Overclocking problems

[Xed]

Hiyas,

This weekend I put together my first amd system but for the life of me can't get it to oc at all. I've had no probs with my other 2 pc's but maybe I've overlooked something. No matter what I've tried it will not oc past a 201 fsb. I have tried upping the voltages slightly, lowering the multipliers, lowered htt, etc. nothing works. I was hoping to drop the multiplier to 10 and get a 250 fsb at 2.5 ghz



Specs

a64 3500+
Msi k8n neo2 platinum 1.2 bios
1 Gig Ocz 3200 plat revision 2
Wd raptor 74 gig
Bfg 6800 gt
Antec 550w with 36a on the 12v

Have a zalman 7000a-alcu with as5 on the cpu, and three enermax 120mm fans for cooling.

Motherboard is reporting 27c case and 33c on the cpu.

 

[Xed]

doh no responses =(

Update - After a bit of tweaking, system now posts at 250 fsb with a 10 multiplier with 4x htt and with my ram timings at 2.5-3-3-10. However it hangs right when windows starts to boot up and I have to do a hard reboot. I am assuming the sata drive is the issue, but would like some input before I run out and buy an ide drive to test with. Thanks =)

 

[Manzelle]

Try bumping the voltage up a bit more...

 

[Xed]

Had the cpu at 1.6 and ram at 2.75, not enough? Don't want to fry anything =)

 

[Manzelle]

Well, the default voltage is 1.5v so bumping it another .25 or .50 to 1.65 shouldn't be that big a deal...however I have never overclocked an A64 so it may be different but my AXP-M 2600+ defaults at 1.45v and 2.0GHz and I run it at 1.85v and 2.6GHz...

Your cooling and temps look fine so I don't think it will hurt anything...

 

[Xed]

Will try that in a few minutes and see if it works, thanks =)

 

[Xed]

Loaded fine, will test stability today and benchmark my games after to see the improvement, thanks again =)

 

[Manzelle]

No problem...hopefully everything will work out...

 

[Xed]

Hope so too, been building pc's for years but this is the first i've bothered to oc, feel like such a noob =)

 

[Xed]

Not stable at all, dropped fsb to 240 and it wouldn't even post =(

 

[Adn4n]

Ok, first of all, you're trying to run PC3200 @ PC 4000; that might be hard to do. I'm not sure whether or not MSI used the Nvidia solution on all 6 SATA ports, if they didn't, then you won't be able to overclock past 10x230; that's how far the ASUS and Soltek's go. You must drop your HT to x3, since x4 would result in 1000fsb, which your mobo does not support. Try 10x230, and run memtest, to see if it's even stable.

I'm quite certain that your inability to post is due to a high HT setting, though it could also be low ram timings: relax them or just try default. My PC3500 is stable at 10x250, but my SATA drive just doesn't support it; in fact, anything above 216 fsb is unstable. I'll be testing an IDE myself next weekend on my similar K8N-E Deluxe, if you'd like to wait.

 

[superHARD]

There isn't a lock that will keep the sata mhz the same?

 

[Xed]

Anand's review had this memory stable at ddr557 in pentium based systems and a bit over ddr500 in amd systems. Also I thought the nforce3 250 chipset supported 1000 ht? My 4 sata ports and both ide ports are the nvidia solution, or at least they're showing up that way. Yet the nvidia ide drivers make windows unstable so I don't install them.

And no the only lock in the bios I see is an agp one, which is why I was thinking maybe its the sata drive.

 

[rgreen83]

Which ports are your sata drives on? for some screwey reason on the msi board, the 1 and 2 ports are not locked and the 3 and 4 ports are locked. Check out madshrimps review of that board for more info, it helped me solve my problem!

 

[Xed]

I am on sata 4 atm =(