Overclocking 2.4C - Can't hit 2600!!!

[Xenon14]

I made my friend get a retail 2.4C P4, The highly recommended for overlcockin gmobo Abit.. or asus something... whatever these forums recommend for overlcock p4-c's, and 3500 dual channle 512 sticks of ram either kingston or corsair, i forget.

In either case, I upped the FSB in bios to get the chip running at 2600, and it wouldn't even boot. I had to reset CMOS to get computer to work. What gives? This is the first time I put together a Pentium system, so i'm not familiar w/ overclocking them, but from what i hear the retail p4 2.4c should hit at least 3ghz easily.

BTW, I don't see where i can increase the clock multiplier in the bios. And.... another odd thing. He has retail fain, and 3 case fans, and his idle temp is 49 Celcius for cpu... seems a bit high.

 

[brettjrob]

You can't change the multiplier on Intel CPU's... they're all locked.

I wonder if the HSF was installed correctly... 49C idle seems high for a P4.

As far as not booting at 217FSB (12x217=~2600MHz), you may have to relax the RAM timings, and you'll almost definitely have to disable PAT/GAT/etc. if it's a Springdale (IS7/P4P800). I doubt the actual CPU is unable to handle 2.6GHz since it's common to see them running at 3GHz.

 

[Xenon14]

I got it from Newegg. The heatsink was exceedingly big and aluminem, and it had a gray sticky on the bottom. I thought it's the same as the amd stickers and need to be taken off, but it was adhered to the bottom rather tightly. I left it on. After I checked temp, I thought I need to take it off, so I pulled the heatsink off the cpu, and it had an imprint of the cpu in the pad (the pad wasn't melted or anything). So as far as I know, the pad is supposed to be there, and since there was an imprint, i installed the heatsink properly...

 

[brettjrob]

Ah... there's the problem. The thermal pad that comes stuck onto the HSF should be replaced with a good thermal compound like Arctic Silver 3... that should drop temps some. This may also explain your overclocking issues as you probably won't get far with the crappy thermal interface material.

 

[sman789]

49 isnt bad if its the abit board, i honestly forgot if i took off a part of the heat pad or not😀
but put strap to 800, agp/pci to fixed, up the vdimm to 2.8, ratio 1:1

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: brettjrob
Ah... there's the problem. The thermal pad that comes stuck onto the HSF should be replaced with a good thermal compound like Arctic Silver 3... that should drop temps some. This may also explain your overclocking issues as you probably won't get far with the crappy thermal interface material.

You should still be able to hit 3.0Ghz easily with the retail stuff since your case has 3 fans for cooling.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Make sure that any fan management options are turned off for now because if its running very quiet, that may be the reason since 49C is fine.

Can you get us specs of the rest of the system? Whats his PSU? What are the ambient room temperatures? What kind of RAM is he using? What divider ratio are you using?

If you can't find things in the bios, refer to the manual the motherboard comes with.

 

[neutralizer]

You forgot your dividers. You're killing your RAM. BTW, I hit 3.0 Ghz easy with a retail hsf. It's the DIVIDERS! Set your dividers to 5:4 or 3:2 for CPU😀RAM and you're set. Happy OCing.

 

[Viper96720]

Is the divider ratios cpu:memory or memory:cpu?

 

[neutralizer]

i dun remember. on my is7, it was cpu : Dram

 

[neutralizer]

12 x 200 = 2400
5:4 divider
12 x 250 = 3000 but still 200 fsb memory

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: brettjrob
Ah... there's the problem. The thermal pad that comes stuck onto the HSF should be replaced with a good thermal compound like Arctic Silver 3... that should drop temps some. This may also explain your overclocking issues as you probably won't get far with the crappy thermal interface material.

doing that is more for geek pride than anything else

 

[Xenon14]

Originally posted by: neutralizer
12 x 200 = 2400
5:4 divider
12 x 250 = 3000 but still 200 fsb memory

I think that's the problem...I left the dividers untouched. I'm gonna call him tomorrow and tell him to set the dividers. We'll see how it goes, thanks.