster that your FSB is, the faster the CPU can "talk" to the North Bridge, which then "talks" quicker to the memory. Even if you are loosing a few overall Mhz in your overclock to attain a higher FSB speed, it is generally worth it. Make sure to keep your PCI bus in spec though if you are running a motherboard that does not supply a PCI lock...nothing will console you if you end up corrupting data on your hard drive for those last couple Mhz on your FSB.
Unlocking: If you still feel that you can get a higher overall CPU speed, but your multiplier is maxed out, then you can unlock the CPU, but it will require a bit of modifying the chip. If you are using a Duron, then all you have to do to unlock the chip is connect all of the L1 bridges with a pencil. If you are using a chip with a Palomino core, then you will need to connect all of the L1 bridges with some conductive paint, or some window defogger paint (which you can purchase at your local auto parts store). To use the paint, you will need to fill the gaps with some crayon or super glue, and then use the conductive paint to connect the dots in between the L1 bridges. All of the AMD CPU's with a thoroughbred core (A or B) are unlocked from the factory, but most of the motherboards that are out today will only recognize either the higher or lower multipliers. Assuming that the 8x bit on the motherboard is set to high which will give you the higher multipliers by default, you will need to connect the last (5th) L3 bridge to gain access to the lower multipliers (sorry for the mix up). There are other methods to access different multipliers for your CPU and they require no modding to the chip itself. You can take small pieces of wire and inset them into certain pin holes on the CPU socket to make the motherboard recognize the different multiplier values. This method is a lot less permanent, but requires a little more knowledge of the CPU socket. A guide to do this can be found here:
http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?h...raht/xp_unlock_draht.htm&prev=/language_tools. Here is another little page to help you to figure out where to place the wires in the socket:
http://www.ocinside.de/go_e.html?/html/workshop/pinmod/amd_pinmod.html
This is the method I use to overclock a new CPU:
Make sure to go over your motherboard's manual thoroughly before you begin to overclock anything through your BIOS or jumpers. You will want to be farmiliar with all of the options that you motherboard has, like the location of the CMOS jumper, etc... If you do not have the original copy of the manual for your motherb oard, go to the manufacturers website and download a copy for reference.
1) Drop the multiplier to something like 5. If your motherboard does not allow you to adjust your multiplier this low, then you will have to settle for the lowest multiplier you can use. You can also unlock your CPU to gain the lower multipliers, but it will take some modding to the chip.
2) Begin to raise the FSB by increments of 5Mhz, testing with Prime95 and memtest86 until the machine becomes unstable. By unstable I mean that it creates rounding error in Prime95, or errors in memtest86.
3) If you have an nForce2 board with PCI locks, you should be able to raise the FSB pretty high with some good memory. If you do not have a PCI locked motherboard, then you will have to use the dividers to regulate the PCI and the AGP bus speeds. It is recommended that the PCI bus should not exceed 38Mhz. If it does, you will either suffer from instability problems, or you will run the risk of corrupting the data on your hard drive, and you could loose some very valuable files, or even have to do a full format and reinstall. Running the PCI bus out of spec in any case can cause this problem, but most hard drives can support a PCI bus of around 38Mhz. Generally (but not always the case) if you have a motherboard with a 1/5 divider you do not want to exceed 190Mhz FSB since 190/5 = 38.
4) When the computer gets to be unstable with a high FSB, back it down slowly (1Mhz or 2Mhz at a time) until the computer regains its stability with memtest86 and Prime95
5) This should tell you roughly the maximum frequency that your memory can handle with the voltage and the timings you have it set on. If you want to see if you can get more move your memory voltage up a little, and relax the timings a little and see if you can squeeze some extra Mhz out of it. The majority of the memory that is on the market today will be able to handle a CAS latency of 2, but if you have to, use a CAS latency of 2.5. I never recommend going to a CAS latency of 3, as it will show greatly in your memory benchmarks, and will in essence cancel the benefit of the high FSB that you have attained.
6) Begin to move the multiplier up slowly and test with Prime95 and 3DMark 2001 until the CPU becomes unstable. You will know it is unstable when Prime95 encounters a rounding error (or any error of that sort) or if 3DMark2001 dumps you back to the desktop in the middle of a benchmark. If you want to use 3DMark2001 to test for stability, the best way to do it is to loop the benchmark for a good 45min - 2hrs and see if it dumps you to the desktop at all.
7) Back the multiplier down little by little and test with Prime95 and 3DMark 2001 SE until the computer is stable again. This should be the highest stable overclock you can get without changing the CPU voltage.
8) To see if you can get more out of the CPU begin to raise the CPU's voltage and move the multiplier up until you feel satisfied with the speed you are at. I usually try to make sure that the voltage that is going through my CPU is below 2.0v, and I feel that this is a good regulation, unless you have some more advanced methods of cooling (other than air).
9) If you are still not happy with the CPU speed, or feel like you could probably get more out of the chip than you have when you just tampered with the CPU voltage, there is always the option of toying with the memory's voltage to get higher FSB speeds, or on certain newer boards you can turn the voltage that is going to the chipset up, to help the motherboard gain stability at high FSB speeds.
Voltage Mod: There is a known problem with a lot of motherboards where they simply do not offer the high voltages that a lot of experienced overclockers use. One solution to this problem is another wire trick where you use the wires in the CPU socket to designate a certain voltage that you want. Like the wire trick for multipliers, this can be a little dangerous to the chip, so I would recommend making double and triple sure that you do this mod right. Since it requires a good layout of the pins and such, here is a thread that describes the voltage wire trick pretty well:
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154172&perpage=30&pagenumber=1. Make sure to check all of the links, and the pictures so that you do not do anything wrong!
10) When you have completed all of this, run Prime95 for around 24hrs and make sure the computer is stable. Take a good look at the temperatures if you decided to tamper with the voltages, and try to make sure that they are under 55C. A good program to monitor the temperatures of different components in the computer is Motherboard Monitor 5. Another good stress test is Folding@Home. This will get my CPU hotter than any other stress testing program, and will be contributing to a good cause. The only problem with using Folding@Home for stress testing is that it will not tell you directly when you get an error in the program, it will just stop working, like Prime95 and memtest86.
Note: When testing the stability of a certain FSB or the FSB and proposed multiplier combination, I usually test for 4hrs. Then when I think I have all of the voltages and the different settings, I test for 24hrs (as stated in step 10). I am just clarifying that you do not have to do a 24hrs test with each different multiplier and FSB speed that you are trying out.
Burn-in: A lot of people feel dissatisfied with their overall overclock, and want to get more out of it when it seems that they have hit the wall. One way to try to get more out of the CPU than it seems you could originally is called burning in. Many people say that burning in will cause the CPU to last a shorter amount of time than it would have out of the box, and that it wont work. On the other hand, a lot of people have tried the burning in method and have had it work for them, me being one of them. If you decide you want to do a burn in, you will need to drop the overclocked frequency back down to the stock frequency of the chip and raise the voltage as high as you feel comfortable going. I think that it is a good idea to use between a .3v and .5v increase in the voltage for a burn-in. When I did my burn in I used a voltage of 1.9v, because my CPU is a DLT3C version, which designates it as 1.5v stock (about a .4v increase in voltage). Then you want to use Prime95 to stress the CPU for 24hrs - 48hrs. I am not too sure why this works, but the basic theory is that it is "breaking the chip in", and that is why it improves the performance. If you do this, make sure that you check on the temperature pretty regularly, and make sure it does not go over 50C - 55C. This could be very detrimental to the stability of the CPU during the burn in (which would defeat the purpose) if you let it go higher than 55C! Also remember that burning in does not work for everyone, but it has worked for quite a few.
Links:
You can find Prime 95 at:
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
You can find Folding@Home at:
http://folding.octeams.com/index.php
You can find memtest86 at:
http://www.memtest86.com/
You can find 3DMark 2001 at:
http://www.madonion.com/download/
You can find Motherboard Monitor 5 at:
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/download.html
Here is a link to BenchmarkHQ where you can find tons of benchmarking software, CPU indentification programs, and stress testers:
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/b_e.html
If you have any further questions feel free to PM, e-mail me, or you may be able to catch me on AIM (my screen name is eatafatty).
Good luck
