Overclocking old chips.

[Quailane]

Hey, I was planning on overclocking some really cheapo cpus for protien folding. You know how old processors had heatsinks with little or no fans and had no thermal interface material? If I lap the heat spreader and heatsink of an oldie such as pentium2 or k6-2, and I apply artic silver and add a high cfm fan to the sink, do you think the outlook for overclocking them is far better than when they were new? Just wondering, because if I get them all overclocked sufficiently, they are running at stock, except for 2 k6-2s, then I could greatly increase my WU output. Oh, yeah, I'm running 2 400 watt very good power supplies with all my oldie folders. The psu's have two extra soldered-on atx leads to each of them.

 

[CrashOveride]

Well, better cooling always helps so I wouldn't be surprised if you got a bit more out of them, cooling really has progressed a lot since those days. I would give it a shot, I don't know if you have to lap the heatspreader though, it should be flat (unless you need the extra space to get the HS on there right).

 

[Quailane]

I lapped the heat spreader of pentium pro this morning past the copper and solder to a silver/aluminum looking layer.

 

[batboy]

Oh yeah, I've had good luck overclocking older CPUs by improving cooling.

 

[CKeys]

Well I have had a P166 up to 266 using a simple peltier/water system many many years ago

 

[Graphic67]

If the K6-2's in question are 450MHz or above, don't expect much more than 10 to 30 MHz in overclocking. The K6-2 cores never seemed to have much overclocking potential.

My old K6-2 500MHz CPU would NOT run even 10MHz over stock on a FIC VA503+ motherboard.

 

[CrashOveride]

Well I have had a P166 up to 266 using a simple peltier/water system many many years ago

Lol... well in that case I doublt you will be able to get much hihger OCes with better hss lol

Welcome To The Forums! CKeys
Feel Free To Introduce Yourself

 

[PAWO]

I overclocked my old P200MMX (original) up to 233 just by messing with the jumpers, its noticebly faster when I run Mandrake 9 or Win98 on that rig, also its still using its stock cooler too, cpu temp reaches about 34-36C under load I think....29 idle. Not bad, I only use it as a test system, so it doesn't matter. Sold my K-2 300Mhz and 500Mhz about 2 years ago, so I never got to try with those.....

 

[barton2500]

K6-2s don't OC that well unless you have really good cooling, I have a 350 Mhz K6-2 that could do 380 on the cooling the came with the system (IBM E3U). But it was ridiculuously hot, so I left it at 350 Mhz.

Pentium IIs will likely do better, considering how ppl used to OC the Celeron 300A to 450 Mhz.

Probably you will be better off getting a cheap mobo and a Duron/Athlon and some RAM, and just keep the rest of your system. Maybe you can get a mobo with SDRAM slots and integrated graphics, such as ECS K7SOM. That's going for $108 Cdn including a Duron 1.2 Ghz in Markham. But you can't overclock it at all, nonetheless, it is a lot faster than the Pentium II/K6-2.

 

[larva]

Lol... well in that case I doublt you will be able to get much hihger OCes with better hss lol

Heh, I had 166MMX's that ran 285MHz with the crap cooling of the day, and my best 200MMX ran at 300MHz (100x3) on DFI Via MVP3 super socket seven boards (with a whopping 1MB L2 cache). It took me a while to figure out that that excellent Via chipset was a fluke and abandon them entirely in the P3 era.

 

[ColtIce]

i had a k6-2 350 that would do 400 with stock cooling.i also had a k6-2 333 that wouldn't do over 380

 

[Cyrix_2k]

The first computer I ever overclocked was a POS emachines with a 233mhz cyrix. It's running happily at 366mhz right now. I also popped one of my old pentiums in that board to see what it would do. I had one of my 133mhx P1's hit 300mhz @ the max voltage of the board and an Icepack sitting on top of it. 100mhz FSB too. All jumpers. Remember those? I also remember that thermal compound was "optional" back then.

 

[gamefoo21]

i had a k6-2 450 hit 550 but it was hot sob. But k6's aren't worth it unless you get a k6-3.

*looks over at all of his Via based mobo's * Wait a second there is a worse chipset. Damned Nforce crap oh and we can't forget lowly SiS. I hate those chipsets.

 

[DaMouse]

hah, my server is an Pentium120 overclocked to 200MHz!

 

[barton2500]

what's wrong with nforce? I've been running my system perfectly stable.

To get junk...you'd have to get ECS+SIS..lol

Pentium100 @ 300 Mhz..omg...that is 1337..200% overclock.