Crazy northwood overclock on standard Vcore & Air cooling

SouperComputer

okay so I picked up a 1.8 Northwood from a fellow boardsie today, thanks peterK19. Actually I bought two.

I had intended building a media centre for the sitting room. I had an old crappy (or so I thought!) gigabyte GA8SIMLH-P board lying about that I picked up for free,
fairly duff coolermaster CPU cooler and a 512MB stick of TwinMos PC2700 RAM.

Didn't intend overclocking, but had a look in the BIOS, as you do just to look at your options and make sure that silly things like UATA disabled etc aren't set blah, blah. I didnt plan on overclocking in a major way but I had a look at my options anyway. No voltage or multiplier settings, but you could increment the FSB in 1mhz jumps. Also you could set the AGP and PCI to auto.

So I went for broke and tried 120mhz FSB, quad-pumped of course, not expecting it to even POST as its a crappy passive cooled SIS 651 chipset coupled with a run of the mill CPU cooler.

Posted no bother!

So I kept pushing it up and up, I couldnt believe it. I had to try several different programs to verify the clock speeds I was so shocked! got as far as 158 before it wouldnt post!

At the moment its running Stress Prime @ 150/310 (RAM), 2.698Ghz for 2 hours, @ 46Deg in an old P2 desktop case with no case fan. I get a blue screen if I run @ 155FSB. I might try a BIOS update to see if I can add some juice and maybe look into a decent cooler.

I have a pic of CPU-Z attached.

All things considered, am I making a big fuss over this, or is this what to expect from a northwood? It runs Superpi 1M in 1:06, i have no idea if this is good or not, and I dont feel the need to run it on the 800Mhz athlon beside me!

masteroftherealm

That is absolutly mental!

SouperComputer

update:

Got a BSOD @150fsb after 2.5hrs on stress prime, cpu temp 55DegC

It ran @ 145\360, 2.61Ghz opernight @ full tilt. The chipset only supports 533, so at 150x4 its way out of spec.

I have an old PIII Fan that ill throw on top of the northbridge and see if I can get it stable @ 150 or higher. All at 1.5Vcore, a crappy PSU and no case fan.

The funniest thing about this is that it is made from scraps. I spent €20 on the cpu, and dug up the rest from bits lying about! Ill post some pics later its pretty funny how crap this system looks!

I'm awful tempted to see how the other 1.8runs.......

SouperComputer

I was going to replace the NB paste with antec formula 5 (same as CPU) but the heatsink is pretty stuck on. I might have another crack at it later.

Placed an olde PIII fan infront of the NB heatsink, still wont boot to windows @ 155, but im hoping for stability @ 150/374

I took some pics but the quality is crap. Ill take some later for your amusement.

Whatya recon, will it work @155 with better cooling?

masteroftherealm

Get an XP120 on that baby and see waht it will go to! Post this on www.xtremesystems.org/forums too man.

SouperComputer

masteroftherealm wrote:

Get an XP120 on that baby and see waht it will go to! Post this on www.xtremesystems.org/forums too man.

ill post up there at some stage alright. A

lthough the cooler is not to snazzy, I think its the chipset that is my bottleneck in terms of getting the CPU to clock faster. The chipset is only designed for 533 and its running @ 600 as I type. Ill try to cool the northbridge down a bit,or if anyone has a 800Fsb board I might be interested in it


Also the RAM is a bit slow for a CPU running @ 2.6Ghz IMO, PC3200 would be nice this would help benchmars I guess.

I must look into BIOS updates too, although ill be sure to back the current one up first! Are these chips multipler locked? I recon I could get a bit more if I could leave the FSB @ 150 and push the multiplier up.

Also, whats a safe voltage to rack these up to?

Evd-Burner

Jesus man that is some overclock for a system made from scraps, i cant even overclock my system.....

SouperComputer

okay, so sticky-taping that old PIII fan over the NB seems to have worked. It's been running all day @ 150core ie: 599.5 FSB 370 RAM, 2.976Ghz without a bother. Added a case fan too as this will be running for a long periods encoding video on the fly.

I might try 152, 153 but 155 seems to be a nogo without much better NB cooling.

Anyway, thats enough overclocking mullarky for today, time for some drinking!

SouperComputer

okay so a couple of weeks later, still running @ 2.7Ghz no problem.

Got myself an XP120 and an ASROCK board with voltage control and an 800Mhz FSB. Hoping to get a bit more out of this chip and then pickup some PC3200RAM

Any voltage reccomendations for this puppy? 1.6? 1.65? 1.7?

gline

SouperComputer wrote:

okay so a couple of weeks later, still running @ 2.7Ghz no problem.

Got myself an XP120 and an ASROCK board with voltage control and an 800Mhz FSB. Hoping to get a bit more out of this chip and then pickup some PC3200RAM

Any voltage reccomendations for this puppy? 1.6? 1.65? 1.7?

the northwoods take well to vcore increases, i was running an old 2.8ghz northwood (mates pc) on 1.75v or 1.8v for months and it was fine, eventually upgraded that system to prescott and sold the cpu and the cpu was fine.

mp3guy

I trust you've ran Memtest86+ to check for memory errors?

BloodBath

the northwoods take well to vcore increases, i was running an old 2.8ghz northwood (mates pc) on 1.75v or 1.8v for months and it was fine, eventually upgraded that system to prescott and sold the cpu and the cpu was fine.

That's pushing it. As far as I remember the generally agreed upon max safe voltage for a northwood is 1.65 if you want it to last any length of time.

gline

BloodBath wrote:

That's pushing it. As far as I remember the generally agreed upon max safe voltage for a northwood is 1.65 if you want it to last any length of time.

i was runnning it on watercooling at these voltages for over 6months and not a bother

SouperComputer

I trust you've ran Memtest86+ to check for memory errors?

yup, and stress prime, CPU burn-in and every kind of stress test I could think find! Been running folding@home also. The memory is not much out of spec, so it should be grand.

1.8v sounds fairly high alright, I anyway ill be messing with all the new gear tonight and ill let you know how I get on.

Temp wise on full-load, under 60c is a figure that I have heard, does that echo everyone elses' experience. ATM with the Coolermaster HSF mentioned earlier, its running @ 2.7Ghz between 55-56 on full load after an hour or so.

I have my fingers crossed that the overclock is not just a fluke with the application of thermal paste! I was using antec formula 5, which I am out of, so moving to Arctic silver 5!

SouperComputer

OK, so the new board was a total bust!

I put the XP120 and the chip in this new ASROCK board, and it would not go above 120mhz (480). There are no voltage settings, except for DRAM and AGP. Im really annoyed, it was a waste of time. Whats wierd is that this is an 800FSB board, so it should have no problem running @480, but there you go. Even updated the BIOS, just in case.

Put the parts back in with the old mobo to make sure I wasnt crazy and it booted @ 2.7 no problem. Removed the NB HS and applied some decent paste, hoping to get it to boot @ 155 (620) 2.79ghz but no joy.

Ill have to keep my eye out for an 800FSB board that can run at "in between" speeds. Any takers?

Whats the deal with unlocking multipliers on these? Can it be done in BIOS, or do I have to remove the cap?

If this chip can go to 2.7 on standard Vcore, there has to be more in it!

gline

SouperComputer wrote:

Whats the deal with unlocking multipliers on these? Can it be done in BIOS, or do I have to remove the cap?

If this chip can go to 2.7 on standard Vcore, there has to be more in it!

cant unlock these, they are hardware locked. yeh there is defo more in it with a bit more vcore. Damn shame about the asrock mobo

SouperComputer

looks like the PCI\AGP dividers are'nt locked on the ASROCK

*shakes fist at ASROCK and says "Dont mention overclocking in the box of a mobo if the dividers aint locked. Its 2005 FFS!*

Left the 1.8@2.7 overnight and the XP120 seems to have knocked about 7C off the temps, hopefully more as the paste settles.

On the VCore, I noticed an older 1.7Ghz northwood was running 1.7V core as standard, peaked at 2.2Ghz with that one.

anyway, to be continued as soon as I get a decent board........

Thanks for all your help folks. All in all 2.7Ghz for €20 aint so bad!

peterk19

I only noticed this thread congrats on what you got out of that chip why did i sell it? i might just overclock my 3.2 Northwood seeing as a 1.8 can do that id like another Ghz out of mine

SouperComputer wrote:

looks like the PCI\AGP dividers are'nt locked on the ASROCK

*shakes fist at ASROCK and says "Dont mention overclocking in the box of a mobo if the dividers aint locked. Its 2005 FFS!*

Left the 1.8@2.7 overnight and the XP120 seems to have knocked about 7C off the temps, hopefully more as the paste settles.

On the VCore, I noticed an older 1.7Ghz northwood was running 1.7V core as standard, peaked at 2.2Ghz with that one.

anyway, to be continued as soon as I get a decent board........

Thanks for all your help folks. All in all 2.7Ghz for €20 aint so bad!

SouperComputer

hiya pete, I was going to PM you a link, but I figured if you were interested you would stumble upon the post.

Unfortunatly, I didnt get to try overclocking both chips, just one that was chosen at random for the motherboard I had lying around.

Im guessing its possibly somthing to do with the chips coming from Dell machines. Dell may have placed a big demand on Intel for 1.8s that week so intel shipped what they could even though the yield was spitting out 2.5-3.0Ghz wafers.

Col_Loki

If the asrock has an AGP lock then id be jumping from 100 to 133 to 166mhz, ie the speeds where there should be valid PCI/AGP dividers.

With extra voltage, increased cooling and Pc2700 Ram i would reckon that 166mhz should work. The ram will be nicely in sync also........

SouperComputer

thats the bummer, I cant increase the voltage with this POS board. Still tempted to try the 166Fsb though. The chip o back in the original machine.

Im buying an MSI board from FS so hopefully ill fair better with that one.