Originally posted by: DPOverLord
Hmmm?. I see your point, my ram which was tweaked was a BASE and by no means did it mean the final product. As for what I have done with the ram I got it yesterday to 222 but when I came back from work it had errors. ...bla, bla, bla...
To Recap, I should get a 120mm fan and focus on finding the max of the ram before the HTT and Max CPU? Or should I get the fan but tweak the settings like you said and try to find a higher max HTT, then go for the MAX CPU, then RAM. Considering the issues were with the ram from the get-go I would think I should focus on getting this ram to its max setting first then worry about the rest. Am I right?
I was hoping to move on, but I have to give one more shot. I think you need to ask yourself, "are you an OC enthusiast, or do you want a basic and relatively outstanding OC for your system?"
An enthusiast seeks to wring the last 1.5% of performance from the system. An enthusiast would have RTFM'd (Read the
Fine Manual), absorbed the information, and would not need to ask the questions you are asking.
Someone seeking a basic overclock is looking for great performance, great value, and a stable system. They are not all that interested in spending hours tweaking and testing, they would rather move on to using the computer, not having purchased the system for an OC hobby. They don't want to fry components, corrupt a hard drive, or turn their room into a sauna. Once stable and usable, they could later tweak the system for that last bit of performance.
I will make the assumption that you want a basic overclock, since you haven't really absorbed what Zebo wrote. Zebo will also point out in this and other research articles that most performance comes from the CPU OC, on the order of 95% to 99.5%. Your RAM tweaks will be barely noticable in realistic benchmarks. You will not percieve the difference in most real world applications.
From the start, do you really want to spend the time tweaking RAM for a 0.5% to 2.5% gain in performance? If so, drive on with your track. If not, if you want to try basic, try the hints below.
1) Skip the motherboard OC, which you have apparently done.
2) RAM OC test is finished. Fails at 220FSB, works at 215FSB. Consider your max RAM OC to be 215FSB with the default settings that you used.
3) Finish the CPU OC. Go to BIOS. Reset to default. Set DRAM = 100, which is 1:2 divider, the lowest. Set CPU multi - 10. Set FSB = 240. Reboot, and run your tests. NOW, start doing what Zebo recommends: test for 5 minutes, and if it passes, stop, go to BIOS, up the FSB 10 points, reboot, and run the test for 5 minutes. Keep repeating until the system fails before 5 minutes. At failure, you have found your CPU limits. Back off the FSB until the tests are stable, then back off another 5% for safety margin, and run a long term test on that FSB.
My guess is that you will start to see instability at around 270FSB, and will be stable at 260 FSB.
Finally, set a divider that keeps the RAM at less than 215 FSB, and run 24 hour stress tests. Including MemTest at some point, just to be sure. If RAM OC is at 260 FSB, then the "133" divider will run RAM at 173. The "166" divider will run it at 216 FSB.
Once RAM divider is set, and tests are passed, leave it for a while and use it. Go back later and tweak RAM to your heart's desire. Beware the extra heat generated.
And RTFM. Research your ValueVX, the potential, and the risks. Tweak it later. I missed that it was ValueVX, not that it matters for basic OC. I tried ValueVX, did not like the heat generated for the impercievable improvement in performance, small rooms with no airconditioning and all.
Good luck. Bye.
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