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Some questions on overclocking

Red Storm

Red Storm

Lifer
I've only just arrived to the overclocking scene, having done my first ever overclocking last night on an athlon 3000 venice (socket 754, oced to 2.4GHz). I did read the guide at the top of the cpu forum, and in there it does say that voltages higher than 1.45 "aren't safe." Asus Probe is giving me a voltage reading of 1.42-1.44, which I'm assuming is ok. My question is, how do you adjust voltage? I can't for the life of me find any info on how you go about actually adjusting it. So how do I do it?

Oh, another thing. My idle temps are 38C and around 45C at load. Are these good?
 
CPU voltage is controllable through bios on most newer AMD motherboards, but many of the older mobos don't allow voltage adjustments.
 
What is considered safe voltage is rather subjective and more down to personal belief/preference than hard facts. There are no magic formulae to work out mean time to failure with respect to voltage increase. One common figure branded about is 10-15% as a safe maximum for A64 cpus. But there's no formula to back this up that I've seen. Have a read of this thread where some of the industry brains (pm & dmens) describe the effects of increasing voltage. There are 2 important messages here: 1. in terms of what damages your chip most, the order is voltage >> MHz > heat; 2. there is an exponential reduction in operating lifetime with increases in voltage, but only a linear reduction with heat. High voltage can damage your cpu even if temperature is within normal limits so dont get lulled into a false sense of security by temps alone. What you have to ask yourself is how long you intend to keep a particular component & guess what voltage will be safe to ensure it lasts that long. Chances are you'll only keep a cpu for 2 years before upgrading (2 weeks for some of the guys on this forum!) so you can afford to take a few risks and push the volts up. My personal limit is 1.55v which is just over 10% of the recommended operating limit. Increasing the voltage will usually give you a higher overclock up to a limit. Go with what ever you feel comfortable with (if you find the BIOS setting that is).
 
Thanks for the answers everyone, much appreciated. However, I got a little greedy and now I've run into a problem. I was ocing the cpu a little at a time, and then I ran into 2.8GHz. When the computer boots, there's "static" everywhere (as in similar to the black and white stuff with tvs), and when I try to get into the bios, it freezes at a screen saying "wait..." except that only the 'w' and the 'a' are there. I've heard there is a way to reset the bios settings physically on the motherboard. Is there anything I can do?

Edit: My motherboard is an Asus K8U-X
 
I think safe voltage also depends on the cooling you using. If you have poor cooling, better not put cpu voltage too high. but I think I saw several people pushing voltage higher than 1.45v for their overclocks.
 
Here's a question: What are SATA locks and how do they relate to overclocking? I saw them mentioned in the sticky thread but not what they are/affect.
 
Originally posted by: Red Storm
Thanks for the answers everyone, much appreciated. However, I got a little greedy and now I've run into a problem. I was ocing the cpu a little at a time, and then I ran into 2.8GHz. When the computer boots, there's "static" everywhere (as in similar to the black and white stuff with tvs), and when I try to get into the bios, it freezes at a screen saying "wait..." except that only the 'w' and the 'a' are there. I've heard there is a way to reset the bios settings physically on the motherboard. Is there anything I can do?

Edit: My motherboard is an Asus K8U-X
Click to expand...

Dude, that sounds bad. That looks like a bit of a basic board for serious overclocking. Look in your manual for the clear CMOS jumper instructions. If you havent got the manual, find the jumper labeled CLRTC near the bottom of the board. Unplug computer from mains, press on button to discharge capacitors, change jumper to position 2-3 for 10 seconds, move back to its default position 1-2. Plug in power lead & start up holding the <DEL> key. If that doesnt work then BIOS could be corrupted.
 
Okay, I found CLRTC written on the bottom of the board, but I don't know what it's actually referring to on the board. I don't see any button.
 
Its not a button, its a 3 pin jumper, 2 of which are bridged with a blue connector (pins 1-2). Change the connector to join the middle & bare pin (pins 2-3) & leave for 10 secs, then return to the original position (1-2). Do this while the computer is unplugged & discharged. Dont turn on with pins 2-3 connected.
 
[to the post below this one] - yes the PCI and PCI-E buses can be locked on the Premium board. Also I'm not using the separate (additional) SATA controller nor the RAID so I'm not worried about that.
 
Originally posted by: yacoub
Here's a question: What are SATA locks and how do they relate to overclocking? I saw them mentioned in the sticky thread but not what they are/affect.
Click to expand...

SATA controllers are PCI or PCI-e devices, depending on chipset & controller chip, so locked via those bus locks.

EDIT: The A8N-SLI Premium uses the Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller which is a PCI controller. You can download the manual for this mobo from the Asus website which should tell you if there's a PCI lock. Alternatively you could ask an owner on the mobo forums - there's plenty of them about. Many boards dont seem to have PCI locks anymore, mine included, but they dont have PCI issues when overclocking so I presume the lock is automatic. The A8N-SLI Premium is an overclocking board so its highly likely the PCI bus will be locked or lockable.
 
Originally posted by: Red Storm
I don't know what you mean by locks, but I got everything working fine now. Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...

If you raise the CPU frequency, then all other buses, PCI-e, AGP, PCI, will increase proportionaly unless they can be locked. PCI should be 33, AGP 66, & PCI-e 100. If you go above these you will almost certainly get instability & in the worst case data corruption on your HDDs.

From a brief bit of googling, it would seem that your board doesnt have locks for AGP or PCI unless yours is a later revision that has them. I dont know much about Asus boards. If I were you, I would check this out before proceeding with anymore overclocking.
 
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