High FSB = possible damage to other parts of computer?

[clicknext]

Right now I have my computer at 11x144=1.58. It's quite stable, ran Prime95 no problem for 5 hours, going no higher than 45 degrees. I'm worried that maybe the FSB is too high, and hard on the other components. Is there any way to tell if the other components are being stressed, and is that possible if the system is stable?

Another question: I've made the FSB too high before, and the hard drive started doing weird stuff, losing data. I didn't note whether it was fine or not after reverting to normal speed, though, because I just went and reformatted it immediately as I was planning to do that anyway. Can someone tell me this?

Another question: Is it possible that I will not be able to know that any components affected by FSB speed are dying unless it's dead?

 

[rIpTOr]

in most cases of PCI/AGP dividers yes too much FSB without appropiate dividing can cause damage.

 

[CrazySaint]

What motherboard do you have? If it has PCI/AGP lock, you need to enable that and you'll have no problems. Otherwise, if it has a 5/1 divider, you need to run the FSB at 166MHz to get everything back to spec.

 

[clicknext]

GA-7VAXP.

I'm pretty sure this thing doesn't have a PCI/AGP lock, but it has a 5/1 divider. My Palamino doesn't like the 166fsb, though, because it means going up to 1.84ghz.

 

[rIpTOr]

Might not be the Palomino. I've sucessfully posted my Athlon XP 2000+ (dunno what stepping) up to 1888MHz but my crappy RAM won't go into Windows.

 

[clicknext]

I have good ram, though. Samsung DDR333. Runs CAS2 DDR400 no problem. Setting it to run at 266, which would mean 288 because of the 144 FSB, still keeps it from booting. I have AGOIA stepping, and it goes into windows, but crashes when CPU usage starts going up.

 

[rIpTOr]

Then your CPU probably needs more voltage.

 

[clicknext]

It's usually at about 1.8 default (dont know why, since 2000+ is supposed to be 1.75) but I used the smallest increment I could, which was +5%, which brought it to 1.9v. I think that should be enough to go to the speeds you're saying, but it wasn't.

 

[DoctorBooze]

The only things I ever heard of getting upset with a high FSB are the graphics card and the hard drive. The graphics card seems obvious, they tend to run fast & hot anyway (like your CPU but you're doing some serious cooling on it). I don't really know why hard drives complain; maybe the manufacturers accept more marginal controller electronics because the drives are still far, far more likely to fail because of physical rather than electrical problems?

I'd suggest not going any higher than 37.5MHz PCI/75MHz AGP i.e. 112MHz, 150MHz or 187MHz depending on your ratios (3:1, 4:1 or 5:1). Your 144MHz FSB ought to be just fine. Remember you can underclock too, if you're worried about it hitting on other components; using the 5:1 ratio with a 150MHz FSB gives a very reasonable 30MHz PCI clock, actually quite close to the default and almost certainly not making any noticeable difference.

If you can't get past 144MHz FSB on that board, it could be your Palomino, is it an early one? You say 11x so that's a 1700+ and others here have reported much better oc'ing than that on them recently. 144MHz FSB almost doesn't count as overclocking

Most likely, though, your PSU's ropey; tolerance of noisy or low-voltage power drops sharply with overclocking.

 

[clicknext]

No, my proc can do 2000+ speed or maybe 2100+ speed just fine. The problem is that right now I'm stuck at 11x multiplier. I don't have a divider that I can just implement whenever I want, it automatically kicks in at 166. 166x11 FSB, though, is 1.84Ghz. My Proc can't handle that. It's definately not the RAM, or components on the AGP/PCI bus, so what's left? Only proc, right?