overclocking athlon 3000+ 333

[hoppa]

I just got an athlon 3000+ 333 mhz fsb. im interested in overclocking it, if possible. ive got an abit an-7, so overclocking should be easy with the supplied uGuru stuff. i just dont know what im doing: what i should increase, what could be dangerous, etc. another concern i have is that i've got slow (pc2700) ram. would overclocking not be beneficial because of this (if i increase fsb to faster than 333mhz)? also, i've got a fortran 300W PS w/ a 9800 pro installed, which has been running perfectly for a while but i'm concerned if i overclock it may go over. also, can decent OCing be done with the retail HSF? would/could OCing reduce the life of my cpu? lots of questions, but I know you all have the answers =)

 

[BlueWeasel]

The PC2700 RAM and your 300W PS are going to be the limiting factors. I'd recommend increasing the FSB in increments of 5 and see how far you can go. You are going to have to raise the CPU and RAM voltages, though, in order to stabilize the system at the higher FSB.

The retail HSF should be fine, as long as you are comfortable with the temps.

 

[VIAN]

300W power supply may be a limiting factor.

I have a generic 350W power supply and PC2700 and I was able to overclock the RAM w/ some RAMsinks to 220MHz.

I don't think the retail heatsink would be enough though. When you hit the high CPU speeds with the Voltage increases, all hell breaks loose with the temps.

1. What I did was lower my timings of my RAM to the lowest possible settings. Where it would boot up and run ONE test. Note: always have FSB and RAM on 1:1, you can do this by setting the RAM to 100% of FSB.

2. Then I lowered the multiplier to a nice number so that I don't overheat the CPU and it doesn't conflict with the RAM. Note: Don't forget to check your multiplier and keep the CPU speed less than stock speed.

3. Bump up the FSB speed by 5MHz at a time, then boot up and run a short test - a benchmark like
Sisandra is good, run Bandwidth Benchmark. Repeat until it either doesn't boot up or in the middle of a test, it restarts.

4. Now Up the the timings, Lowest number first. Then repeat 3. If your timings are getting to high, about 4 for the middle two, I would up the voltage and see if it works when instability if found.

5. Now to see if it is stable, I figured I the most it would ever be under load is when playing a game for about 8 hours. So I tested Prime95 for 8 hours and it was stable. If it isn't stable, lower the RAM clock by 5 until it is stable and then lower the timings to the minimal and test again for stability.

5. Now the RAM is finished, now do the CPU. Just up the multiplier then boot and run both CPU tests using Sisandra.

6. Now up the mutliplier and check again for stability. If instability is found, try and increase the voltage. Realize, though, that if it is instability caused by heat, increasing the voltage will not help.

Well this was how I did it, specs in sig.