Overclocking Novice needs help!

[Eternalaop]

Hello O.I.A.,

I am currently a overclocking Novice with very little experience in the area. But I enjoy doing it nevertheless. Because of this I have decided to save some money and buy a P4 3GhzC processor and A gig of Corsair XMS DDR 400. I would like to clock my P4 at 3450 Mhz and get a stable ratio with the ram. So far all I can come up with is a 2:3 ratio that would underclock the ram to 172.5/345 Mgz. Is this worth it? Also where can I go to understand Latency settings so that I can tweak them.

Thanks,
Logan Smith

[Beemer]

http://www.corsairmicro.com/corsair/products/tech/memory_basics/153707/index.html
- very good for explaining all you need to know about ram.

I have a 3.0 that runs at 3.75 but it is not entirely stable, right now I am at 3.65. I bought pc4000 ram which is rated for 500mhz, in this way I dont have to run a divider :wink: I did have to up the voltage to the core to 1.625, which creates a little more heat.

A couple of questions for you, first of all can you change your core voltage? Second do you have a 5/4 divider? And thirdly what kind of cooling do you have as far as the CPU goes?

[Eternalaop]

Hey thanks for the reply Beemer,

Yes my motherboard did support core changes, well atleast up until the screen went black and it stopped booting. I sent it back to be replaced and should have it back soon. It was the Abit IC7 Max3. Maybe you could tell me if it had the 5/4 divider. Other then that I cant really tell what is supported because I cant check :-( As far as cooling I hope to save up enough money to go out and buy the koolance Water system.

Thanks for the ram info ill go cheack that out now.

[Beemer]

That just happens to be the same board I have. I love it, ok here are some settings for you. Run a 5/4 divider, set your voltage to 1.625, make sure that the pci + agp is locked, then manually set the fsb (under softmenu->user defined) to 195. Granted that is not all you can get from your ram (200 would be the highest) but using the divider and your cpu multiplier of 15 that will give you 3.656GHz. If you were to set it at 200 you go up to 3.75 but like I said before that is not entirely stable. Make sure that you have good cooling though, the board comes with monitoring software on the CD, I would install that and see what your temps are. I would recommend keeping it under 60 C although my philosophy is keep it under 65 :wink: I would definatly invest in some cooling before overclocking that far. If you find that its not stable, back down the fsb, but I think that 3.65 shouldnt be a problem, you may even be able to go further. :wink: It really depends on how ambitous you want to be :D

[Eternalaop]

Sweet!
Thanks Beemer, sweet to see you have the same board.
Thats all the information I need, Thanks for the Corsair sight did help on exsplaning Latency.

[Eternalaop]

Ever wonder why when given 3 wishes no one wished for unlimited wishes?
__________________________________________________ ___________

Disney said it wasent possible in thr cartoon Aladin ^ ^

[Beemer]

Glad to be of service, hope that it helps you out. If you have any questions or problems let us know. When you get it all finished you should post some benchmark scores in here, there is a thread called post your overclock for that. Also there is a download of sandra in the downloads section of the site. That will allow you to run a burn in and test the stability of the system.

Guess I will have to change up my signature now. :lol:

[Beemer]

Just thought of something: When I first got my board it would post either, some of the settings may have been off or whatnot because all I had to do was clear the cmos. Dont know if that would have helped you at all your board may have just went dead..... Anyway it shows in the book how to clear it if you need too :wink:

[fstroupe]

My NF7-S manual recommends to clear the CMOS before posting the first time. Of course, I just read that yesterday, instead of before building the computer. :oops:

[Beemer]

Like I said before "ehhh, who needs manuals!" :wink:

[Roadracer_4ever]

Like I said before "ehhh, who needs manuals!" :wink:

Lol....sounds like my room mate....he's always in a hurry to get things done and likes shortcuts. (ie. hand threading two of 4 screws into the power supply so he can get on with the rest of the install) the side panel never gets put back on cuz he always seems to have something going wrong with it. It sits under his desk where the cat likes to stick it's nose inside and see how close it can get it's nose to the cpu fan as well. Last i checked it had about a half a cat's worth of shedded fur inside....lol..
Willhave to get myself a dig cam and take some pics of it for ya sometime....kinda looks like a Frankenpc :shock: :roll: