Have read Clunk's excellent guide to O/C C2D's, and...

[The Fish]

Got in 2 x 2Gb PC 6400 RAM, replacing some 2Gb of Crucial PC5300.

With the crucial I could get a clock from 200FSB to 215FSB and then unstable. Not a lot then. I can now get up to 227 FSB stable. Thats from 2.4Ghz to 2.775 Ghz. Now I am aware from Clunk's guide and others that the Pentium Dual Core as my E2220 is, will go a bit. But I have only ever upped the FSB when clocking, never the voltage on the CPU or RAM. Well I think I know enough to know my limits as it were.

OK the questions; Clunk talks about getting the DRAM frequency to set the divider. On that BIOS page on my ASUS, it gives a choice of auto or 667 or 800. But CPUID tells me the divider is 3:5, not 1:1 as I want. And no other setting is BIOS will give me that, have looked. Any ideas on that? Its a P43/45 chipset fyi.

And when I couldn't get the clock about 227FSB I thought, hmmm, timings at CAS 5 so a touch of one increment on the RAM voltage won't hurt surely? And found the auto setting wouldn't change and give me the increment. Now I know this board should do that so combing the manual as I write this.

Any other ideas on why its a fairly low clock on what is a very clockable CPU I belive from reading other articles on the net? Or is it just one of those things? Some do some don't...I think the RAm is up to it, Corsair and all, mobo seems ok ?

Any experience out there with this set up or similar?

Cheers if you can good people...

[mrt9888]

You don't need to do anything to the RAM, leave the voltage as standard because you won't need to overclock it since your CPU has a multiplier of 12.

If its not stable at higher speeds then increase CPU voltage a step higher.

[The Fish]

Ok mrt will do. I had noticed the multiplier was 12, a good start for O/C ing. I'd like to say I bought it with that in mind, but it was just luck lol.

[The Fish]

Am thinking running the RAM at 667 so it has headroom is correct? At 378.5Mhz at mo with FSB at 227. With 'odd' divider at 3:5.

Which would make your point about CPU voltage, as the RAM is not being o/c'd. That right?

[scaryjim]

hmm, from a quick google it looks like your board is a fairly basic P43 one. That means it probably won't allow a wide range of memory dividers. Just because a chipset *can* support a variety of overclocking features doesn't mean that every mobo As such, you'll be looking at setting the BIOS to 667, which is a 3:5 ratio. I think you'd need a more overclocking-oriented board to get the wider range of dividers (either that or there *might* be an advanced set of pages in the BIOS...).

With a 3:5 ratio, you can push the FSB to 240 before you'll start overclocking the memory, so I don't think the memory is your problem, tbh.

The chipset should support up to 333MHz FSB comfortably, so I don't think it's the motherboard that's holding you back either.

That really only leaves the CPU. Firstly, you might just have a poor sample. The fact that other people have got similar CPUs to higher frequencies gives no guarantee that you will be able to: mileage will always vary with each individual CPU.
Secondly, your CPU might be getting too hot. I assume you're keeping an eye on the temperatures? What level are they reaching, and how are you testing for stability? If you're using Clunk's guide I assume you're using Orthos? I notice that you say you've got your rig in a cheap beige case,which probably means the airflow isn't great - that's not ideal for overclocking. You also don't mention what CPU cooler you're using. If it's the one that came with the CPU then it's very unlikely to be up to the job of handling a large overclock.

The only other possibility that springs immediately to mind is that it's possible that other clocks in the system (e.g. PCIe) are linked to the FSB and you can't uncouple them. If this is the case, instability could be caused by, for example, your graphics card, or even your hard drives, as raising the FSB will drive them faster than expected. As I said, from a quick google that really doesn't look like a particularly overclocking friendly motherboard to me...

[The Fish]

Spot on scaryjim.

Two weaknesses I am aware of are no case cooling and stock cooler. Yes using Othos to stress using blend test, and temps seem ok, in spite of poor cooling. Any advice on an easy fitting cooler would be good, 30 ish to spend. Please tell me the Intel cooler is not the standard for fitting!
Temps from PCWizard 2010:
Hardware Monitoring : Winbond W83677HG-I
Voltage CPU : 1.25 V
+3.3V Voltage : 3.42 V
+5V Voltage : 4.94 V
+12V Voltage : 12.41 V
Processor Fan : 2360 rpm
Processor Temperature : 39 °C
Mainboard Temperature : 44 °C
Power/Aux Temperature : 38.5 °C
:
Processor Intel Pentium : Sensor DTS
Core 1 : 40 °C
Core 2 : 37 °C
:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT : nVidia Driver
Temperature : 55 °C
Temperature (GPU) : 56 °C
Fan : 40%
:
Hard Disk Monitoring : S.M.A.R.T
Hard Disk SAMSUNG HD252HJ : 42 °C
Hard Disk ST3500418AS : 45 °C
Hard Disk ST3500418AS : 37 °C

Amy issues there? Always been stable like this. Obviously if I am clocking it hard I'll need better cooling, but is an increment of Vcore thr next thing to try, appreciating it may be a weak one to clock?

Thanks again for advice.

*btw, I am aware its a decent 'budget' board and the bios is the bios, so think your point on dividers is good.

[Pob255]

Yes that's the problem with budget boards, the BIOS is often a little bare.

theres a couple of things to check, turn off "Spectrum spread" and it's often good to turn off the intel speed step (speed step shouldn't effect it but it has the possibility to and without it running often makes stress testing easier as a bad OC will show up sooner)
Your PSU might also be getting in the way, it's not a very good unit and could be rather noisey on the ripple, which again will get shown up when you overclock.

Have you manually set the memory voltages and timings of the memory to the settings of the memory?

You *should* be able to get 240fsb out of that without major issue, but as scaryjim said nothing is garrantied when overclocking.

On your temps the one thing that looks a bit warm is the hard drives.
Mainboard looks a bit high but not out of range.

[The Fish]

Thanks for the feedback. I suspect my hard drives get a little warm as there is no case cooling. Three of them on top of each other too, not a great deal of airflow.

The memory is at suggested timings already, and I will try the spectrum spread. But it seems a mild clock may be it. Oh well nearly 2.8 is a bit better than 2.4.

Things I have learnt: getting a third party cooler. Get a budget board and pay for it. But obviously I'm not a big clocker, still learning and its done me fine so far, just small clocking by the looks of it. The next board will be a 1156 with a quad i5 CPU.

Upgrade path for this is quad core next. After a better psu as already mentioned. 4 x 12v rails seems to be the future for about 55 squids. And have just ordered third party cooler.

[scaryjim]

Are those temps at idle? If so they're no better than acceptable - you need to give Orthos a good 5 minutes then check the temps again. If they're after the CPU's been loaded for at least 5 minutes, then frankly they're remarkable for stock cooling!

As to your new PSU, the important thing is to get a reputable brand. The number of 12V rails is neither here not there - a cheap PSU is still a cheap PSU. The brands that are usually recommended on here are Corsair, OCZ, Antec, Enermax, BeQuiet... I'm sure others will chip in with more that I've forgotten.

For a standard PC configuration of 1 CPU and a mid-range graphics card, all running at stock speeds, 400W is ample. For overclocking, it's wise to have a bit of headroom, so 500W is a good target. You'll only realistically need more than that if you're looking at having multiple graphics cards in the future (for instance, i'm currently running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX on a 750W PSU, but I'm about to add a second 8800GTX and overclock everything, so I'll need the headroom ). As far as PSUs go, bigger is not always better (there are tests out there of cheap 700W PSUs that blew up when asked to provide a steady 350W output ) - so be careful, and check your brands. A PSU is the *last* thing you think about skimping on

[The Fish]

Scaryjim, good advice thanks.Temps after 15 mins of Orthos blend test:

Hardware Monitoring : Winbond W83677HG-I
Voltage CPU : 1.21 V
+3.3V Voltage : 3.41 V
+5V Voltage : 4.92 V
+12V Voltage : 12.36 V
Processor Fan : 2556 rpm
Processor Temperature : 39 °C
Mainboard Temperature : 65 °C
Power/Aux Temperature : 52 °C
:
Processor Intel Pentium : Sensor DTS
Core 1 : 63 °C
Core 2 : 62 °C
:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT : nVidia Driver
Temperature : 56 °C
Temperature (GPU) : 56 °C
Fan : 40%
:
Hard Disk Monitoring : S.M.A.R.T
Hard Disk SAMSUNG HD252HJ : 42 °C
Hard Disk ST3500418AS : 45 °C
Hard Disk ST3500418AS : 38 °C

One, I suspect the middle placed one, of the disks has gone up a couple of degrees, but nothing serious I think. Thanks for the advice on the psu's. Summed up with cheap is cheap really. I have to rebudget on the other parts having finally understood it is skimping at your peril. Am I right in thinking the three drives also take a few amps as well?

[Pob255]

Well there's skimping vs good value
As you've seen with your current pc, running at stock is fine, it's only when you start trying to push the pc above stock setting that quality really rears it's head.

Although psu's are the execption to this rule because there is so much fudgeing of numbers going on, however you can still get some cheap units that are ok for a basic setup.

[scaryjim]

Aha, as I thought.

Firstly, it looks like the Processor Temperature and Motherboard Temperature sensors on the Winbond chip (the first set of results) are the wrong way round. So your mobo is running at 39deg, and the CPU is running at 65deg.

If you're not convinced, look at the Intel core sensors:

Processor Intel Pentium : Sensor DTS
Core 1 : 63 °C
Core 2 : 62 °C

Now, mid 60s is just about OK for a Pentium, but it's towards the very top end of OK. To quote Clunk:

Keep an eye on the temps, I would say for a relatively modest overclock like this, we don’t want to be hitting 65c, and I would hope that the temps would be much less than this.

I can easily see pushing the overclock up any further taking that into dubious territory. So, I'd say you need a new CPU cooler, personally. You problem is going to be getting a decent one that will fit in your cheap case: the good ones are tower based and quite tall, so they're unlikely to fit!

If you're thinking of doing this properly, therefore, I'd suggest a new / PSU / CPU Cooler combination: be prepared to spend around £100 on that lot - BUT: and it's an important one - if you make the right choices on case, PSU and CPU cooler now, you could carry them through to your next build. Lots of top end coolers have multiple fittings, so they'll go on S775 *and* S1156 motherboards. And obviously, a decent 500W PSU and decent case will be reusable too. So you could just look at it as getting started early on your new build, while giving yourself more room to play with overclocking in the meantime

EDIT: Just picked up your question about vcore: upping the vcore will increase the heat output of the CPU, so personally I wouldn't do that until you get a better cooler. Stick with what you've got now, which is a pretty reasonable overclock (13%) on stock cooling

[The Fish]

@Pob: Agreed there, on stock my basic case, cpu cooler and psu cope fine. As both of you noted clocking reveals the budget bits a little.

@sjim: Thanks for the winbond tip, the temps make sense now. Yeah expecting third party cooler tomorrow, not expensive so should fit...

I like your point about starting the next rebuild now with replacing the budget parts with some quality. I do have some quality bits there, my audio card is a M Audio delta 44 as I'm a muso and the pc is the heart of an extensive set up. Graphix and RAM are ok so your point is a good one. Next mobo will be core i5 quad based so I should get the less sexy but important bits right.

Sound advice from all you good people, and having known the truth of your words I've made the leap to action. Cheers!

Oh and I am leaving the current set up as is with a mild clock. Know the limits....

[The Fish]

As a point for newer clockers like myself, a 20 quid cooler brings the temps down nicely from the low 60's...although I can't account for why the drives have dropped too. Maybe just one of those open the case things?
*temps after 15 mis of Orthos blend test.

Hardware Monitoring : Winbond W83677HG-I
Voltage CPU : 1.22 V
+3.3V Voltage : 3.41 V
+5V Voltage : 4.92 V
+12V Voltage : 12.41 V
Processor Fan : 1695 rpm
Processor Temperature : 29 °C
Mainboard Temperature : 49 °C
Power/Aux Temperature : 33.5 °C
:
Processor Intel Pentium : Sensor DTS
Core 1 : 44 °C
Core 2 : 43 °C
:
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT : nVidia Driver
Temperature : 47 °C
Temperature (GPU) : 47 °C
Fan : 40%
:
Hard Disk Monitoring : S.M.A.R.T
Hard Disk SAMSUNG HD252HJ : 21 °C
Hard Disk ST3500418AS : 26 °C
Hard Disk ST3500418AS : 25 °C

[scaryjim]

If the first temps were taken with the side panel on and second with the side panel off, then that's almost certainly responsible for *some* of the temp drops - I saw a significant drop in idle temps with a stock cooler just by taking the side panel off. Also, the new cooler might be providing better case airflow in general - what did you go for in the end?

[The Fish]

I ended up with an Akasa fan.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Akasa...an-for-LGA-775

It looked like it would fit into the case, it did, and you might be right its blowing the air in the case around better too hence the hard drives coming down.

I'm taking the advice jim and getting a case and psu, decent stuff, before I do the i5 core upgrade.

Thanks feller!

*the temps were all with the side on btw.