The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

TO: tinytom

We were all noobz at one time, so welcome and let's continue to learn together.

Read my recent replys to your post about RAM and chipsets. not speaaking of the COMMANDO in general but rather the Intel !P965 chipset and ICH8R SATA RAID south bridge MCH. this is the nwest of the Intel SATA RAID hubs and is known to bee good to DDR1333 for 1:1 FSB. I personally had the P5B w/ same chipset to 2128FSB 1:1 DDR1066. So you got OC potential w/ PC8500 and if at 1:1 on an E6600, you got great rom for tight timings at even may of DDR990 w/ best of the E6600's. Remember, as a lot of us on here say, No one core is exactly like the other. So you may get better then my 495FSB or barely 425 like some new rev I see.

In any event, on this new chipset and ICH8R, it won't be your RAM holding you back right now, it will be the E6600 but you have lots of options.

You should be fine as 425FSB (multi 6,7,8x) for your RAM to run rated DDR1066. My experience w/ Corsair is they are very OC capible. I will keep you posted on my test on my own 8500 when I get more time.

BUILD LIST

The only major item I would change before going for high FSB is your power supply. 6000w will do but 700w wil give you room to play harder. great choice on the Raptor, make best use of it by installing as RAID ready (f6 floppy install) to the fast ICH8R Intel RAID so you can add the 2nd raptor to complete RAID 0 if so desired later in a Windows inviroment. I dont know the performance of the AC 7 today but I know people on here like them so you shell be fine. I only used w/ early A64 and were just under comp w/ Zalman but much louder. I, by personal test results & choice, go for the Zalman CNPS9700. Boarders right there at top end air and low end water performance for high airflow or just right down quiet for media center PC in livingroom on mild OC rigs.

And now that's what's Clockin' like it

 

forgive me for asking again, but what pic service can you /we use to get images in our post or is there a fixed method to add the PIC type sig I create in photoshop or elsewhere?

this a test image load from a profile I have online so miss me on this if it fails



how's this, edit no. 2

 

NuckNFuts,

I use www.imageshack.com. Just upload the image and copy the forum url and then use ctrl v to paste it to your post. You have to change the capital letters on the IMG on both ends to small letters and then it will appear in your post.

Hope this helps!

Clock On,
theone

 

I use imageshack as it seems reliable unlike almost all other services.

 

Cool cool, this can be fun. Now I just gotta get some new PIX to share.





Here's my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium & AMD A64 X2 4400 (939) w/ Zalman CNPS7700-Cu and modded chipset cooler to break the heat back when new as it quickly got updated to the better (then) CNPS9500-LED Cu. The color was achieved by means of UV active sighn paint and caps on mobo were treated w/ UV active Holloween "glow-In-The-Dark" gel paint.

 

TO NUCKNFUTS

Just to clarify, do I buy 6400 or 8500 ram where the comando says it only supports 800mhz?
Im under the impression buy 6400 and clock it to 8500 specs?

 

the E6600 at stock 2.4ghz will blow the doors off your P4 2.8ghz. it will be at least twice as fast. my E6600 when it was stock at 2.4ghz was almost twice as fast as my P4 3.4ghz OC'ed to 3.6ghz.

 

"YES", if the budget allows, by all means, go for PC8500. It will pleas you at both stock of 1066 and backwords to PC6400 w/ tighter timings.Even if the CPU you have today can't get you the 1:1 1000 +, you have room to grow with the PC8500. Also with current set up, you have great parts to learn with and experiment as you grow knowledge in the art of "overclocking"

Be sure to check in here before you go at it to see if there's anything we can offer. I for 1 like to build on the bench before mounting and make sure it all works well. Here's my old trusty ABIT IC7-MAX3 (pre Fatality) and a P4E Prescott to 4GHz on the well loved OC'r of its day, Intel !875P (Canterwood) w/ ICH5R SATA RAID. You can just add a few small pieces of foam blocks in staggared spots and under CPU area to act as stand-offs and you're good to go.



The clock starts here! good luck

 

I had been OC'n the early Prescotts and the D's and I can say they did well for themselves if you had a worthy mobo to take them over 3.73GHz. Core 2 Duo is certainly faster but I couldn't claim twice, just a lot faster in many areas.

Most people who came and said "WOW" this thing rocks, totally blows my old PC away often had older tech. Netburst had its day in the sun to shine for a little bit and did well to keep up w/ then current A64 but gave a run for the money in the area of stability and a daily OC'r that we come to love so much from Intel today. My A64's did great in gaming and past the synthetic scores for days but froze/crashed more often then any Intel I ran under a real world game play stress. (mostly video and other driver issues)

I had a single core Prescott 660 to 4.25GHz on air and did great for media encoding keeping close enough behind my D840 to be worthy of staying in the game. It was a fun chip to OC on the 1st gen LGA775 w/ new PRB exploit. on the ASUS P5AD2-E Premium !925XE

 

NuckNFuts,

I think you meant zalman CNPS7700-CU. that's not a CNPS9700-CU in the pic.

I was comparing encoding times using RB/CCE. YES it was within 10 minutes of being twice as fast as my P4 northwood core rig and it didn't have junk components either. asus P4P800SE mobo and 2gig corsair XMS DDR 400 (PC3200).

I would almost guarantee that for encoding the E6600 at stock 2.4ghz will be twice as fast as a stock P4 2.8ghz.

 

Oops, "my bad", that's what I use on my Intel and was reffering to tinytom. I edited it, Thankx for noticing. That pic is like a yr & a half old, lol. I was barely waiting for my 9500 to be released in Sep 05'

 

If reffering to a Prescott 2.8 then yes I can believe it, darn near close to twice. But the 660 to 4.25 shine for what it was to keep in the game. Granted, still not the top performer. I but I still use it today but w/ hand me down CNPS9500 and does great on temp now so 4.25GHz is more stable.

Did you or were any of you here OC'n the Prescotts when new? They had to hit 3.73 over to flurish and of corce high bandwidth. I had it as 4.14GHz on the P5N32-SLI but could only hit over 4 at high multi so got poor FSB:RAM bandwidth. Ran cool on the new 8 phase though. I'm gonna put it bk there to use EIST and give to mother as daily user.

 

Will my pc boot with 8500 in it still then? Will the mobo run it at 6400 automatic or will I have to make adjustments?

Reading my mobo manual it says 889mhz and 1067mhz ram freq is available for oc puposes only? Can I put 1066ram in there and just run it at 1067 or does this mean I have to clock 800mhz to 1066?

 

YES it will. This is whay we have the JEDEC standards, and why many RAMS use speed programmed timings. So if all in AUTO for start, it will set as spec DDR800 with a different set of timings for 800 untill you set RAM as munual and move the FSB up, then RAM moves w/ it and also now needs looser timings.

I would advise starting as stock till you get to know the BIOS and finish your OS install. If you're comfident, you can go for the GOLD just as soon as the update fixes and latest drivers are in.

What OS will you be going with? I like XP Pro X64 for good OC. It is fast and stable. Will or can become unstable if you go backwords w/ older out dated hardware and apps, so let us know. Avoid VISTA for now if that's what you like till you know the sweet spot of your OC.

Stay Tuned,
After this message, I'll be....right back!

 

TO: tinytom

Since you are starting from scrach. There's some things to look at from the beginning. The OS.

If Windows, you can use the neet feature of "RAID READY" even if you never set up RAID on your OS, it is easiest and best to do it from the get go. XP does require a f6 install via floppy to see the ICH8R south bridge hub for either HDD or SATA DVD if you have 1. You can move DVD elsewhere if needed, but it is best here during install till you get the 3rd party device drivers for other SATA controlers.

Get prepared while you wait for the other parts. Download all latest drivers from both Intel , nVidia, and ASUS for the priorty installs of your new OS. Get the latest update /fixes to be most stable. Avoid going further if any ?? or !! are in the device manager. This especially includes the ACPI virtual device drivers of ASUS Windows active BIOS. Either the PC ProbeII or Ai Booster will include this and count as installed. Don't feel bad, too many guys will avoid installing either of these and wonder what that yellow ! is for cause they cant find the device. Let us know if you need the run down on the Intel SATA RAID READY f6 Install.

EDIT Now the COMMANDO is just over 2 months old so you may not get the latest BIOS fix, so after the above is good, install the ASUS Update app (latest ver) and read the BIOS. Look for v1001 dated sometime this month (older may be like Mar or Apr). The fix deals w/ lower multi and hot pluging of SATA II and AHCI control. All god to fix before going for high OC. It would be best to do this early as later, BIOS and older apps and drivers can run in conflict, system can just act weird on you and make Overclocking kinda buggy

 

*NuckNFuts*

My current system has raid set up that pops up with an option on start up and looks similar to a bios screen. I dont own a floppy drive at all!

I will get everything updated and set up before starting to look at OC'ing. I do need to get some kind of system restore program installed so that if anything happens I can revert back to a good point (program wise)

Ill get pc8500 corsair dominator then to try and help things along, as Im understanding it will run at 800mhz but when things start to get increased will have no problems running at 1066mhz as thats whats its designed for and run more stable than a clocked pc6400.
Im also looking in to a 750w thermaltake psu as you said my 500w might not be up to the task when increasing voltage demands. Probably best since Im going to have so many HDD's in there.


When downloading updates do I just keep them to one side and install them once I have the OS up and running? I was going to use XP pro or Home as I have a copy of both, was going to 'test' vista on my HP before taking any kind of a leap of faith with that one! Ive always got my Vaio laptop to revert back to if anything happens with either system anyways!


**Looking on the Asus website it doesnt have the Corsair dominator range listed as being compatable......?**

***Dominator or Reaper, which would be best?***

 

Ya funny thing that is since Corsair almost always uses ASUS as their test beds or high end OC's, yet ASUS fails to credit Corsair in their "QVL". I believe it's more to do w/ the guys who paid in to have ASUS actually test so thay can be on the list. This list is for those who will not buy if it doesn't say "YES" kinda like the guy who wont but the A/V camcorder cable for his iPod cause it say camcorder on the box and not iPod. Same cable, different marketing use.

"***Dominator or Reaper, which would be best?***"

I say you'd like the Dominator over OCZ just for the better timings and cooling factor. They do good as is but in a hot case, you get a 3-fan set to clip on top and that actually helps when stressing it, and not too loud either. I'm not pushing it cause I got it, I do use OCZ too , their watercooled version and they OC nice, but looser timings and do need that water if you push them, and no fan, and often too tall for some systems. But they are great to OC.

"Yahoo" some reviews, you'll see soem good promice. Try not to get too excited as most will be based on synthetic benchmarks. It still give hope though. Notice a lot are on an ASUS if not the DFI LanParty!

You will need xp Pro for RAID support (anybody correct me if I'm wrong) & a floppy (even if to borrow from another PC, - not USB) to install Intel as RAID ready. It can be done later but more work for you and will for sure need a 2nd SATA (not to install, just borrow) on the ICH8R SB.

"The RAID BIOS" You see this now? Or on other system? The one w/ green in the top is the Intel ICH8R BIOS and means you have it enabled so if you try to install XP, it wont find the device without the f6 driver on floppy. Let me know if you get stuck here so we can do it another way till without floppy.

YES you will need to download the priority drivers and update now and use them to complete install. Intel f6 floppy drives, you need before all others to loads XP Pro and for CD to see ICH8R Intel SATA controller.

 

Everythig has gone silent on the board?

Any one have any experience with the Thermaltake Big Water 745 kit?
I was going to get this, the M5 monitor kit (with upgraded 500lph pump) and the volcano cpu waterpass heatsink. (looks like air heatsink but with water pipes punning through the fins)

This is the last thing on my shopping list then Im ready to build finaly!

 

Hey there, just thought everybody took a 4 day weekend off or something. I'm still here and reading.

I don't know of the kit you mentioned but I ended up just building mine from scratch w/ most parts from online sorces in Germany and little misl. hardware local in home supply hardware store and Automotive supply.

When I get a chance, I can look at my parts build list to get names. Some of my favorites were a a 6 - 12v DC external pump w/ CPU mobo fan sensor wire to adjust to speed and respond to pump fail in BIOS or ASUS PC ProbeII. A tripple 120mm 2 row external radiator w/ shrowd. 2.5Gl external water resivore w/ blanketed insulator to kee the chill in.

Any good kit by one of the big name reputable brands can give you better then most high end air in terms of cooling and quietness.

 

Look at the thermal take website its all there, its the last thing now then its time to build!!