WIP: Karaktu's (and Zap's!) Unofficial Guide to mobile Celeron overclocking success!

[Zap]

Well, I'm more interested in "the interest of sleep" than "the interest of science." I just got home an hour ago (12:30am) so today is out. Seriously though, I will investigate!!!

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: Zap
If a board has adjustable voltages in BIOS, you can change voltage regardless. The pin mod just changes the default detected voltage. If you can change voltages, then you may not have to pin mod. Some boards (such as my dying Albatron 845PEV Pro) allow you to lower voltage, not just raise it. My board detects at around 1.65v but I have it lowered to around 1.35v in BIOS.

do you have a preferred motherboard with decent voltage adjustment options for use with mobile celeron or mobile pentium 4?

 

[jazzisjazz]

Would make a nice group buy

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...em&category=86713&item=6777091167&rd=1

just a suggestion

currently running a refurb abit it-7max2, 1.8 @ 2.9,1.625v 161fsb,kingston valueram ddr400 -2.5,3,3,5
prime95 stable - 4hrs

jazzisjazz

 

[Zap]

Same vendor has them for sale individually for $23/ea plus $7 shipping, $30 total for a buy-it-now. Not a bad value. I've purchased about 5 mobile CPUs from that vendor with no problems.

 

[TStep]

Originally posted by: jazzisjazz
Would make a nice group buy

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...em&category=86713&item=6777091167&rd=1

just a suggestion

currently running a refurb abit it-7max2, 1.8 @ 2.9,1.625v 161fsb,kingston valueram ddr400 -2.5,3,3,5
prime95 stable - 4hrs

jazzisjazz

yummy, $23.50 each delivered, very tempting.

 

[jazzisjazz]

Would this make a good board for a value system?

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=PX848-LIKE&cat=MBB

at the geeks

http://www.firingsquad.com/hw/419/Albatron_PX848_Like/

a few more details

http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/it/mb/manual.asp?pro_id=81

manual

anybody see a better value at the moment ( the shuttle ab60n/r seem to be gone) or know of specific reasons not to buy this board?

 

[Zap]

There's always a risk when trying boards that nobody else has tried with mobile Celeron/P4 because there's always the chance that the board doesn't like the chip and refuses to work with it, or you may need to mod the chip.

Albatron boards are usually overclockable, but a lower end model like this one may not be. Also, the chipset is relatively unknown, so again a risk perhaps of no AGP/PCI lock.

Anyone else have any thoughts or know more about this board?

 

[Zap]

Well, I was unable to get a mobile Celeron to work in my Shuttle AB60R motherboard. I tried doing the AE1 voltage mod and it still won't POST. Don't have the 133MHz BSEL mod on this chip. Verified Celeron to work with and without the AE1 voltage mod on an Asus board. Guess the Shuttle board is good only for mobile P4 chips.

:| Also, while testing, found out the last two out of three video cards I got from Newegg as refurb were DOA. One was a 6800GT Leadtek (few days ago, $210) and it has visual glitches on POST. The other DOA card was a Rosewill (Newegg house brand?) Radeon 9600 256MB that I was gonna use in my HTPC because it was passively cooled. GRrrrr, that one is past the RMA period for refurbs. Should have tested it earlier but was busy (stuff like getting married, and other schtuff like that). The only good card was a Gigabyte Radeon 9250. WTF, seems like 50% RMA rate on refurb video cards for me this past half year (one other card, 6800LE was fine). This Radeon 9600 would cause a red light to come on next to the AGP slot of the Shuttle board, and the Asus board just ignored it and continued using onboard video. Things like this, plus refurb not being as cheap as before... not buying as much refurb stuff as in the past.

 

[Zap]

I'm now using the Shuttle AB60R board in my "main" rig. Got tired of the Albatron PX845PEV Pro board "losing" the USB, network and now PS/2 ports fail every couple of hours, requiring a reboot. Not locked, because sometimes mouse stops working but keyboard still does, sometimes other way around. When I took out the Albatron board, noticed that now there were TWO bulging capacitors around the Southbridge/PCI slots.

With the Shuttle board, currently running a mobile P4 1.6GHz at 2.5GHz (208FSB). I keep having to lower the FSB as I get crashes/errors. Just got another one, "Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close." F-it, just move the error window aside and keep working, LOL. Gonna have to go into BIOS and lower clock again. My computer keeps getting slower with my "upgrades." At one time it was a slightly overclocked P4 2.6C on an Abit IS7, then turned into a slightly overclocked P4 2.4A (PressHOTT) on the IS7, then a mobile Celeron 1.6@3GHz on the Albatron, but then overheating problems (had a really low RPM NMB fan, might have been under 1000RPM on the CPU heatsink) and the failing caps had me lowering clock speed until I was at around 2.6-2.7GHz when I switched out tonight to the mobile P4 1.6GHz @2.5GHz and dropping, and dropping, and dropping...

At least I'm back to dual channel RAM, right now running at DDR333 CAS2 dual.

 

[greenwar]

>Also, while testing, found out the last two out of three video cards I got from Newegg as >refurb were DOA. One was a 6800GT Leadtek (few days ago, $210) and it has visual >glitches on POST.

Zap, I am quite sure, thats the 6800GT I returned. I bought it new and found it to have those weird characters in post and returned it. Surprisingly, they sent the same thing back to me as a replacement, which left me no option but to seek a refund.

Regarding the shuttle board, I almost bought it when you mentioned it first in this forum. Good that I didnt.

 

[Zap]

Newegg had a bunch of those boards. There's a thread in Hot Deals talking about these. So far seven people confirmed purchasing and receiving this card. Four worked fine. Three were DOA (with visual glitches).

The Shuttle board is fine for a low cost mobile P4 setup. Strange that it works fine with the mobile P4 without mods, and won't work at all with the mobile Celeron. Still a good value with the Intel CSA LAN and firewire and secondary Silicon Image SATA RAID. My total cost after shipping/tax for both CPU and motherboard was just under $70. CPU currently runs at 2.4GHz. Had strange glitches anything above that. The CPU is a mobile P4 1.6GHz, I think C1 stepping, but it may even be B0. At 2.4GHz (200MHz FSB, dual channel) it feels about as fast as a mobile Celeron running around 2.66GHz (166MHz FSB, single channel). It runs cool enough and is stable.

 

[Karaktu]

I think I'm changing the title of the thread to Karaktu and Zap's ... Sorry I haven't had the time to keep up with this thread.

 

[Karaktu]

BTW, I'm waiting for this board to become reasonable, and then I will be playing with Dothans. I've already overclocked my Dell 6000 to 2.13 GHz with a Dothan 1.6.

 

[TStep]

Originally posted by: Karaktu
BTW, I'm waiting for this board to become reasonable, and then I will be playing with Dothans. I've already overclocked my Dell 6000 to 2.13 GHz with a Dothan 1.6.

Ditto, as soon as I can grab a reasonably priced 915 board, I'll be experimenting as well.

 

[Univac]

Ok, i am a real newb to intel and the chipsets they run on,so please be patient

These questions have to do with the asus P4S800-mx

is it best to have the memory run the same speed as the fsb?

Or is it better to run the ram faster if possible??

And what about the chipset clock mode?? Synchronous or Asynchronous??

What got me messing around with it again is it has been very warm around here and I had to
slow my AMD barton down to 2.1 gig to keep it under 60c.

I got one of my celeron processors to 3.1 Ghz.

so..how do you think it would compare to a 2.1Ghz barton on a nforce 2 motherboard for games??

the video card is a 9700pro

The game of the month is Battlefield 2

The fsb for the barton is 167 mhz, for the celeron mobile 170 ish,depending on how I should run the ram.

Please forgive me for being lazy,but you guys are so knowledgeable!!!

(And the heat has made me too cranky to sit and watch benchmarks )

Thank You

 

[Karaktu]

My feeling is that you should get a better HSF for your Athlon XP and/or increase the airflow in your machine as it should be the better gaming CPU, especially if you're using a dual-chanel memory board.

It's better to run your memory as fast as possible on the P4S800-MX. 166 FSB/200 DDR is what I usually set them to.

I haven't noticed any real difference in the chipset clock mode. I usually leave it Async.

 

[Karaktu]

Nice little deal on a SIS 651 board. All you really need for a mobile Celeron HTPC.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=650DF-R

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I'm going to chime in. Bought 4x 1.6GHz mobiCels from Karaktu (looong time ago ) and they're all running on Abit IS7-E2s at max voltage (1.6V). Got pretty nice speeds out of them : 3.2GHz (CNSP 7000), 3.08GHz (CNPS 7000), 2 x 2.8GHz (stock Intel copper-core HSF).

Traded away the 3.08GHz combo for an A64 3000+, but the others are still running strong.

 

[DanU]

I just stumbled upon this thread via google and I want to report success with a mobile celeron 2.4 and a Soyo i865PE Plus mobo. I did the pin mod so it boots at 1.2V.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: Karaktu
BTW, I'm waiting for this board to become reasonable, and then I will be playing with Dothans. I've already overclocked my Dell 6000 to 2.13 GHz with a Dothan 1.6.

I recently built a sytem using the Asus P4P800-VM, with the CT-479 adaptor. Got a 1.6ghz 400mhz FSB dothan running at 2.4ghz at stock voltage using clockgen, with a 6600GT(also overclocked 550/1025, stock is 500/900). I've got it in an antec aria, makes for a nice quiet and still fast gaming machine, and runs cool even in that cramped case with the small heatsink that comes with the ct-479. It actualy beat me 3.82ghz prescott with a 6800GT in 3Dmark01, and runs all my games pretty well.

I also have a mobile 1.6ghz northwood running great thanks to this guide. I put it on an 845 chipset Aopen board that I got off of e-bay for $35 and have had it running at up to 2.7ghz 100% stable.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Karaktu
I think I'm changing the title of the thread to Karaktu and Zap's ... Sorry I haven't had the time to keep up with this thread.

Thanks for the homage to me, you're too kind. I've just been trying to keep the thread going.

That Jetway motherboard looks veeeerrrrrry interesting. Looks to be out of one of their mini systems. I'm not thinking HTPC, I'm thinking case mod. It would be small enough to hide in various places, especially if used with integrated graphics and a 1U HSF on a mobile CPU. I'd snag one just because, except that I'm gonna be moving soon. Maybe after...

 

[Univac]

Originally posted by: Karaktu
My feeling is that you should get a better HSF for your Athlon XP and/or increase the airflow in your machine as it should be the better gaming CPU, especially if you're using a dual-chanel memory board.

It's better to run your memory as fast as possible on the P4S800-MX. 166 FSB/200 DDR is what I usually set them to.

I haven't noticed any real difference in the chipset clock mode. I usually leave it Async.

Thanks for the info!

I have a big alpha heatsink and 3 80mm fans in a antec case, I think it just runs hot!
Or the diode is off because even at 63c I don't get any errors or blue screens.

I think I just worry to much...

But it is hard not to think something is up with how cool the celeron?s run with a big overclock..

 

[Lil Big Mec]

Have not read through the entire thread, but just wanted to say awesome job! And to add a Vantec Aeroflow needs the penny trick to make contact with the core.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Univac
I think it just runs hot!
Or the diode is off because even at 63c I don't get any errors or blue screens.

Or the motherboard is just "tuned" wrong. I had an Abit IS7 motherboard that reported temps waaaayyyy high. Abit kept claiming they were doing the proper thing in figuring out temps and that all other board manufacturers were underreporting temps, but finally they caved in and released a BIOS that magically dropped temps by around 10ºC. I've seen the same CPU/cooler combo have almost a 20ºC difference between boards. I've seen boards that have reported the CPU as running cooler than the ambient temperature. :Q Nope, I don't have any exotic cooling, just heatsinks and fans. I think my record was a VIA C3 that the motherboard reported as running around 8ºC or so. Hey, I currently (for another few days) live in a desert. The outside temp right now is probably 110ºF and my A/C is set to around 80ºF. That's around 26ºC. No way a CPU can be running under that with just a fan/heatsink.

 

[vnangia]

Hello!

Stumbled across this most excellently useful thread whilst browsing another site, so I wanted to say thank you for all the information that all of you have provided!

Zap, you mentioned some posts back that you had a Mobile P4 1.6GHz and were testing it out. My 2002 Toshiba laptop just died, and so I now have a mobile Pentium 4, rated at 1.6 GHz (SL6EX) lying around. I'm not interested in overclocking, merely getting stock speed so I have a second computer until I graduate; I figure 133FSBx12locked multiplier ought to get me close enough to 1.6GHz. I'm also somewhat concerned about the extra voltage being pumped through it - it's rated at 1.3V, and most of the motherboards seem to default to 1.5-1.6V. What effect might this have on the longevity of the processor? Alternatively, can you recommend a reasonably good, but inexpensive motherboard that you have had success with in bringing the voltage down to 1.3V? I understand that the Asus P4S800-MX seems to be a popular choice, but have you had any success with either of the Shuttle systems? Any advice appreciated.

Thank you!

EDIT: Also ought to have mentioned - I dislike breaking off parts unless absolutely necessary. The less twisting off of pins, the happier I'd be - please let me know if you've had any success getting the Asus board or Shuttle barebone running at stock speed without breaking off pins.