How do I know when it's my memory holding me back....

[nippyjun]

I have a tbird 1.2 that was pretested by a very reputable person at 1420 1.85 volts. On my system I can run it at 1400 with some problems but at anything higher I have severe problems. Now, this is with PC1600 memory that normally runs at 100mhz bus speed that I'm running at 133 or a little higher. So, When my overclocking fails do I assume that it is the memory since I'm running that out of spec more then the tbird? Or is it the tbird. At 1400 the system runs fine, but I get a good amount of random errors, crashes, bsod's. At over 1400 I get windows protection errors and have trouble getting to windows.

Give me some input please...

Thanks.

 

[WarCon]

Whats your cooling and your case air flow like? Don't think your memory should be an issue. Heat is more likely, try taking your side panel and blow a tabletop fan or floor fan directly into it and see if you don't have some heat problems. Could even be your northbridge chip not being cooled well enough.

 

[nippyjun]

Well, I have a custom made coolcase, and a fop38. The heat numbers are fine. the CPU doesn't go above 42 with stress and the case not over 33. The northbridge shouldn't be an issue because I'm not really overclocking the system, just the cpu and the memory.

 

[WarCon]

Borrow your friends memory (assuming you have a friend with PC2100) and see if its the memory, you may be right about it not wanting to go that high a fsb. It was designed for 100mhz so maybe your right.

 

[nippyjun]

Unfortunately I'm probably going to have to wait to buy some PC2100 as I don't know anyone here who has any.

 

[WarCon]

Try a lower fsb overclock maybe, something like 113 or 114 * 12.5 unless your worried about your PCI devices. And make your memory bus same speed as fsb, I'm assuming your mobo will let you do that. That should let you know if its your memory or maybe something else. Also try lowering some of your memory optimizations, if you are using any of them. I also am assuming your vcore is already at 1.85.

Good luck

 

[nippyjun]

Good Idea WarCon. I'll give that a try!

 

[WarCon]

Let us know if that is it for future reference.

Good luck