Formula for an OC
The parts:
Intel 1.8A
Abit TH7II-R
IBM GX120 40 gb HD x2
Samsung 256 RDRAM x2
Cardex/Gainward TI 450 "Golden Sample"
Creative Audigy Platinum
Pioneer 16x DVD
Lite-On 32X CDRW
Intel PCI Lan
Lian Li PC-70 USB
Enermax 430 Watt PSU
2x enermax 80mm fan (adjustable)
2x enermax 120mm fans (adjustable)
WIN XP
Office XP
Chip cooling: Swiftech MCX-478
To start, I researched all these items. I will give a quick rundown
about the choices I made and why I chose them.
Most cases were all about quality and good history OCing with good
prices.
We all know about the MB. This thing just rocks for OCers.
The chip I chose because I was reasonably certain that I could get
it to 123 FSB and that would be almost $400 cheaper than buying the
damn 2.2. That was all I really wanted.
I have a long history with IBM drives and I was a great admirer of
the DTLA line. THat was what I asked for on my order and the reason
I chose to buy from ATACOM was because they said they carried them.
When I saw the drives were 120GXP I was miffed and told them their
website was hosed. They apologized and took another $10 bucks off
each drive. That settled it for me. IBM drives just OC better. I
didn't know if I would need that kind of flexibility given the MB's
ability to fix the PCI bus but there you have it. I am pleased with
their performance.
As to the RAID choice, I am glad I got it and will test setups with
it on my next two drives, but I decided the first 80 gb would be
program data and I just don't think RAID 0 is a good idea unless you
also mirror and I didn't want to do that. For the data drives I
will try to RAID 0 them.
I haven't seen any input on any sight about any company that makes
more reliable RIMMS than Samsung, regardless of what brand name they
have. Central Computer had them on sale, no questions.
I have watched Cardex for a while and I was really impressed with
some of the write-ups they have gotten. The utility they come with
is sweet. BTW, if any of you want to explain to me how to set up
the QIII ARENA demo on a loop and showing frame-rates I will let you
know what they are.
I have over 20gb just in music that I cherish so the sound card
option was important to me. This card sounds good and doesn't use a
lot of CPU to play MP3's so that is why I went with them. My
girlfriend has a keyboard that we sample into my system and the
front live drive set up kicks *** for that. It also provided for
the fire-wire ports that I may play with soon.
My last two systems both had Pioneer DVD drives that were cheap and
worked great, lasted long time... for 75 bucks you can't beat that.
LiteOn was all about the drive's abilities to write original errors.
This means you can copy more discs and defeat more copy protection
than with any other CDRW. Besides that, the price is unbelievable
and 32X kicks major butt.
I have a long history with Intel and I trust them over others when
it comes to LAN. The only other source I like is Netgear. This one
was the right price.
The power supply for me was crucial. I wanted to have the power
available for a decent peltier if I ever went that way and this case
has a funny setup for the PSU. It has to have a fan on the top, not
the bottom.
The case was a no brainer. It is big, it is beautiful, it is tight,
it is well built, it is light, it has USB up front, it has the space
for water cooling or vapochill mods, it comes with great ADDA
fans... and I couldn't wait to hack into it. Two extra enermax 80's
are in the back top exhausting and turned down. You have to do
something here, at least tape over the holes if you don't want fans,
because if you don't, you will short circuit the flow that cools the
PSU and it will run hot and have a shorter life. These are turned
down to minimum flow, which I will discuss later. The 120s... well
here is where you all call me crazy. I cut the case on the side
panel and aimed one at full throttle at the vid card and one at full
throttle at the RIMMs/northbridge. This total combo keeps the case
under positive pressure, so air only comes in where I have input
fans: two up front 80 mm ADDAs at full throttle and the two monsters
on the side. This is good becuase those spots are filtered. So my
insides stay cleaner. I would estimate that there is over 200 cfm
going through my case. I kept the top exhaust fans turned down to
suck most of the flow out the bottom. That is where the real heat
is. The case comes with 2 more ADDA 80s here at full throttle and
three little exhaust holes.
I had trouble in the beginning because my first supplier for the
swiftech ran out on my order so I had my system ready to build
without the kick *** cooler. Oh well, I went ahead.
Things went great with all the assembly. I don't really like the
INTEL stock cooler, but it supposedly guarantees perfect even
pressure. Oh well. Scrape that black goop off the HS and put some
Arctic Silver on there. Take the fan off the Vid Card and put some
AS there too. It has something there but I didn't buy the AS to
look at... before putting it back on I placed the external thermal
lead onto the vid card and into the MB. I had good placement there
on the chip's edge without disturbing the HSF contact. The temp has
never been higher than 44c.
On with the show. Regardless of how I tried I couldn't get the Win
XP installer to partition and format the HD while it was plugged
into the RAID header. After moving the HD to the regular IDE0
header it went well... I couldn't believe how fast it was. After
checking the boot and activating I shut down and moved the HD to the
RAID header and rebooted.............
.
.
.
BINGO! No worries, it didn't care.
I started with just the vid card, mem, 1 HD, and FD... Shutdown,
add hardware, restart, install drivers... test, test, test....
no problems.
Windows XP kicks ***. WOW. Networking, new hardware, file
transfers from my old system all went well...
After I had installed all the hardware and all the programs I
started to see what the chip temps were. Keep in mind the TI 200 I
overclocked from the start with their utility so those temps only
varied with ambient.
With all my fans and the stock cooler I had:
Ambient: 25
CPU:35 idle, 38 loaded (I will follow this standard from here down)
All the Sandra numbers will be the same format:
Drystone/Whetstone: 3385/3140
Multimedia: 7156-8761 it/s
Memory: 2486-2480
I waited to clock it up for when I got the cooler. I was thrilled
when it came but I was not looking forward to strippping my system
back down. Let me add some things here. I don't use rounded cables
for my drives as the shielding on the cheap ones is inadequate and
will slow you down. For this I got cables that were long enough and
routed them flatly along my case, always crossing each other and
other cables at right angles. This takes a lot of patience. But in
the end you get just as good air flow and faster drives. If you
want to spend the money on the really expensive platinum rounded
cables, be my guest.
So everything comes out and I pull the MB. When swiftech recommends
glueing the nylon nuts to the stand offs and MB, I say: DON'T EVEN
THINK ABOUT NOT DOING IT!!! YOU WILL STRIP NUTS, YOU WILL GO
CRAZY!!! YOU WILL WORRY ABOUT YOUR CHIP!!! Just take the time,
pull the MB all the way out, put on the stand offs and nylon nuts
and superglue them together and to the back of the MB. Trust me, it
will save you headaches galore. If you end up switching coolers,
the stand-offs may not have to be removed. After my 2nd stripped
nylon nut I got new nuts and superglued it all down. Everything
back together. I spent maybe 30 minutes cleaning the CPU. I spent
another 15 working AS into the HS according to AS's web page. Then
on with the layer of AS and on with the cooler. I have to interject
that while this is a great cooler, I would change a few things. Too
many of the little parts are cheap, like the fan hold down bracket
and screws. Put some pride into it, man! I ended up getting nuts
onto these too. Keep in mind I am a part time machinist/mechanic so
I tend to put real torque on fasteners.
All back together:
24
31/33
You can see that this cooler really does the trick!
At stock speed 33 degrees C fully loaded with P95!
Time to clock this baby!
On to MB settings that matter!
First of all I spent days looking for an explanation of differential
current. It aint out there. I left it x6.
Tip: Keep the memory setting at 400! Not AUTO! I couldn't run 105
FSB with the setting in auto. set it to 400 and I hit 102 and 105
no problems.
Keep in mind that I tested windows, office apps, browser, Norton
Antivirus, Sandra, P95, and WMP on every setting.
105*18 33 (fixed) 66(fixed)=1890 420/840(bridge speed/memory speed)
1.5 V HWD: 1.49 down to 1.44 during P95.
23 case temp
32/36 chip unloaded/loaded
3560/3294 sandra cpu
7530/9182 sandra multimedia
2610/2606 sandra memory
This cooler is great! This BUS FIXING makes OC'ing too easy!
110*18 33f 66f =1980 440/880
1.5 V 1.49-1.44
24
32/38
3736/3448
7886/9628
2735/2729
Wow, my numbers were already killing the Sandra 2.0 benches. I am
sure that is based on the heat and the L2 cache, not to mention the
memory and the fact that this MB is faster than others at any speed.
time to bring up the voltage. I did this first step on instinct.
115*18 33f 66f = 2070 460/920
1.55 V 1.53-1.49 voltage drop during P95...
23
31/38
3913/3602
8237/10070
2863/2860
Look at that! No increase in temp! 15% overclocked and no increase
in temp! That is 38 C running p95 for 1 hour.
I stopped for the night here and ran p95 over night. It went great.
This speed is solid! You could prolly do this stock if your case is
well cooled.
So I was watching those precipitous voltage drops when the system
was running the p95 torture test and wondered if that could help me
guage when to increase the voltage without having to take steps
forward, fail, and then raise the voltage to succeed... I would say
that maybe it made little difference... I thought that if I could
minimize the voltage drop at say 115*18 by going to 1.60 (see only a
drop to 1.57) then maybe I could be assured that it would run 118*18
at 1.60. It was part of my thinking anyways.
The next day I decided to do the VPIN mod. My girlfriend talked me
out of using the hacked BIOS because she thinks I am brilliant and
that I should trust myself with the pin mod and not some crazy
hackers. She must love me a lot.
So I ran some higher numbers:
117*18 and 119*18 at 1.55 and settled into the following:
120*18 33f 66f = 2160 480/960
1.575 1.56-1.52
23
33/39
4071/3759
8594/10514
2986/2983
obviously before the VPIN mod, BUT ROCK STEADY!! ANYONE UNCOMFY
WITH THE MOD CAN DO THIS!
Here I did the mod. Here is a funny story. If you short the pins
to the wrong ones your system will not POST. The display will read
00. Recheck your pins and make sure that you are only shorting the
intended pins. Here was my little trick after failing:
Lay the chip on its back, pins up, with pins 4,3,2,1 at the bottom
right.
Cut your speaker wire, and strip out one strand about 3 inches long.
Use a needle (sewing) to make a loop and carefully lay the loop
aroung pin 1, pull the wire tight and lay your needle over the top
of the wire between pins 1 and 2, fully in the channel created by
all the parallel pins so that the pins are much higher than your
needle. This way you can easily twist the wire once, hook pin 2,
hold the wire down, and transfer your needle to the next valley to
hold down again and repeat. I have a good photo of this!!
Everything back together, clear the CMOS, power up, enter in all my
BIOS settings:
125*18 33f 66f = 2250 500/1000
1.675 volts 1.66-1.62
25
34/40
4331/3933
8924/10926
3114/3108
This is a really great temp. If you stop here, you have beaten the
2.2 in raw speed, but now you have the memory speed and quad pumped
bridge speed killing every machine on the block, and you saved
almost $400 minus all the damn fans + the really loud swiftech...
BTW, yes, it is loud... REAL LOUD.
Onward and upward
Tinkering one megahertz at a time found me wishing the voltage
adjustments were in much smaller increments... like maybe 1.675 to
1.680 to 1.685 etc... It got harder to find sweet combos up at this
speed. More about this later as it really kicked my *** at the end.
130*18 33f 66f = 2340 520/1040
1.70 V 1.69-1.63 (notice, still a .06 drop...)
26
35/41
4694/4089
9273/11365
3240/3234
Here I stopped for the night again and noticed that after a few
hours the case temp was up. That cooler is really doing it's job
and I am moving an *** ton of air through the system (*** ton is a
mechanical term). The system also failed P95 after 6 hours. This
is another good stopping point because your memory is only 72%
efficient and if you run this speed, you are running the memory at
advertised speed: 3.2 gb/sec.
131,132 were touchy and 133 was just ****ing me off...
133*18 33f 66f = 2394 533/1066
1.70v 1.69-1.63 (same drop)
26
36/42
4449/4183
9484/11641
3315/3310
Here I had quirky problems and P95 would fail after 3 minutes. I
imagine the chip temp would have gotten hotter but I coulnd't heat
it with p95 and the STABILITY TEST.EXE software just doesn't load
the chip the way p95 does.
Check this out and you will understand why I want finer voltage
adjustments.
At 1.725 volts P95 failed instantly. IE failed and Norton (NAV)
failed.
At 1.675 volts it failed to boot win xp.
SOOOOOO.... what to do. Screw it, let's go higher.
You have to find the right FSB, one the chip can handle, where the
voltage is going to be right....
BINGO!
134*18 33f 66f = 2412 536/1072
1.725 1.71-1.66
25
36/43
4638/4217
9592/11725
3324/3321
That was the trick...
And then, uhoh, I had Lan problems. Things weren't connecting.
hmm.....
135*18 showed memory errors
132 at 1.70 volts showed the same 95 problems.
BINGO!
It is a good thing I take all those notes.
Have you noticed I kept the f's in the PCI and AGP settings?
I had them fixed at 134, where there is no need...
I wonder....
134*18 33.5 67 (2/4 setting under AGP) = 2412 536/1072
1.725 1.71-1.66
26
37/44
4639/4215
9594/11731
All the internet programs ran really great!
If only everything was as simple to do as overclocking a northwood
with this mb.
BTW, P95 is still not very stable at this speed. It will shutdown
after 3 mins (show an error). The thing is: I never see a boot
problem, I never see a POST problem, I never have a software issue
and STABILITY TEST.EXE runs perfect for 12 hours.
I am happy.
Why this speed?
So I can DIVX rip DVD movies in real time at 29.97 fps into cdrw
size files and quit paying hollywood all that extra money. (I
collect coupons for blockbuster now and rip the movies).
Total cost: $2144 with tax.
Old monitor: Viewsonic pf790 (two years old, looks great).
And for my music: Central had a sale on the last box of Altec
Lansing 400w 641 system for $199.
DAMN, THE MUPPETS NEVER SOUNDED SO GOOD.
(singing) you can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em...
there's something irresistable-ish about 'em...
we grin and bear it cuz the nights are long...
I hope that somethin' better comes along...
and the matrix on DVD on this system will ROCK YOUR WORLD!
Try not to flame me too much, I am posting this to help people reach
stable speeds, not take over small island countries with left wing
politics.
hehe
And all you guys that think 14 fans (12 system plus two in the back
of the desk) is too loud? Just turn up the speakers baby!
Check the adjusted signature for corrections...
so yes, any tips, experience you have would be helpful. Please post soon though, I'm planning on ordering my parts soon and BTW, I am particularly interested in your memory setup because that right now is the only component I'm not to sure about yet. Thanks.
