The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Ace_2,

It's going to crash at a lower speed under 100% load compared to what you were getting before.

Need to know some more info please...
What is/were:
Load % (Orthos running is 100%)=
Core Temps (CoreTemp)=
Vcore voltage setting (The setting made in bios)=

From CPU-Z
CPU Tab- CPU clocks:

Core Speed=
Multipier=
Buss Speed=
Rated FSB=
Memory Tab-
Memory Frequency=
FSBRAM=

 

Binning the raidmax PSU could probably earn you a lot more mhz for a start...

 

@sammorris: And how exactly do I do that?

@fasfrank: Dude, I can't even get into Windows. When I overclock too high, when the computer restarts, the power light turns off and the computer becomes irresponsive.

 

Well the fan RPM for me is absolutely nuts. My fan runs on average at 4500RPM and still can't cool it down enough and even vibrates the damn table it sits on! So it's really going to be a relief for it to be that cooled down and quiet. I really like th PWM feature as well cause I use ASUS PC Probe to monitor core temperatures and fan speed.

Going to pick up in 1hr. I'll shut down now and take out the fan. And I remember exactly how as my PC is custom built so I should hopefully not screw anything up.

 

ace_2,
I understand that, but you should have gotten to a successful overclock setting 5 Mhz below the settings that failed.


Edit
Binning means throwing out your current power supply and getting a new one.

I just want to see some numbers from whatever overclock speed you can get to run correctly. I can't tell if you are going from your stock settings directly to a speed that's too high. There should be a speed in between that will run and stress test correctly.

Here's the sort of thing I have going when I test my OCs:

 

I got it! Working perfectly at 34C and 1800RPM!!! I went from 2800 all the way to 3800 and DAMN is it fast! It all reports perfectly in ASUS PC Probe and all my apps are blazing fast! In AMD speed I went from 1.80GHz to 2.44GHz and I could still increase at the temperature I'm at. I decided not to get the GFX card cooler seeing as I don't mind going any higher then 500MHz at the moment.

 

ace_2,

That's a British expression for throwing it in the trash, and I agree. Some of the C2Ds have problems caused by poorly made Power Supplies and don't take kindly to poor voltage control. The PS I had that was made by Powmax, was what helped ruin my P5P800-SE motherboard on my D-940. My overclocking it to 3.94GHz didn't help either! When I built my C2D, I bought a Thermaltake Tr-2 500 watt PS. That 450W ATX Alpha Raidmax you have is only capable of a little over 300 watts under load according to it's specs before it packs it's tent and lets you down. While something like my Thermaltake has better efficiency. The biggest thing you will notice is that the Thermaltake weighs about twice as much!

Consider the PS as the foundation of your build! I just discovered that my PS is on sale from Newegg for $79.99 with a mail in rebate it comes to $49.99, which is a great price! It's the baby brother to sammorris's Toughpower 750 watt with the same design but only 500 watts. Very quiet too!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153028

You will discover over time that the quality of your build is directly related to the quality of the components you put into it. Your choice in MB, PS and memory is everything to good overclocking. You don't have to buy the most expensive components, just good high quality ones which can be found at reasonable prices. I lucked out with this build as I bought the MB on sale from ChiefValue for $99, G.Skill PC6400 2x1GB cas4 memory for $129 and the Thermaltake PS for $46. At the time, I saved about $90 over retail. The same components are even cheaper now!

The moral to this story is buy the best high quality components you can afford when overclocking. You will spend far less money in the long run!

Clock On,
theone :}

 

Ace_2,

Yes a bios revision can certainly make a difference.

And if your psu is really only good for 300w as theone said,I'm sure(as I said at the beginning)your psu is letting you down.

No system will o/clock well with a sub standard psu.

 

Ace_2,
After looking at the Asus website,it appears your board doesn't have "official" support for your cpu.



http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

Your bios is 3 months old,the newest one is here(which say's supports new cpu):

http://support.asus.com.tw/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Don't be afraid of flashing your bios.If you do it correctly you will see how easy it is.Once flashing starts it only takes a few seconds.

Just make sure before you decide to do it you reset everything in your bios to defaults.

Try the newest bios and see how you go.

If your current problem is still there at least you have eliminated the bios as being the problem.

To see approximately what your system needs as far as wattage goes have a look here:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Fill in the details as accurately as you can,see what the result is and let us know.

 

First explain to me how to get the shots of the windows, then I'll overclock again to my limit before the power light turns off when the computer restarts itself after exiting the BIOS setup.

 

I take screenshots with a capture program, I use Gadwin Printscreen. Once I capture it, I ftp it to my website and then link to it.

Crowy is using ImageShack which will let you host your pictures there.
http://imageshack.us/

There are lots of screen capture programs. I've always used Gadwin just because it's easy and free.

 

Ace_2,
Go here:
http://www.etrusoft.com/
and download quick screen capture(there are others but this is the one I use).

Run the application.
Click on capture then hold down your left mouse button and drag around the screen area you want to capture then left click again.

Name the file and save it to wherever you want(I just save to desktop).

Then go here:
http://imageshack.us/

Click on browse,go to your desktop(if thats where you saved the image) and click on the image you want to upload.Then click "host it".

Now copy where it says direct link to image.

Go to the reply box here at AD.

Right click in the reply box and click paste.

At the beginning of the link you just pasted put this

Then we should all see a picture.

 

LOL!! Was typing at the same time!!

 

Ace_2,

You can also just use the link for forums, just left click your mouse to highlight it and copy the URL using the right click and select copy. Use Control v to put it on the forum. I save them to Notepad if I have more than 1 and just minimize it to the taskbar. Be sure to change the IMG, in caps at both ends to lower case img otherwise it won't work. BTW I use Screen Grabber Pro, also free!

Clock On,
theone :}

 

fasfrank,

I just learned something!!
Thanks for that

 

Uh-oh, that doesn't sound very good! I think I might need to up to an E6600 if I can't properly overclock because of that, unless I wait for a new BIOS that supports the E6420.

 

Whoops! My internet is slow today.

 

TO: rvinkebob; and others

I think you already baught it but the better CPU coolers for the money spent have bean ThermalRight since 2003. Built right in the height of the lil hottest CPU's on the market, the XP Athlon and later A64's (your socket 754).

As mentioned, many on here are buyint the Artic Cooler manly cause everyone else is and some cause of low buy in price. Some may have spent the money elsewhere before CPU cooler and have to budget But you said you were open to medium price if it is good and that will be ThermalRight products. One small one made directly for your's was/is the 'lil Ultra 90 Tower or later the Ultra 120 (non eXtreme) w/ mounting for s754 & 939 (eXtreme will fit as same but need 754/939 bracket)

The SI-128 can be had for $40 USD or the Ultra 90 @ $15. (just a step below the Artic in perfromance but miles above stock. The Ultra and Ultra eXtreme 120s can be had for $50 & $55 - $60 USD. The 4 pip Ultra is above the Artic in both cooling and noise, the eXtreme is likey the best on air today in my experiences. They give even a heat pump TEC cooler a run for it's money at only a 1-2C trail.

However, I'm just as new here so most go in favor of the regulars so I suggest you actuall yahoo search the reviews on many of the mentioned ThermalRight products and judge from there as these guys in their labs do very much what I do in my personal workshop. Spend just one day confirming some my suggestions so you can say you made your own pick and not just cause the others baught it.

Good luck

 

NuckNfuts,

I bought my first Arctic Cooler as an inexpensive replacement for my Zalman 9500LED on my old P4 3.0/800, and installed the Zalman on my new D-940. I wasn't happy with the temps from the start. It cooled all right but you had to keep an eye on the room temp because at about 28C the CPU temp started to climb to 52 at idle, and the MB went over 50C. If I ran Prime 95 on it the CPU temp would get to about 60-62C and the MB to 55C.

In May of 06, I had a Heart attack at work which effectively put an end to my working days. My roomate wanted a new computer to replace the P4 so I built him an Athlon 64 4000+ on a Biostar T-Force 6100 socket 939 MB. While I was ordering the parts I bought an Arctic Freezer 64 for CPU cooling. I happened to notice that Newegg had the new Freezer 7 Pro on sale for $16.99 with free shipping, so I added it to my order just to try. I built the 4000+ for my roomie and noticed that about the only thing different between the 64 and the 7 Pro was the mount.

Since I had lots of time on my hands plus the proper mounts I decided I was going to do a real world test between the Zalman and the Arctics across 3 platforms. The cases were all the same so I figured that it would be an honest test. Besides I was bored silly and wanted something to do besides stay in the house all day and watch TV. I had all the mounts for the three platforms and since the Arctics seemed the same, other than the mount, I set to work. First up was the D-940! I pulled the Zalman and cleaned everything up and installed the Freezer 7 with the thermal compound that came with it. The first thing I noticed was that the temps were 5-6C lower than with the Zalman, even though the thermal compound hadn't cured yet. It ultimately got to 8C cooler overall with the Freezer 7 Pro. Today, with a milder (10%) OC for my roomie the temps are 34/37 for the CPU and MB at idle in a 29C room. Loaded it will get to 46/37 for CPU and MB and hasn't been removed since it replaced the Zalman.

Next up was the P4 which I had put in a new case for a customer of mine who wanted something for his home office. I had a Freezer 4 in stock for another customer but it wasn't going to install it for a couple of weeks, I decided to put the Zalman on the P4. Dug out the mounts for it and installed it. The temps were right about 2C higher but I figured that was because the AS5 hadn't cured yet. After about a week and a half of pretty much constant running, the temps went down to where they were before. I pulled the Zalman and installed the Freezer 4. Out of the box, the CPU was 5C cooler! I let that run in real good and concentrated on the new 4000+. I dug out the bits to mount the Zalman on the AMD, and it performed pretty good. Low 40Cs at idle and mid to high 50Cs under load. After a couple of weeks I needed to put the Zalman back in the P4 to deliver it. I pulled it, removed the Freezer 4 and installed the Zalman back in the P4 and delivered it to my customer. I mounted the Freezer 64 on the 4000+ and fired it up. CPU temp was in the high 30s. Today it idles at 35-36 and gets into the high 40s low 50s under load with a 12% OC.

I've since built my C2D and bought another Freezer 7 Pro for it. My E4300 runs at 3.276GHz and idles in the high 20s. That's with an 82% OC running 1.392v on the vcore. I never got to install the Zalman on it but I don't feel that it would improve anything. While I realize my testing wasn't very scientific, the Arctics all outperformed the Zalman in the real world! I realize that price was a very real reason for buying the first Freezer 7. I've paid as high as $54.99 for one since. I've put one in every customer build since (38 so far) and never have temperature issues. It's way quieter than the 9500 and on my new C2D using the PWM control on the MB, it's damn near silent! On mine it idles at 28-30C and the fan runs at 800-1000 rpm. While encoding with DVDRB/CCE it gets to the mid 40s and the rpms go up to 1200-1300 range. Even running OCCT for 12 hours only raises the temp to 52-54C and the fan rpms to 1500!

BTW, Zalman replaced the first 9500 because it stopped cooling as well as it had been. I think the fluid came out of it because over a period of a couple of weeks, the temps started climbing higher and higher and I RMA'd it! The replacement was the one I did the comparisun tests with and was brand new at the time! I never fail to recommend an Arctic Freezer series to anyone looking for a good cooler. Yes, there are others that are better like the Tuniq Tower, but they are designed for extreme overclockers. It also costs a good bit more than the Arctic. I ran my D-940 as high as 4.01GHz with My Freezer 7 Pro until sanity prevailed and I lowered it to 3.71. The MB I was using was old tech and not really designed for the power demands of the D-940 at those speeds. Still, the Freezer 7 kept up with it and still had lower temps than with the Zalman at 3.71!

The bottom line is it's a very good cooler for a moderate price. There are others that will out cool it but most cost more, or are noisy or difficult to install because of their size and weight. I doubt that a single member here has ever bought one just because other people have. Most here ask for opinions or temp monitoring screenshots, but everyone I know here makes their own choices. I made this an issue a while back on another Forum, after I ran my "test" and I got into more than one argument. Many of the members PM'd me to let me know that their findings were about the same as mine, they just didn't want to get into the same argument. Some are even members here! Back then the thinking was that the Copper was a better conductor of heat so it had to make a better cooler because the fins were copper! I even got skoffed at for going through all that work, and there was even a suggestion that maybe I might not have actually done all the work that I said I had done!

As far as the Thermalright goes, the Ultra 90 is $23.49 without a fan. Add the recommended fan and that's another $11.75 (current Newegg prices). This makes it cost more than the Arctic Freezer 64 at $29.99! It's heatsink is made out of Aluminum and I don't think there's a person in this forum that would buy any cooler that didn't have a copper heatsink! Passive cooling and overclocking don't seem to work very well together as some members have found out, so the fan is a must! At 30db it's extremely loud, too loud for most of us! I'll take the Freezer 64 over the Thermalright Ultra 90 any day!

Best Regards,
theone :}