This is kind of bugging me a tiny bit, so I figured I'd come here to ask and get a definitive opinion. 😀 Last night I got a new 2.8 GHz P4 in the mail to replace my 1.8A P4. (I simply got sick of the insanely loud noise coming from the fan of the heatsink I was using to keep my 1.8A at 2.52 GHz cool. I was able to sell my 1.8A and felt that the money spent of the new 2.8 GHz CPU would be well worth it in terms of peace and quiet.) So I put my 2.8 chip in my computer and at stock speed and voltage my computer is dead slient. I'm extatic about that. However, once an overclocker always an overclocker. 😛 Using the stock heatsink and fan with AS3, I bumped up the fsb to 143 MHz in order to get up to 3.0 GHz. That's about as far as I want to take it in terms of overclocking, so now I'm going for the "stability." This is where I'm having the problems. At stock voltages, which my motherboard seems to be undervolting at, the CPU runs nice and cool and is quite stable. But if I increase the front side bus to only 140 MHz, it fails Prime95 after about 24 minutes. So in order to stabilize it, I raised the vcore up to 1.550 volts. Now, it fails after only 9 minutes! I brought the fsb up a few more MHz to 143, in order to get to 3.0 GHz, and raised to vcore up to 1.60 volts in order to get stability, and Prime95 still fails after about ten minutes. I brought the fsb back down to 140 MHz and it still failed at the same spot. Isn't an increased voltage supposed to make the chip more stable?
The CPU was packed on September 9th, it's spec code is SL6HL, and obviously it's a C1 stepping. What do you think could be causing the instability? My RAM should be fine because I have the same RAM that I was using when running my 1.8A @ 2.52 GHz (Micron PC2400 DDR RAM), and my motherboard doesn't give me any special ratios to lower the speed of the RAM. (My RAM is running at 286 DDR). What should I do to get more stability? Could it be my RAM and should I go with some more conservative settings, or is it my CPU and it needs even more voltage? (I'm not willing to go and get another heatsink, because if for some reason I can't get it stable, I'll just lower the speed and deal with a slower CPU. Besides, the 2.8 GHz is faster than my old CPU at 2.52 GHz anyway. 😀 ) Thanks for any help.
The CPU was packed on September 9th, it's spec code is SL6HL, and obviously it's a C1 stepping. What do you think could be causing the instability? My RAM should be fine because I have the same RAM that I was using when running my 1.8A @ 2.52 GHz (Micron PC2400 DDR RAM), and my motherboard doesn't give me any special ratios to lower the speed of the RAM. (My RAM is running at 286 DDR). What should I do to get more stability? Could it be my RAM and should I go with some more conservative settings, or is it my CPU and it needs even more voltage? (I'm not willing to go and get another heatsink, because if for some reason I can't get it stable, I'll just lower the speed and deal with a slower CPU. Besides, the 2.8 GHz is faster than my old CPU at 2.52 GHz anyway. 😀 ) Thanks for any help.
