Looking for advice on my system

[KClaisse]

I'm extremely green to overclocking, and I am looking to squeeze every inch of performance out of my slightly outdated system. I am not planning on upgrading this system for another year,

Power Supply: 600w Xion power supply
Case: Thermaltake Tsunami
Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLI
CPU: Intel Pentium D 940 @ 3.2GHz with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Memory: PQI Dual Channel 2048MB DDR2 PC4200 (2x1GB)
Graphics Card:XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme Edition (Black PCB) with an Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 Rev. 3.
Operating System Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Fedora Core 6 kernel-2.6.20-1.2962 custom 1000Hz rebuild

Some CPU-Z Screenshots for the really technical details
CPU
Motherboard
Memory

Case has 3 fans, 1 in the front sucking air in. 1 in the back blowing air out, and one on the side sucking air in.

I've read posts and stickies and I still can't put ends together and figure out what to do. I am just looking for the maximum safe overclock my system can give. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Kyle

 

[tenchi86]

Well your system with a little overclocking should easily be enough to last another year if you do not require max settings on every game you play. Really though I am not sure what you are asking? If you are looking for just general tips on overclocking then here are a few things to try; Firstly when overclocking the order is up to you, but most people like to do the CPU, then Ram, then GPU(GPU done via software). As you get better with overclocking you can start to work with the ram/cpu at the same time to try and achieve the best OC possible. Also remember to take it slowly. Overclock the CPU slightly then stress test it using a program like Prime95. If it is stable then go back and bring it up a little more, if it is not stable either lower your clock or raise your volts. For GPU overclocking a program like Rivatuner should do you well, and just stress test it with programs like ATI Tool and 3Dmark. The main tip I can give though is of course to watch your temps. When overclocking try not to do anything crazy such as jumping your volts up a ridiculous amount in one go and always keep an eye on your LOAD temps.

I know that is not very specific but if you could elaborate on what part you need help with we could be able to better assist you.

 

[KClaisse]

Forgive me for my extreme naiveness. I've tried to overclock before. I raised my FSB, but whenever I raised it by 1 MHz my system would freeze. That was with my old P4 system and through a tool supplied by Asus. I've never tried to overclock my memory because I have no clue how to do that or what to change. I've never adjusted voltages on anything just because I don't know what to change it to, higher, lower, how much, stuff like that. I probably should read some more stuff.

I just found this: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=124363
It looks interesting, and sounds... errrm.. interesting. I've no clue what a cas latency is or what the HT voltage is, but it's about overclocking my board.

Is there like a legend of terms or a glossary somewhere?

 

[tenchi86]

Firstly, don't apologize for being new to this. We all started in the same situation you are in now. As for overclocking, the issue you may have been running into with your last board was that the software was incorrectly controlling the motherboard. It is highly recommended you overclock through your Bios to avoid those types of issues. With that in mind I would suggest you start small and only worry about your CPU at this point in time. It is getting late (5:00AM here) so I cannot go into to much detail right now but basically for CPU overclocking you need to first figure out what settings your Motherboard and your CPU support in changing, such as Multipliers, FSB, Voltage, and Dividers. Those may sound complicated right now but once you get a handle on them they will seem pretty simple. To quickly/simply explain them though

Multiplier is a number usually rather small (Under 20) that basically tells your CPU to run X times faster then the FSB. So say your system is running at 133FSB and the CPU multiplier is 5 you would have a 133*5=1.33Ghz CPU.
FSB is simply the pathway at which data on your motherboard travels through/the speed at which it travels. (It is no longer as simple as the actual number that is shown as you now have to considering things like Quad pumping, but that is for another time)
Voltage in regards to OCing is simply the amount of power X component is receiving
Divider in regards to Memory/CPU is a feature motherboards have that allows you to run your CPU and RAM FSB at different speeds, though for beginning overclocking I would probably ignore this for now.

So in short what you are going to want to do right now is simply go into your bios and raise your FSB a small amount to say 210 (Others may suggest even less then that, I am just personally a little impatient) which would make your CPU go from 3.2Ghz too 3.36Ghz. After you have done that save your changes to your Bios and go into Windows and use a program like Everest or MBM5 to see your CPU temp, if it appears ok (For your CPU I believe under 65c is ok but I could be mistaken) then load Prime95 and run it in stress mode and continue to watch your CPUs heat for the next say 15 minutes. If it appears to level out under 65c then allow Prime95 to run for a few hours during which time you will periodically recheck the CPU temp. If Prime95 fails then you will return to your Bios and slightly raise your volts (I am talking .1/2) and then repeat the process you just did when you raised for FSB, and remember to keep a close eye on your temps as the volts will be the main cause in temps raising. Once you have done this a few times and feel you are reaching the max of your CPU run Prime95 for a full 24 hours so it has a chance to run during the entire cycle of a days temp.

As for guides. http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=257741 and http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=62006
are two I find very helpful and both should be read before you overclock, or at least before you overclock your ram.

Note: As I said it is late here, so sorry if my sentence lack grammar or structure, I will try and fix them tomorrow if they are to hard to understand.

 

[KClaisse]

Well I went into the BIOS.

No options for multiplier (Guess the Pentium D doesn't support that), in fact it didn't give any information about my CPU at all. I had to use CPU-Z to find my multiplier (16), but in the BIOS it is using the rated FSB instead of just the bus speed. So it said 800MHz, I changed it to 810MHz and pressed F10. The screen went black, the floppy drive made it's noise, but after about a minute the screen was still black. I pressed the shutdown button, nothing. I pressed the restart button and that worked. Then at the post screen it said that the last CMOS settings failed to boot, press F1 to continue, DEL to enter the BIOS settings. I'm not sure what I did wrong.

 

[JamesXP]

When in BIOS do ctrl F1

 

[KClaisse]

ctrl+F1 didn't do anything.

If I set my FSB to anything but 800MHz my system has problems. I couldn't shutdown from windows, and when I finally shut it down it wouldn't boot. I had to reset the CMOS.

I always have bad luck when it comes to overclocking. Some people fry their motherboards or melt their CPU's. I'll be lucky to boot after changing the FSB by a 1MHz.

I ran Prime95 after I reset my BIOS and after about 2 hours now the temp hasn't gone over 48C.

I'm starting to thing though that my system is immune to overclocking,

 

[KClaisse]

Anyone have any other suggestions? Has anyone OC'ed their PD940 before? Why would my system fail to post even with a 1MHz change?