First overclocking attempt.

rabbitinlights · 29-08-2003 7:43pm #1

I have the following setup:

Abit IC-7
P4 2.4Ghz
2 x 512Mb Matched Corsair PC3200
Skyhawk Midi Tower

I have been slowly bringing it up over the last few days, letting it run for a while to see if its ok, At the moment its running at 3.01Ghz........ I've never tried overclocking before this, and i just checked on sandra and the "CPU core voltage" is 1.5V and the CPU temp has been changing between 43.5C-46.5C is this ok?

How do i make sure everything is fine? do i run the burn in test for a few hours and check the results?

What damage (if any) am i doing to my PC?

Sean

Creamy Goodness · 29-08-2003 8:35pm

i think to make sure u overclock successfully is to run a program called prime95 for a few hours i'm not sure though.

nice system i have the same cept for a 3ghz chip i can't wait til i start to overclock but my system atm has bad air flow and i'm too lazy to fix it.

aibt ic7 is amazing ain't it?

one of my mates in scotland got the same setup as me with a 2.4 chip and he has watercooling and he got his chip to 3.5ghz :eek:

just shows you how good these are at overclocking

Col_Loki · 29-08-2003 9:24pm

Thats pretty good going so for i think !! Is your Vcore stock at 1.5v ?? AFAIK there are chips that need 1.525 & 1.55v stock so it seams you got a good chip. over 3ghz anyway

.

To see if its a stable overclock try prime95 for 6-12hours. Ive had overclocks that run sandra burn tests countless times and fail within 5mins of prime95. Im thinking your overclock should be stable, keep it up

Gerry · 29-08-2003 9:32pm

You may be able to get to 3.2ghz on air cooling if you have a good chip. You'll also need to ensure that your case cooling is good, to get rid of the hot air. Your temperatures are good, but you want to keep them as low as possible. Make sure that the fans are not restricted too much by crappy fan vents which have holes drilled in them.
As for the damage you are doing, well your chip may not last as long. But chips last for many years, its supposed to be 10 or 15. The damage isn't as bad in your case, because you haven't raised the voltage.

rabbitinlights · 30-08-2003 12:00am

Thanks!

Everything seems to be fine and i checked the Voltage and its 1.525, it was rounded down in sandra, one very odd thing though is when i load up MAFIA it wont start up? but when i slow the chip to 2.8 it loads fine? im gonna run prime95 tonight and see what happens...... very odd.

Id say im gonna leave it at 2.8Ghz for a while, but its nice to know what it can do!!

Sean

Sir Random · 01-09-2003 10:08pm

What speed is your Ram running at? (HOST/SDRAM ratio)
Did you lock the AGP/PCI at 66/33 in the BIOS? If Mafia won't load, it could be that your AGP clockspeed is overclocking your Gfx card. Better check in case you damage your card.

BigEejit · 02-09-2003 8:31am

I have an IC7-G and 2x256 mushkin level2 ... I had to put my vcore up to 1.6, my ram voltage up to 2.8v and my ram timings are 2,3,3,7 (spd detects 2,2,2,5) ... I'm burning in my system at these levels for another while (artic silver needs a while to be working 100% as well) ... before I start cranking it up ....

My memory divider is 5:4 (at 1:1 I got up to 230 ish, but I had to change my memory timings to 2.5, 3, 3, 8 ... I think what I have now is faster) ... and fix your agp/pci

And is it just me or is the price or ram gone bonkers in the last couple of months ... I got those two sticks of ram for €130 ... they are €216 now at www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk (in Kildare) ....

My temps are idle at 43 ish (room temp 22) .. after a good few hours of prime95 I hit low 60's ... I need to attack my case again :rolleyes:.. as Gerry mentioned about the cooling, you will need lots of air going through if you get the Ghz up there ... take a drill / hacksaw / dremel or whatever to it and get some more fans in there (elara have very quiet sharkoon fans, I have 4 of them) ..... make sure you have a good quality heatsink/fan on your cpu (i use a zalman 6500alcu) ...

rabbitinlights · 03-09-2003 8:00pm

Ok, sorted it, the GFX card was being overclocked, changed the ratio and it ran mafia fine and got through 6 hours of Prime95, so i have it running stable at 3.12Ghz on stock cooling!, must be a very good chip!! God Bless the IC-7.

Thanks guys!

Mountjoy Mugger · 03-09-2003 8:15pm

Originally posted by rabbitinlights
God Bless the IC-7.

I just hope my Asus P4C800-E Deluxe is as nice when I get it next week.

Sir Random · 03-09-2003 11:21pm

You should set the AGP/PCI ratio to "fixed" to make sure you don't accidentally overclock it again. Then you can tweak away at your fsb without worrying about ratios. You could easily have fried your gfx card that time (the fact that it froze a few times already isn't good for it)

netman · 15-09-2003 11:33am

you should be able to squeeze about 3.4ghz out of any 2.4c chip (800mhz fsb). abit ic7-g reports temperatures about 10 degrees higher than any other motherboard, it's already been reported and acknowledged by abit, so don't worry about temperatures until you get close to 60's.

if i were you, i'd reset the gfx card to default clock, set the memory to spd and run it a 5:4 settings, lock in the agp/pci to 66/33 and then see how far the CPU will go. once you get there, check out how far you can push the memory. corsair can handle some serious overclocks.

once you're done with all that you can start overclocking your gfx card again. depending on how good your airflow is (if you're using air cooling that is) you might find yourself with a pretty hot case and unable to maintain stability for longer periods of time.

prime95 is a pretty good benchmark for cpu/memory stability, i'd leave it running on torture test until it completes (overnight). if that turns out fine, then run 3dmark in a loop test overnight with gfx card overclocked until you get a stable system. just expect to see it crash if things get too hot, as it will be stressing out the hottest components in your pc - cpu and gfx.

i'd imagine you'll get a pretty near toaster after all that and have a need for a few more fans, or water cooling

the fun just never ends...

rabbitinlights · 25-09-2003 10:30pm

After getting a bit of a fright about my GFX card cutting out, i left my Pc running at 2.4 for the last week or so, but over the last 2 days ive been messing around and finally late last night i got it running stable at 3.21Ghz, I ran Prime95 for 12 hours last night and it passed no problems!! its running at 46.5 degree's and gets to about 50 when under load (from sandra)(is this Ok?)

Very happy with the P4 chip and the IC-7 and of course the Corsair ram is spot on!

Im gonna leave it at that because its on stock cooling and i dont wanna wreck it......... although....

Ps: thanks to everyone who helped out.

Col_Loki · 25-09-2003 11:07pm

Nice one, that looks pretty good to me

. 3.2ghz is a good result with the 2.4c , some people are getting 3.4 & 3.5ghz but alot of that is water cooling or high end air.

Temps looks fine aswell, when saying load temps you would normally quote prime95 load as that is prob the max load you can put on a cpu - normally a few degrees more than sandra load.

Well done

,

Loki

Sir Random · 26-09-2003 2:55am

Very nice!

46.5c normal to 50c load doesn't seem right with stock cooling. Less than 4 degrees rise? I'd keep an eye on those temps when your gaming but if you don't go over 50c, you've got a great chip there.
You could probably get your normal temps down a few degrees with an extra fan. You'd be surprised what well placed fans can do when you experiment.

rabbitinlights · 26-09-2003 1:25pm

The temps were while running sandra so im guessing they were not at full pelt, I ran prime95 again last night again and it gave a fault at about the tenth hour.......Grrrrrr

Now desision time, should i drop it back down and have a fully stable machine or be happy with the very late fault?

the fault was "rounded to .5, expected less that .4"

I have it testing at 3.16Ghz now so ill know when i get back from work if thats fully stable........

What do ye think:

3.2 with late fault
or
3.16 fully stable?

LegacyUser · 26-09-2003 3:05pm

yea ic7's are way cool,

my 2.8 runs grand at 3.9

Col_Loki · 26-09-2003 4:56pm

An error that late running prime95 is only a tiny ammount of instability. Its unlightly it will cause you any problems, but to have a rock solid machine mabye take down the FSB by 1mhz and she should run without any problems.

Of course you could get a better cooler and push it further...... 3.2ghz sounds nicer than 3.18ghz but performance difference is almost un-noticable. That late an error doesent warent pushing up your Vcore another notch IMO. Still a great overclock.

my 2.8 runs grand at 3.9

Wow you must be using a pommi right? Or high end water chilled cooling?

Damm thats a fast machine.

rabbitinlights · 26-09-2003 8:06pm

Im gonna leave it at 3.2, mainly cus its sounds better!! I think it will be fine with that amount of instability........ not as if nasa are relying on its calculations..........yet

2.8 @ 3.9, holy cow, what FSB is it at?
do you live in the antartic?

Post a Pic, Post a pic, post a pic!!

Sean

First overclocking attempt.

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