First time OCer 2100XP TB 'b' LF help

Hi,

I am looking to OC my CPU for the first time, heres what I have:

2100XP TB 'b' CPU
MSI K7N2-L Mobo
512mb Corsair XMS PC2700 333mhz RAM
PSU CWT 450BDT
ATI Radeon 9500Pro 128MB
80 IBM 2mb cache 7200RPM HDD

I am sure you heard this before, but can you advise me how I go about OCing, how far I am likely to get and whats gonna be my weakest link?

Thanks

From your post I assume you have been reading abit here and maybe other forums. First thing to know is this is a slow proccess. There is a wealth of information here and you will do yourself a great service by spending time reading the stickies in each section ie AMD CPU, AMD Mobo, Nvidia etc. these are the places to start for general spicific item information. Another place is on the Overclockers front page. Heres a link to some beginners guides to OCing. Look through these articles, give it a whirl and then come back here with the questions you will surely have. Every system is differnt and each component will act as they will. Nothing can say what will be a weak link until you try. The answers are here but not always easily found. Have patients and Welcome to the Forums

Out of interest, I've got my 2400 (default 2GHz) to 2212 and it's absolutely stable, this is a relatively mild overclock by just raising the FSB a bit at a time. Your system is pretty similar to mine, and your RAM is likewise very cool

Your cooler is always going to be the most important part, so make sure it's decent and get some proper Arctic Silver 3 on it. When I tried to overclock, it wouldn't let me mess with the multiplier at all, so be prepared to clear CMOS a fair few times! On mine it wouldn't do this with the jumpers - in that case, take power lead out, then battery, leave 10 secs, power lead in, switch on, wait for BIOS screen, switch off and replace battery.

If you mess with the FSB it's entirely possible your other devices won't like it. The way I did it was to bump up FSB one step at a time until it wouldn't POST (152) and then drop back down and keep bumping it up until it wouldn't load Windows. This was a mistake, because I stuffed my Windows installation at 151. What I should have done was used a spare HD with Windows on to test and not my actual one with all my data on! Luckily I could install a parallel copy and get the stuff back off, but I was kicking myself about that one!

Anyhow, hope this helps!

Go and read the beginner guides on the front page. They are very informative, and can help you out a lot.

With the MSI board you dont have a PCI lock so you want to make sure your PCI bus is below 38Mhz, otherwise you will het different corruptions, including HD corruption, which is bad. I think the max you should take the FSB in that case is around 190.

If you have the options of different multipliers, use them. The FSB will give you better overall system performance, but when you hit aq wall with your FSB you may be able to take the CPU itself a few Mhz higher with the multiplier.

This is a very slow process. You should be upping your FSB by small increments at a time 1-5Mhz, and keeping an eye on your temps. When you fing a speed that you are happy with, where you can bott into wondiws, make sure you pick up Prime95 (do a search on google) and test the stablilty of the CPU. If it isn't stable you should lower the speed a little bit, or up the vcore a little.

Hope i helped you a little, and if you have any questions feel free to PM me.

oh yeah and:
WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!!

OK I am not having much look so far....

I seem to be able to up the FSB OK atm got to 150... not a lot I know but still testing the water.

So I decide to download Prime95

After installation it takes about 20 secs and then <PHUMPF> or something like that, the power goes off.

I have tried going back to default 133FSB and still get the same, now something is wrong here.... the system seems to be running stable to me, can play games and benchmark OK just this prime95 switches my PC off about 40 secs after boot up or 20 secs after install and I have to uninstall it to get into my PC for longer than this.

Any ideas?

How much voltage are you giving you chip? Sometimes I would get random reboots if the voltage was not high enough, could also be your power suppy though.

Yeah, sounds like a cheap powersupply. I had one go out on startup with a 1333 athlon at stock. Smoke and all

isn't that MSI board w/ the Nforce2 chipset? that would mean he has pci-agp lock, no?

it is indeed the Nvida 2 board, also PSU is a CWT 450BDT SATA PSU, I was told plenty enough for this kinda thing,

Now regarding voltage I have 2 questions

1) what is min voltage a 2100 should be at and what is max? and in answering this what part does PSU play in what voltage you can allocate? ie max in bios is 1.8v

2) Mostly I had left the voltage at H/W specified but if I altered it I seemed to get strange beeping at aroung 1.725... is this because it is too low or too high or something else??

01_VTEC SE said:

isn't that MSI board w/ the Nforce2 chipset? that would mean he has pci-agp lock, no?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that the MSI nForce2 doesn't have the PCI lock..

Another thing that may be going wrong with the rebooting is your temps. I know a lot of board auto-shutdown if the temp gets too high. What kind of heatsink/fan are you running? You may want to also download Motherboard Moniter 5 and check your temps when this happens. Also check the rail on your PSU and make sure it's not that. If all else fails try a diff. PSU and see if that helps anything.

OK rail on PSU what do you mean?? do you have an example?

My system is stable atm but any attempt at OC and BANG reboot

I am after a starter guide and if anyone say "look at the front" or check the homepage or see the guides! I wil say in advance I have read them and I need guidance.

If the link you put in helps me or educates me then great...

If it is a referance to a frontpage guide.. then...???