Please help an OC'ing newbie...

[Deckard]

Hello all. Let me start by saying that I love this forum because I feel like people give honest answers. At other places, I think people boast about outrageous OC'ing that just doesn't seem possible.

Anyway... Here is the deal. I have the setup seen in my profile below (also, I'm using Arctic Silver II). I am using Motherboard monitor 5 which correlates highly with what the bios tells me. The MBM stats say I'm running:

41C, 30C and 23C (I don't know where it is getting these temperatures; I assume there are 3 temperature diodes on the MB). Under load, the 41C may get up to 44 or 45C. From what I've read in other posts, I guess ~40C is normal for an OC'd system. However, here are my problems and questions...

Problem: Before I OC'd I consistently ran at ~30C. So just this 52Mhz OC is making the temp rise 10C? It doesn't seem worth it.

Problem: MBM reports that Core 0 is running at 1.84 Volts (unfortunately I don't know what the voltage was before I OC'd it). The default for this chip is 1.7 V. I tried setting the voltage to a lower amount in the BIOS, but it doesn't seem to matter. No matter what I set the bios at, MBM reports the same voltage for Core 0 (1.84 V). Suggestions about this?

Question: I currently have the jumper on the MB set to 100Mhz FSB, and when posting, the BIOS says "DRAM CLK 100 Mhz" even though I have the OC'd setting to 112Mhz for the FSB. I assume the BIOS starts out at 100Mhz, but then switches to 112Mhz after posting? Should I set the jumper to 133Mhz? I also read that you can just remove this jumper completely and the system will still work normally. Comments about this?

Question: I'm running 133Mhz RAM (a Micron chipset and a Kingston ValueRam chipset, both CAS 3, although I'm running them at CAS 2) but I could only get them to run stable at 7.5 x 122 = 915Mhz. I eventually went with an OC of 8.5 x 112 = 952Mhz which runs stable. Obviously I have tons of options to OC, and I don't really know what the best way to go is... Should I go with the highest FSB my RAM will support and lower the multiplier? Or should I have a higher multiplier setting and a modest increase in FSB? Another way to ask this question is; if I have a faster FSB setting, but lower overall calculated system speed (e.g. 7.5 x 122 = 915Mhz) will that be faster than a lower FSB setting with a faster overall speed (e.g. 8.5 x 112 = 952Mhz)? I suppose I could run Sis Sandra, but I don't happen to have it.

I appreciate any comments - especially regarding the voltage issue. I think if I could just lower the voltage the chip would still OC but the temp would decrease.

 

[Tsaico]

I think generally the more voltage you give it, the more you can pump out, but it also puts in more heat wich translates to more wear on you chip. So keeping the voltage relatively low will help lower your temps but will cost in speed. I personally like (I will presume you are running an intel) bumping up the bus speeds and keeping the multipliers about the same...(at most will I try 7.5 for my normal 7) So really it is up to you, how much stress are you willing to put you chip under. And honestly, much of the overclocking nowadays seems to be more of a braggin right than a real world practiaclity. Bu they, if you can get more for nothing, why not? Good luck
Also, I wouldn't go much over 1.80 volts... maybe 1.9, but then you would really be pushing it. I have my voltage at a default 1.65

 

[Deckard]

Yes, tsaico, but why can't I lower the voltage via the BIOS? Do I need to connect bridges on the chip to lower the voltage? Supposedly it should already be set by default at 1.7V according to the bridges. All I did to the chip was connect the L6 bridges and connect one bridge on L6 to set the default multiplier to 7. Last night I set it to 9 x 110 = 990 and it runs absolutely stable, but the temp is sitting at 41C with no load (45C under load). I really don't know if it's worth it to run it at only 100 Mhz more if it has to run at 41C. I mean, how much difference am I going to notice between 900Mhz and 990Mhz, ya know?

 

[ku]

not much... but it's just the thrill of cheating out the CPU companies that makes people overclock (maybe not all, but me at least). It's really up to you. Personally, I don't think you should overclock at all if you don't really care about a few mhz. You should use your chip for as long as you can and then O/C it when you're CPU speed is falling behind.