Idiots guide to overclocking?

[Bananadude]

Is there such a thing, or should a novice not really attempt this? I've not done it before, but it does intrigue me. Just about to get a new system which consists of P4 2.4GHz (533FSB), ASUS P4PE, 512mb PC2700 Crucial RAM and Raddeon 9700 (non-pro). Interested in getting as much as i can from this setup, and from what i hear this chip and mbd are good of oc'ing. Still, i'm not about to dive in without knowing what i'm doing, so I would like to get an idea as to how to approach it all, and what i might be letting myself in for...!

 

[Derick]

Everyone is a novice at one point so that really doesn't have anything to do with it.

Kinda just depends on how far you want to go with it. Air, water, peltier, phase-change (refridgeration).
I'd read this for some basic info on cooling.

Since this is your first time I would stick to just the basic air method . So get I nice heatsink/fan. Just check out what people are saying in other post here and in the cooling forum. Then check out some reviews on your board. A lot of sites will discuss overclocking to a certain point for each motherbaord. This way you can learn some extra stuff about how your motherboard works.

First step is to increase the FSB. This will increase the overall system speed wich is better than increasing the multiplier first. Both will overclock your processor but but the first is better for averall system speed. But since your's is a Pentium system increasing the multiplier isn't an option. So, up the FSB untill system won't post or Windows won't start. (The next step would be to drop the FSB to the last seting that worked then to up the multiplier.) Then the next step will be to up the cpu voltage. This will definatly increase the proccesor temp, hence the need for a high quallity fan. Usually this will help you get to higher speeds. Try and set it only as high as you need to run the system with stability. I'm not sure what are sfe voltages for the P4 so you'll have to ask someon else, but don't keep uping it just because its not working. Somtimes it helps but sometimes it doesn't. Also, raising the FSB will overclock your other components so if your motherbaord supports it then you can up the voltages on them too.

most the answers can be found with in the forums pages and if need any more help just ask.

 

[DivideBYZero]

4th time in last week I've posted this, Someone want to make an OC 101 sticky?

This sort of info is Motherboard specific, but in most cases the menu's and settings are common. It breaks down like this:

- You CPU has a frequency
- Your Memory has a frequency
- Your PCI bus and all other sundry busses have a frequency

They are all related as (usually) one single clock genrator is used to get the original clock speed. The relationship is often like this, although there are ALWAYS exceptions:

CPU speed = Memory speed(before DDR or QDR) x Multiplier value.
PCI speed = Memory speed(before DDR or QDR) / 3 (or 4 or even 5, the goal speed is 33Mhz as PCI devices often hate high PCI bus speeds, such as hard discs=data coruption!!!)
AGP Speed = PCI speed x data rate(2x, 4x, 8x), so 2x = 66Mhz if the PCI is 33Mhz and so on

Multipliers are locked on P4 and can be changed on Athlons. Some motherboards allow the PCI clock to be locked into 33Mhz, this is good.

So, original speed of memory on a 400Mhz P4 is 100Mhz(400Mhz QDR) and the multiplier is 20, giving 2Ghz. To overclock, set the fsb to 110 and the CPU speed upon next boot will be 2.2Ghz (110x20).

Et Viola, your first overclock. Now I have simplified the process by a great margin and to answer your question about BIOS menu's, this will be clear if you get an Overclocking friendly Motherboard( ASUS, Abit, Epox), by way of the manual. They usually have a menu with the main overclocking features in one place.

Hope that helps!