Overclocking Trouble.

F

forrehmmnd

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
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It seems no matter what cpu I use, i can never achieve the results people are commonly supposed to be able to get with those processors. I always end up having a ceiling that i feel is a bit on the low side, none of my parts are cheap by any standard, but i always seem to have to put stupid amounts of voltage through my cpus to get any sort of comparable result, and im not comfortable doing that.

Anyone have any insight?
 
Could just be luck of the draw. Even out of the same batch, the overclocking ability is going to vary wildly. Not to mention that RAM and motherboards suffer from the same thing too.
 
How many cpu's have you tried to overlock? You can't really judge your skill or luck based on such a small sample.
 
theres so many variables in overclocking its almost impossible to match some one elses overclock on a system.. ambient temp.. different hardware.. different coolers.. hell even different components on the same exact hardware.. so its pretty much luck of the draw if you can match some ones overclock exactly..
 
As my fiancee would say, you just have a lazy luckdragon. One of our friends has amazing luck...everything always happens better than he could ever possibly want...my fiancee always talks of hijacking his luckdragon in the middle of the night, but thinks it would be useless because, knowing his luck, the damn thing would escape!

Basically, it's just the way things go. I had amazing luck with overclocking stuff back in the day, then I hit a horrible streak for 5 or so years, and now I'd say I'm about average or slightly above average in terms of luck and overclocking. ::shrug:: the universe is a weird place.
 
Anyone have any insight?
Click to expand...

Per above, there are the lucky and then there are the guys that work at ensuring success by employing the tricks or what I like to think of as the "art" of overclocking.

With your P35 board (and almost all intel P965, P35, P45 boards the key to OCing is the MCH Memory Controller Hub also called the Northbridge. It gets OCed just like the CPU as you increase the FSB and keeping it cool is key to a stable high OC.

With only an 8X mulitplier you have to run fairly high FSB (400 to get to 3.2GHz) and the MCH needs cooling attention at anything over 266-300MHz Hence the factory heatpipe cooling.

About that heatpipe. Your board has an extensive heatpipe assembly. Thats good and thats bad. The good part is when it works it works well. The bad is that from the factory it seldom works as well as it should for a lot of reasons.

If I had your board the first thing I would have done before installing it in the case would be to carefully remove the heatpipe. It is held on by small plastic pushpins that if you squeeze them from the backside of the board will easily come out and release the heatpipe. Take special care to not damage the thermal pads under the MOSFET section near the CPU socket if they are used there. Save them for reuse. Then clean the top surfaces of the Southbridge and MCH and the corresponding bottom of the heatpipe. Apply good thermal grease (AS5 or whatever - any decent thermal compound will work better than the factory stuff) in a thin layer. Replace the pushpins with nylon screws and nuts found at a good hardware store. Usually they are in the "speciality screws" bins/drawers. #6-32 x 1 inch size works on every board I have messed with. Get two nuts per screw. Looks like you will need 6 screws, 12 flat washers and 12 nuts. Use I inch long screws and cut off any extra when done. Use washers where possible but not absolutely required, just depends if you can get one on where you want it or not. Refasten the heatpipe to the board with screw and washer on the top and a washer and the nut(s) on the bottom side. Insert all the screws washers nuts and get them all lined up and lightly snug one nut on each screw. Then starting at one end or the other of the pipe work along its length. First snug the first nut, dont crank down, just smartly snug, do them all. Then go back and give each nut 1/8 of a turn. The heatpipe should be on there solid as a rock but again you dont crank down like bolting a cylinder head to an engine block, just good and snug, or "smartly tight" is best I can describe. If the heatpipe is on solidly and does not wiggle at all when given a good tug, tight enough. Now go back and add the second nut and tighten it well. Tighten it a little harder than the first. This will lock the first nut and prevent thermal cycling from loosening the hardware. You can cut off any extra screw length with side cutters, nippers, toenail clippers whatever.

Then using silicone RTV adhesive glue a small fan to the MCH part of the heatpipe, its the heatsink in the middle. Measure the heatsink and get a 12V low (less than 1800 rpm or it will sound whiney) and get two as they seldom last more than a year or so and a spare is good to have. Usually a 40 or 50mm fan will lay on top of the heatsink just fine. Put a glob of the RTV in each fan mounting hole so that 1/2 of the glob is in the hole and 1/2 protruding out. Gently lay the fan on the heatsink (the board needs to be laying flat) so the fan blows down. Very very very gently press the fan down a little bit so the silicone adhesive contacts the heatsink fins so it will hold the fan. The idea is to NOT press the fan all the way down. You want the exposed RTV to get on/in the fins just a little bit to hold the fan but still want a little gap between the fan and the fins to ensure the blades do not rub. You have just made a do-it-yourself silicone fan anti-vibration mount. If you need to ever remove/replace the fan a quick twist and it will peel right off and any remaining silicone will peel right off with a fingernail leaving no mess or residue.

Give that a go one rainly day. I think it will help your luck change significantly.

When you have the board taken care of consider how you go about OCing. I am a big believer in a rational plan backed by testing to determine 3 key factors. How high will the board go FSB wise, how high will the CPU go, how high will the memory go. Each of those items is determined by attempting to eliminate the other components from the testing. This will give you an excellent idea of what to expect and also identify the weakest component. Then you have to start working with it as a system. A basic outline of how I go about finding out what a board will do is here. Basiclly I work like a surgeon, taking constant notes and testing as I go and never changing more than one thing at a time unless I know exactly what I am doing. And remember there is no hurry, You can use the machine at your present settings and then (if you keep notes) on a lazy day do some more testing. Eventually you will find a good high OC and know you are about at the board limits. Then you start tweaking the less used bios features. BTW leave that stuff alone. CPU voltage, MCH voltage, Dram voltage and FSB and memory ratio which ideally should be 1:1 for your situation with 800MHz memory is all you need to mess with once you set the memory timings manually in the bios. First find a decent high OC then mess with the more fancy bios settings. Keep it as simple as possbile at first. 3.2GHz should be a walk in the park (8 x 400 with a 1:1 ratio and it should not take more than 1.4ish CPU volts to get there and a couple of voltage bumps on the MCH. Set memory to highest voltage recommended by the manuf likely 2.0 -2.1 but go to the manuf web site and look up your exact memory and used highest given in the acceptable voltage range spec.

Lots of info here - and more importantly a testing plan. Concentrate on the outline/steps more than the details - its the procedure that is important.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1169366

Avoid "just trying stuff" at all costs. If you dont have a rational reason for changing a bios setting - dont.
 
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