OC'd Celeron II crashing... please help?

[Arschloch]

Hey all.

Here are the pertinent system specs:

Celeron 533 FC-PGA, Abit Slotket !!!
Abit BX6 (the original, rev 1)
96 megs 8 ns PC-100

My system had worked just fine with an overclocked 366@550 prior to this 533. I was told that the 533 did 800 at 1.65v, and 920 at 1.82v. Unfortunately, the highest I can go is 666 (8x83). When set at 8x100 or 8x112 with 1.85v (the VCORE actually reports 1.82), the computer boots up just fine... but then just as it completes loading windows, the hard drive light turns on and stays on, and the video goes out. I then have to reboot.

Is this what might happen if the chip actually COULDN'T do 800 or 896? Or assuming that it can do those speeds (as I was told it could), what else might be causing this problem? I wouldn't think it would be a voltage issue, since it supposedly did 800 at 1.65v, and in my box it can't do 800 with 1.85v.

Anyone with any help/ideas/suggestions/similar experiences? I would really appreciate it.

Thanks a bunch.
--Arschloch

 

[PistachioByAzul]

There is such a thing as too much voltage, because more voltage generates more heat. Set it down to 1.65 and it should run at 800 just fine...1.85v is definitely too much.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

Oh yeah, make sure your heatsink is properly attached, and that you're using a paperthin layer of heatsink compound.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

Flash your bios to the latest rev, as well 🙂

 

[Arschloch]

Hey, thanks for all the suggestions! I guess I should have written a little more about my system...

I already do have the latest BIOS revision. Also, my hs/fan is a Golden Orb, so I already have the thermal paste.

As far as the voltage goes, however, I took your suggestion and dropped it to 1.65.

The other thing I did was I killed everything in my "startup" folder. I booted into Windows at 800, and let it sit at the "Enter password" screen for 5 minutes to make sure it wasn't a heat issue causing the computer to freeze/reboot. Finally, I typed in my password, and then it crashed again. Since I was -sure- that it had to be a program starting up.

And now I know what it was: Rain. I don't know why, but whenever I start Rain now, my computer reboots. Every time, without fail. So I just removed Rain, and I've been up at 800 MHz for two hours now without a crash or reboot. So again, thank you for your suggestions. 🙂

Now that I'm thinking about it... what is the maximum voltage one should set for their Celeron II?

--Arschloch

 

[PistachioByAzul]

I'm not sure, but you want to have it set as low as possible.

 

[lepper boy]

Well I don't know for sure about this...... but you might want to try re=installing with it set at the basic 533.. and then bump it up to the 100 mhz fsb..... or just run it in a loop at 566 mhz for a while and get the chip broke in some... I remember way back.. oc'ing my 300a... it wouldn't do 450 fresh out of the box.... I ran the q2 loop and after a couple days I hit 450......... now I can hit 504.. and higher..... but 450 is a nice speep, until I pick up my 566. and go for 850.

 

[Lvis]

It may be your 83 mhz system bus. Your harddrive, sound card, modem etc. are all running out of spec, not just your cpu. I would try to run it at 100mhz, then the only component running out of spec is the cpu.

 

[Arschloch]

lepper boy,

As far as the "breaking in" thing goes, I did think of that. But I've heard both sides: Some people seem to think breaking in a CPU works, and other people say it doesn't matter. Is there any authoritative source on this issue? Has anyone ever really determined for sure whether or not "breaking in" the CPU at a lower overclocked speed helps?

Incidentally, right now I have it up to 896 (8x112) at 1.85v (VCORE reports 1.82v). It seems to be mostly okay, but the computer is doing some weird things from time to time. For example, it wouldn't turn on this morning for about 10 minutes. Also, NHL 2000, which worked fine before changing to this CPU, now crashes and tells me that NHL2K.exe has executed an invalid instruction. It was also doing this when the CPU was set at its base speed, 533, so I'm sure this isn't overclocking instability.

Hmm. Any more ideas?

--Arschloch 🙂

 

[PistachioByAzul]

I don't think you understand man. You really don't want to be using high voltages. 1.85 is too high, thats pretty far over spec. Bump it down to maybe 1.75 or 1.7.