Newbie afraid to overclock new system via BIOS....

[SweeJ]

i'm about to setup my new system, with the stuff i got shown in my sig below.

i want to overclock, but afraid to do it even after reading the guide/sticky.

my mobo is the Gigabyte EP45-UD3R. can i use the EasyTunes overclocking utility in Vista instead? i just want a reasonable overclock, not like the max i can get out of my CPU. i figured with a simple click, to say an average speed of 3.4 or 3.6GHz will suffice

i know that may not be as good as say tweaking via BIOS, but what i want to know is if that software effective.

many thanks for your replies in advance!

p/s my 2nd old hard drive is now failing.... i can hear it clicking away randomly.... but i'm not sure which of the remaining 3 is failing... is there any software i can use to see which of them would be the likely one?

 

[BlueAcolyte]

1) Just do it in BIOS, it's probably less dangerous than through windows. With just a few setting changes, you can easily hit 3.4GHz.

2) Use HD Tune to see if your hard drives are failing (It has a test.)

 

[dguy6789]

Go into your bios, change your front side bus from 333 to 400. Make sure your memory clock speed doesn't go above 1066. Save and exit. You now have a 3.4Ghz Quad.

 

[pugh]

I learned the hard way one time with software overclocking.. I hate it now. I used to be timid of messing around with OC'ing in the bios.. It is the best thing since sliced pie.

 

[imported_Redmist]

yah bios is the best but if i was to use any software to OC with it would be AMD overdrive on my 790X board.

 

[dbcooper1]

The Easytune software is actually pretty good and will get you to 400fsb. Touch the drives while they're running and if one is clicking, you'll probably be able to feel it when you touch that drive. Or, you could run power them up one at a time to find the culprit.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Go into your bios, change your front side bus from 333 to 400. Make sure your memory clock speed doesn't go above 1066. Save and exit. You now have a 3.4Ghz Quad.

+1

 

[polarbear6]

i say the easy tunes is only for testing waters
i first overclock using easy tune as its not permanent
i oc then stress test when i am happy with the speed
i finalize it in the bios
so simple my life

 

[taltamir]

easy tune is worse then doing thrugh the bios, also manually set the bios volate for the cpu to match the default, if you leave it on auto on a gigabyte board it will overvolt the hell out of it when you overclock.

 

[acole1]

The EasyTune presets work well if you want to OC a bit for fun, or get a general idea of how high it will go. But if you want to do it seriously, or for extended periods of time, I would do the research and use the BIOS.

For me, EasyTune presets wouldn't go high enough. Hopefully the same is true for you!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Do your homework. If necessary, read Graysky's sticky several times. Find the users forum for the GA-EP45-UD3R, if there is one. There should be a forum, and there should be more information about over-clocking the P45 chipset. Look for performance reviews of the motherboard -- some may put the board through its paces and give more than one group of settings that "give you a ballpark idea" of how and where it will go.

dguy6789 may be offering a good place to start with the Q9550 and that board, but first, get into the BIOS setup, find the BIOS monitor which reports the default voltages, and make a note of them. You may want to start with the VCORE changed from "Auto" to the value reported in the monitor, then "exit/save" and go back into bios to see if the reported VCORE is close to the set value.

Also, start with the RAM speed [DDR]=667 Mhz and the FSB [QDR]= 1,333 Mhz -- manually set. Follow Graysky's methodology. If it takes you two weeks to absorb this stuff before you get started, it is worth the wait. The FSB 1,333 setting corresponds to the 333 Mhz mentioned by dguy6789. To get it up to FSB 1,600 corresponds to what he suggests as 400 Mhz. At that point, you would have raised the RAM speed from 667 to 800, running those RAMs at DDR=800Mhz.

A lot of noobs get tripped up for failing to sync the DDR ram-speed and the QDR FSB ( = 2 x DDR) to keep the RAM within spec as you attempt to over-clock the CPU.