My first overclock! Yay! (need some advice, though)

My first overclock! Thanks for the advice!

Well I finally got my Shuttle AK31 (v3.1) today so I stuck it in my box went to work. This is my first EVER overclock, and I'm pretty happy with the results so far.

I figured I'd wing it and see if I could boot up with my existing hard drive instead of re-formatting (I hate re-loading all my stuff) I got a blue "can't read from device" screen, but booted from my Win2K CD, ran the windows 2000 installation repair and I was good to go with a "new" install that kept all my existing programs, settings, etc. (I found out from the guy at the local computer store afterwards that I "shouldn't" have been able to do that. He also told me how bad shuttle boards are, so whatever)

With that out of the way, I started the OC and have landed at 1800 mhz with an xp1800+ (unlocked) 12 x 150 FSB. So far it's stable and runs sandra benchmarks very nicely. I'm using a thermalright ax7 that currently has a Sunon 35cfm on it, plus another sunon in the case right over the cpu (my generic case came with this hole there, which is convienent) MBM5 shows me at 95 F cpu / 84 F ambient at idle, and it gets up to about 100F under load. I'm going to do some ducting straight to a delta 80cfm on the AX7 to get the CPU temps down (along with some sound proofing!!!)

I'll post some benchmarks too, just 'cause "this is my first time" and I'm all excited. It was pretty fun to load up WCPUID and see the processor named an Athlon 2200+

I have a request from those more experienced with this board to please help me with setting memory timings. Being a noob, I only have a very small grasp on memory timings, even after reading a very long and detailed article on them. I'm running two 256 meg sticks of PC2100 DDR that is fairly generic (I don't even know who makes it, actually) It gives me a "decent" benchmark of 2258 / 2088 in sandra, but I'm sure that fine tuning the memory settings can make that better.

Thanks to you all for this website and forum. It's because of you all that I had even a small understanding of how to overclock. (Not to mention how to unlock my precious processor!)

K1

Here are some screen shots:

It makes me happy to bench this high over a P4.

I can't resist...just one more

lower is better for most of the settings. you want to run cas 2 instead of 2.5 if you can. that makes the bigest difference. my settings are

cas 2
4 bank interleave

2
5
3 (can't boot with this at 2 with fsb of 166, but 2 would be faster)

the last two setting seem to make very little diff but the fastest benchie i got was with them at 2, 1.

good luck, you already got a nice o/c going there. did you have to up the voltage yet? what are your temps?
*edit* those temps look ok but i, as most here, am more used to celcius temp readings. so long as your under 50c you should be okay. i got 45 load temp while aircooling.

Thanks Juliendogg,

I went in and set all memory settings as low as they could go. Booted up, ran sandra memory looped about 20 times, seems all good. I've also upped my FSB to 155 now so I'm at 1866mhz (multiplier still at 12)

As for voltage, I have only needed to raise it to 1.8, which is fine with me, because I think I've read that without a voltage mod, the highest you can take it is 1.85.

According to MBM5, when I'm at 95 degrees F, that is the same as 35 C. (I haven't looked at under load in celcius)

I'm getting pretty happy with my benchmarks now. Here's where my memory is at:

awesome overclock, i run mine at 2-2-2 and a 4 bank interleave.

Turns out that I'm not too stable above 152 with the most aggressive memory settings. After a lot of playing around with settings, I decided to stay at 12x150, +.05 vcore, 2.6v for memory. I stay cool at these voltages air cooling with an AX7+sunon 80mm fan, a stock side 80mm case fan and a fairly cool room. MBM 5 shows me at 35 cpu/28 ambient idle. When I really stress the cpu, it will get up to 39 or 40 depending on room temps. My sandra memory benchmarks at these settings are 2309/2194. I'm pretty happy with that for now.

My next idea is to rheostat the Delta 80cfm fan that I got with my AX7 to a reasonable noise level AND line my case with sound absorbing material so that the fan noise won't bug me too much. Right now, it's not THAT loud, but things can always be cooler and more quiet, eh?

Overclocking is a lot of fun, although it really is pretty addicting...I wonder what the divorce rate among overclockers is.

K1