Overclocking without more voltage?

[orion23]

Hi,
I've been looking into overclocking my rig a bit and so far I've played around with very basic settings using ideas from other members.

From what I understand, playing around with the voltage reduces the life of the component. Is that correct? How high is safe?

What if I only choose to reise the FSB? Is this safe?

I have an X2 4800+ and an Asus A8N SLI Premium with 4X512MB Kingston HyperX PC-3200

Right now, I am running the following settings:

Hypertransport 4X
PCI synchro 33.33
DDR 333
CPU Mul 12
FSB 215 (it crashes if I try 220)
All voltages remain at default.

CPU temperature doesn't go past 40-45C

What else can I do (or how) to push my system higher but safely?

Thank you in advance!

 

[furballi]

It's perfectly safe to bump Vcore up by 0.5 to 1.0VDC. The expensive CPUs don't overclock well (already maxed out).

 

[designit]

No No. You dont mean .5 to 1volt.
.5v will put a 1.5v vcore to 2v and will kill it.
stay below 1.575 and you are safe. never let temp go higher than 50c. prolong 50c is also not good at all.
a good load temp is around 38c. 40-45c on for short period.
keep cpu temp steady at around 30c and vcore less than 1.575, cpu will last you forever.
temp fluctuation is just as bad as high temp and high voltage. too much fluctuation will cause material fatigue and property will deteriorate.

 

[furballi]

Late SAT. My bad! 1.45 to 1.55. Missed the decimal.

 

[Childs]

Just up the FSB first. You can probably get 200-400Mhz without touching vcore, and maybe just using a memory divider. I would drop HTT down to 3x, and if its still not stable drop memory down to 266. Maybe remove 2 dimms. vcore should be the last thing you do IMO. Possible problem with your CPU is that its at 2.4Ghz stock....not much higher you can go with air cooling. 400Mhz gain would be impressive, but be prepared to be happy with 200Mhz.

 

[orion23]

Right now, the cpu is running at 2580 with no "problems" yet.
A few days ago, I tried a 225 FSB which put it @ 2700 and it worked as long as I gave it more juice. I think I was doing 1.425V and it was stable at that speed.

Temperature would go as high as 53 under load and 45c or so while idle.


Should I up the Vcore to 1.425V again? is this safe?

Thanks guys!

 

[bob4432]

see rig in sig

 

[Rotax]

i think 53 loaded and 1.425v is fine . .

i don't like load temps much over 55 . . but if its stable (ie can run prime x 2 for 12+ hrs) . . let 'er run . .

i'm at 1.432-1.48v (load-idle) on my opty 165 @ 2430MHz (270MHz x 9) . .

CPU = 50c (typically maxes @ 52c)
Sys = 27-30c

i did have this chip up to 305x8.5 = 2592MHz, but was unable to keep it prime stable w/o either more volts (aka cooling)...or a better board...

FYI, currently using stock AMD cooler (heat pipe) . .

 

[orion23]

Using the same setting above, I'm trying a 230 FSB and it's holding up. That's 2760 right now.

I've tried to do 233 FSB but it immediately crashes.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

best do a prime run to be sure its stable. If just 3 Mhz makes it completely crash then i doubt its truly stable at 230.

 

[Rotax]

i find it weird that running prime, i have 1 instance bomb out after 1h 45m and the other runs np for hours after. . i've also ran hours worth of SP2004 x 2 and get no crash at all . . have also run super pi stacked w/ prime and no probs . .

also use memtest86+ for testing memory . . i find it very hand for dialing in timings and voltage reqs

 

[orion23]

Originally posted by: thecoolnessrune
best do a prime run to be sure its stable. If just 3 Mhz makes it completely crash then i doubt its truly stable at 230.

I know that stable means running Prime95 for days at a time. I really don't go by that.

I ran 3dmark 06 twice and it made it through. Same with 3dmark 05.
Played quake 4 for about 2 hours without a problem. And worked repairing a few DVD ISO files (4.7GB) without problems. That's about as intensive as I'll ever use my PC.

So it's pretty stable for me. I just wish I could push it to hit 2800! (maybe next time)

 

[kb3edk]

I have an Opty 170 and an X2 3800+ that will both run at a 20% overclock (from 2 to 2.4 GHz) without any bump in voltage. I have an X2 4400+ that will refuse to overclock over its stock speed (2.2 GHz) at all unless I give it more volts. In general I'm like the guy a few posts up, I don't like to go above 1.5 vcore or 50C load temperature on any of my OCs.

 

[Munky]

My Opty165 will do 2.4ghz at 1.35v. But after that it needs a lot more voltage for a little more speed, so I'm running at stock voltage. To the OP, you have to first determine what you board can do without stressing the cpu. So, lower the cpu multi and raise the FSB until you know how far the board can go. Also, dont forget to lower the HTT multiplier so that FSB*HTT multi <= 1000. Using 4 sticks of mem will lower your OC limit, so try using only 2 sticks, or even one.