dummy's guide to overclockin

[hacktic]

remember i'm quite a n00b so dun get too techy....for a dummy

 

[Rasputin'sLiver]

16* = 160,.....165,166,167.......my RAM is crucial PC2100 256mb x1

there's your bottleneck. get faster ram! you should be able to do 120mhz though

the best bang for the buck is samsung 2700, but the sure bet is corsair xms 3000 or 3200 (latest rev.)

 

[hacktic]

yep doing 120 now....well that's the max i can go? i'm fine with it.... thanks a lot...

 

[Rasputin'sLiver]

yep doing 120 now....well that's the max i can go? i'm fine with it.... thanks a lot...

i meant to say you should be doing 133 but i'm only half awake...

 

[batboy]

You know, maybe you'd get a little more help if you didn't call some of the things that I took a long time to write up at the top "tech talk trash". If you don't want to learn about how your computer works and the basics involved in overclocking, then just leave the settings all on default and forget about tweaking things. Knowledge is power.

The reason some of the basic stuff is so vague is because each motherboard is different and much of what you have to do is trial and error. It never ceases to amaze me how people show up here demanding a "cookbook" step by step instruction. Apparently all you want to do is be led by the hand through the overclocking garden. Well, if you want to achieve a decent overclock, then you have to learn some tech talk and get itchy.

First off, you have to improve cooling. Those factory Intel retail coolers are fairly worthless for anything more than a mild overclock as you're finding out. You're going to need a little more voltage to get over the hump of 120 FSB, but before you can raise voltage, you need better cooling. LIke Arctic Silver thermal paste, case fans, and a much better CPU heatsink/fan.

Cooling is the key to overclocking. Heat is the enemy. Sorry, if you want to overclock, you have to talk the tech trash talk and walk the tech trash walk.

 

[hacktic]

oh alright!. but then u guys started commenting about this and that....it went off topic

 

[batboy]

Ok, let's get down to business. Sounds like you were able to reach 120 FSB. Congrats, you are now a seasoned veteran overclocker. With your system, you should be able to reach 133 FSB which will give you a system speed of 2.4 gig. That is a nice little overclock that should whip up on most of your buddies system as far as performance benchmarks go.

Some of the earlier discussion about type of RAM and memory settings are not as off topic as you might think. But right now, I agree with you, let's try to keep this as simple as possible. I have never played around with the motherboard you're using, but I'll go look up a manual and see what BIOS settings are available so we can figure out what to do. In the meantime, I'm going to repeat what I said in my earlier post, because it's super important.

First off, you have to improve cooling. Those factory Intel retail coolers are fairly worthless for anything more than a mild overclock as you're finding out. You're going to need a little more voltage to get over the hump of 120 FSB, but before you can raise voltage, you need better cooling. LIke Arctic Silver thermal paste, case fans, and a much better CPU heatsink/fan.

Now, if you're on a tight budget and can't afford a new CPU cooler, there are a few things you can still do to improve cooling. First, if you're using the black thermal pad on the retail CPU heatsink, you need to scrape that crap off and put some better thermal paste on that puppy. If you can't afford or don't want to get Arctic Silver, go Radio Shack and get a $3 thing of silicone thermal paste and use it.

Do you have any case fans? At a minimum you should have an 80mm fan mounted in the front lower part of the case blowing fresh air in. You'll already have a power supply exhaust fan. I prefer two intakes and two exhaust fans, but you might get by initially by just adding one in the front. I've seen these fans for $5 to $10 or if you have an old power supply unit laying around, you can recycle the fan out of it.

 

[ol' man]

oh alright!. but then u guys started commenting about this and that....it went off topic

Please

You are lucky anyone helped you in the first place!

Next time instead of insulting people;

UTSE.
(use the search engine.)

Calling something like this tech trash is BS!

I agree with Batboy.

 

[da_iceman]

wtg batboy !!! ur one helpful dude, i've been lurking down this forums but I don't post much since lot's of my answers I can find on these forum, though it took time.. about a month? heheheh

hacktic : bro you'r one lucky d00d for having a fella help you and look up for your motherboard, just to find the correct settings... i envy you, ^_^ YOU SHOULD BE THANKFUL ^_^


OT : ^_^

nway I'm excited building my new rig, to test all the information I got from various sites including this forum... I'll be posting a thread about my ocin'g adventure hehehe oh man can't wait for my mushkin 512 pc3200 to be delivered ^_^


aiming 1.6a @ 2.7 ghz ^_^

man, i can't believe i put on so many smileys hehehhe

 

[batboy]

Ok, I looked up the manual and I now have an good idea what settings you might try after you check to see what your load CPU temps are (report back here when you're done). If temps look good, we'll try a couple of things. I think you're stuck right now because the PCI bus is running too high and is out of spec. At 120 FSB the PCI bus is at 40 MHz using the default 1/3 divider (that's to high to be stable). Fortunately, that Gigabybe mobo has a way to manually change the PCI bus dividers. Get the cooling taken care of and we'll get that bad boy running up to at least 2.4 gig, I promise.

 

[AZN]

Ok, I looked up the manual and I now have an good idea what settings you might try after you check to see what your load CPU temps are (report back here when you're done). If temps look good, we'll try a couple of things. I think you're stuck right now because the PCI bus is running too high and is out of spec. At 120 FSB the PCI bus is at 40 MHz using the default 1/3 divider (that's to high to be stable). Fortunately, that Gigabybe mobo has a way to manually change the PCI bus dividers. Get the cooling taken care of and we'll get that bad boy running up to at least 2.4 gig, I promise.

BTW well said about the OCing tech trash. Before i got into heavy OCIng,i didnt know jack. I may have only got this 1.8a to 2ghz if i was lucky. Read this as much as i can from this site, showed me every setting i needed to know. thx u forum. Batboy is right, if u are lazy and want us to do all the work for u, forget it. We will guide u as much as we can, but dont expect us to hand feed u everything.
about the PCI bus, Was it not possible to lock it? like on my th7ii i can lock it at 66mhz, but batboy said for hte gigabyte that was way to high... I already noted early in my post about the agp/pci bus speed. I told him to lock it, so it wont go any higher
BTW, to hit 133fsb at 2.4ghz he will need good air cooling and 1.7v on bios, that should read about 1.62v on the hardware monitor. but if u have better cooling, u should be able to hit 133fsb with a lower voltage.

 

[batboy]

As near as I can tell, there is no way to "fix" the PCI bus, but there is a way to manually change the PCI divider. It has a weird way of doing this without much explanation in the mobo manual, but I found a review that explained it. The bizzare thing is that this mobo has FSB settings up to 355 MHz (that was no typo) and a bunch of dividers... 1/3 up to 1/10. Next step is to find out what the load CPU temps are...

 

[hacktic]

all the help is so much appreciated esp. NO1

i'll use the search engine in future. btw, i've set my sys down back to 100FSB, cos there seems to be a prob with the onboard sound. no more O/C til maybe i get a new RAM

got beer?

 

[AZN]

all the help is so much appreciated esp. NO1

i'll use the search engine in future. btw, i've set my sys down back to 100FSB, cos there seems to be a prob with the onboard sound. no more O/C til maybe i get a new RAM

got beer?

NP thats what all of us are here for. I got alot of help from this forum, and im trying to return the favor. about the sound. my onboard sound worked, but not to well. Playing UT it would get distorted. I just used my audigy. If ur sound doesnt do well when OCing, u may want to invest in a better SC.
When asking for help. the best thing to do for us is give as much info about ur setup and what u have done. Without know temps. voltage, hardware and such, we are just guessing sometimes. So plz next post lets see alot of ur info thx.

 

[batboy]

The on-board sound will get shakey at high FSB speeds. That's another reason why you need to use the proper PCI divider.

 

[deez]

all the help is so much appreciated esp. NO1

i'll use the search engine in future. btw, i've set my sys down back to 100FSB, cos there seems to be a prob with the onboard sound. no more O/C til maybe i get a new RAM

got beer?

why not just begin with a mild overclock that wont throw your PCI bus way off until you get proper cooling components. If you get it up to 133 then your PCI devices will be back in spec. But till then you can always try around 110FSB and see if your sound still messes up. Onboard sound is generally pretty crappy anyway. You dont have to try to push it to the max on your first try...learn a little bit about all of your components first.

 

[AZN]

why not just begin with a mild overclock that wont throw your PCI bus way off until you get proper cooling components. If you get it up to 133 then your PCI devices will be back in spec. But till then you can always try around 110FSB and see if your sound still messes up. Onboard sound is generally pretty crappy anyway. You dont have to try to push it to the max on your first try...learn a little bit about all of your components first.

yes learn alittle more, but really 133fsb with the 1.8a isnt to much to ask for. u dont even need a volt mod. The stock HSF can probably do it.

 

[deez]

yes learn alittle more, but really 133fsb with the 1.8a isnt to much to ask for. u dont even need a volt mod. The stock HSF can probably do it.

I'm sure there are some exceptions. But I dont doubt 133 FSB is easy to hit b/c I've been building a lot of 1.6A systems for work lately and the heatsink barely gets warm. But I've never overclocked one b/c they are not mine.

 

[AZN]

I'm sure there are some exceptions. But I dont doubt 133 FSB is easy to hit b/c I've been building a lot of 1.6A systems for work lately and the heatsink barely gets warm. But I've never overclocked one b/c they are not mine.

yes it is. maxvla has his stock hsf for the 1.6a at 145fsb. no problem... 133fsb should be obtainable for the 1.6a-1.8a easy. now the 2.0a and above alittle harder.