The 'OFFICIAL' Thread on unlocking AMD CPUs!

[stompah]

Ok guys and girls, We seem to have way to many 'How do I unlock XXXX' or 'My unlocking trick didnt work'.

Ok so here it is! The end-all answer to the eternal question 'How do I unlock my CPU'. Also I want you guys who have successfully unlocked your chips (especially XPs!) to list your method and all the pitfalls to using that method.

UNLOCKING T-BREDS! YOU KNOW YA WANNA DO IT

EDIT:Thanks to buckhunter/deerhunter who has found that only ONE bridge needs to be connected to unlock multipliers. Makes buying a tbred over a pally an almost easy choice =]

link to a thread created here by DA WHIP of Tom's doing the unlock with super glue and conductive silver. The video does require some time to download if you are on dial up.


Here is a link provided by NUTNDUN to PcTechTalk on how to unlock via super glue and an auto defogger repair kit. A better way for you 56k'ers to see it done.


The following three links are from OC.com linked by
killem1x1. Who finally has seemed to have chosen a way to unlock his XP. CRAYON!!! Here is the link to his thread thanking those who helped him. That also has an extensive mults x fsb table... good thread just for that!

Lew (I dont know his nick on the forums) has taken a few photos and modded them to help explain the steps in unlocking an XP using super glue and an auto defogger repair kit.

Joe Citarella of OC.com has a quick overview and some good pics. Also show 2 different ways in which AMD has cut the bridges 'Pits and Slits'.

Some REALLY close photos of the slits submitted to OC.com by Dozer and Tinhead

Thanx to nikhsub1 for posting a link to VR-Zone's article on using thermal grease and conductive silver grease.










Peace!!! I am out for now!

EDIT: fxed link to the tbred unlocking to XS.com

 

[Arkaine23]

Unlocked XP 1600+

Method: Crayon to fill the L1 laser pits and the surrounding ones too, to be safe. Auto window defogger paint to connect the dots. Used a safety pin to apply and acetone with Q-tips to clean mistakes. Scotch tape to mask. I also used grounding heel straps and a wrist strap, a 5x magnifying glass, and a mag-lite flashlight.

Pitfalls: Must clear crayon wax from the L1 contacts with pin or exacto. It helps to use several thin layers of defogger paint, and press it flat. The paint seemed to lift up when I was trimming its edges sometimes. Take your time. I did this twice and spent at least half an hour each time.

I did this yesterday, so I can't vouch for the longevity or safety of the crayon method. Some people seem to think the crayon wax will melt. At 105 F on the core (probably cooler on the L1 area), I doubt it.

Edit: Finished tweaking my new cooling gear set up and now the cpu idles at 31 C or 87 F. Let's see that crayon melt now! Load temps to come once I get windows working again.

 

[bobt17]

hmmm i think i'll give this a -=BUMP=-

 

[Fiz]

I used 7 layers of clear coat nail polish to fill the pits, letting each layer dry for about 10 min. After they were all done I used a defogger repair kit to close the bridges. I put 2 layers on each bridge, the only down side is the amount of time it took. But I can use every mult and it has been good for quite some time now.

Fiz

 

[stompah]

Bump cause I worked on it for a little while tonight.

 

[plizzo]

ok, i need some help.
i tried to unlock my multipliers in the system shown in my sig. the only difference from the sig is the heatsink i used to test the unlocking, cause i didnt want to screw the alpha on and off if i had to tetry the unlocking. i used the kit from www.highspeedpc.com. basically fill the gaps with "gap filler" then connect the dots "with conductive grease". i did everything perfectly, i used a magnifying glass and it looked like a piece of art. so i hooked everything back up to test it out and nothing. well not nothin, all my fans come on, but nothing else. no error beeps, no signal to the monitor. i though maybe the mb was grounding wrong so i took everything out and tested it outside the case. still just fans. i unconnected and reconnected everything like 5 times with no luck.
so i then used the "cleaning agent" the kit came with and completely cleaned off everything i did to the cpu, basically so it looked new again. i tried again thinking id be back to normal, and still only the fans came on.
any ideas of whats wrong? did i permanently mess up the cpu?
im gunna try to borrow another cpu tonight to test it, so i'll see if thats the problem, but in the mean time does anyone have any ideas of what i did?
thanks
sorry for such a long post.

 

[nikhsub1]

In my book there is only 1 way to unlock an XP. I did 2 in 5 minutes.

http://www.vr-zone.com/guides/AMD/AthlonXPUnlock/

 

[walaka7]

Never trusted conductive grease.. maybe its better but not in my mind.. I went with the super glue and defogger paint.. took 15 minutes the second time (first time i put on camara took 2 hours LOL) you can see it at: (dumped link, sorry)



Oh and plizzo.. did you clear cmos after reinstalling cpu??

 

[JFettig]

ok heres what im wonderin...i think it mite be possible to unlock without filling the pits, look at my pic,

and if i do touch one of them pits will it hirt anything? or will it just not work?

 

[walaka7]

Usually it will just lock the multiplier, or give erroneous results (you chose 10 and it gives you 9 and so on)

 

[Emericana]

just got mine unlocked using the kit from www.highspeedpc.com it is great! very cheap and definetly worth it. It took me a LONG TIME to figure out how to successfully do it, but now i have a method down in which i can unlock a chip in 2 minutes give or take a few. What was taking me so long is that i did not know that the L1 dots had to be completly covered with the conductive greese, before i had the greese barely touching it....

now that you all know that, i HIGHLY recommend you all get this kit... it will allow you to either unlock 35 CPU's, or messup a bunch of times on the one you have

 

[JFettig]

ok heres what i did, havent got the pen yet GRRRR

but i taped off the bridges, then i put a little superglue on the end of a exacto nife and kinda scraped it across the bridge so the glue filled the bridge and didnt get any more on it! so it just leaveled over it!

 

[bdf24]

ok heres what im wonderin...i think it mite be possible to unlock without filling the pits, look at my pic,

and if i do touch one of them pits will it hirt anything? or will it just not work?

I think that look's a lot easier then it really is. Remember that picture is enhanced. There really not much room at all. You'll need a steady hand and a VERY thin pencil to pull it off. Although I must admit. If it work's I think it's a much better option then filling the gaps as well.

Let us know how it turn's out.

 

[Saleen]

Pardon my ignorance but i'm rather new to this whole OC concept.

Can someone explain what unlocking the CPU does?

From what i've read/gathered it has something to do with allowing you to increase the frequency of the CPU?

 

[Arkaine23]

OC & unlocking

Welcome to the Forums!

CPU mHz is dependent on 2 things: multiplyer and front side bus.

Ex. Athlon XP 1600+ runs on 10.5 multiplyer and 133 FSB at stock. 10.5x133=1396 MHz

Overclocking with FSb can only go so far before something can't take the speed, since FSB overclocking stresses everything in the system.

Once a cpu is unlocked, the multiplyer can be changed. This only stresses the cpu.

Ex. Athlon XP 1600+ at 11.5x133=1533Mhz

A lot of people do both multiplyer and FSB. The best way is to drop the multiplyer so that you can get even more FSB than you could at the stock multiplyer.

Ex. same cpu at 10.5x150= 1575Mhz stock multiplyer with FSB overclock.
Vs. 10x160= 1600Mhz and higher FSB means better overall performance.

Basically unlocking a cpu gives you more flexibilty when overclocking. For example, no matter what I try, I can't get above 150 FSB stable on my 1600+. It is probably my ram holding me back. So I was stuck around 1575mHz on the stock 10.5x multiplyer. I unlocked and raised my multiplyer to 11x and set my FSb to 148, so now I'm at 1633Mhz with only a 2Mhz loss of FSB.

Edit: I just shattered the 150 FSB barrier using the 10x multiplyer... at 155 FSB and going up!

 

[Nantlas]

I'm having the same problem Plizzo had, i bought the XP unlocking kit from highspeedpc.com and the first time i tried it everything went fine expect i could only get up to 12.5, 13 and 14 didn't work. So i wiped everything off and tried again but now only my fans come on and i dont get a motherboard beep or anything, think it might be some kind of grounding issue?



Nantlas

 

[Nuthouse]

I can not seem to unlock my athlon 1.4. I used the pencil trick using a PAPERMATE sharpwriter #2 USA. this was my second attempt and it didn't work again. I am getting flustered. DO I have to buy one of those kits to unlock my CPU ? My computer works fine, but I just can't seem to unlock my processor.

Specs

Case IW-Q500N Full Tower
Power Supply Powerman 300W
Motherboard ASUS A7M266 v1004a bios
CPU AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
Ram 1X 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR cas2.5
Hard Drives 1X 60GB IBM deskstars 60XP
DVD-ROM Pioneer 16X DVD-106S
CD-RW Plextor Plexwriter 16/10/40A
windows 2000 pro

 

[stompah]

try a regular #2 leaded pencil

 

[Saleen]

Arkaine,

thanks for the explanation ! That really helped me understand this stuff much better

 

[Slayn]

I wonder has anyone overclocked the hard way? I dont have overclocking options on my mobo and I would have to go and fill in some bridges and cut some others to manually change the multiplyer on the cpu. Has anyone successfully done this?