overclocking from scratch

hi all im new to the forums here, but they have been of great help so far!

ok so heres the deal. i spent about a grand the other day on a system that i will be mainly using for games and audio recording and stuff (logic, cubase etc). the spec is

shuttle snb95g5 skt 939
athlon 64 xp3200 ~(winchester)
1gig corsair twinx xms3200xl
ati radeon x800 pro
200gb seagate barracuda 8mb cache 7200rpm
m audiophile 192
nec nd3500 16x dual layer black

basically, im thinking this will b able to run hl2, far cry etc at pretty much full whack and still be smooth. Ive gone for these parts because ive done some research and supposedly the athlon64 winchesters are good for ocing but the problem lies in the fact that i have virtually no knowledge at all when it comes to ocing. Ive been searching the web for some guides but they all seem to be either out of date in terms of hardware or are full of technical gubbins which im not quite up to terms with. dont get me wrong, i know my stuff in terms of normal hardware but there are loads of crazy 3 letter thingies here and there which ive no clue about? if someone could point me in the direction of a fairly easy to understand guide or just give me a quick rundown on the terminology?

Shuttles have poor overclocking tbh. No need to overclock it.

No idea how good shuttles are at overclocking, but heres a very basic guide to overclocking:

Your chip (in your case a 3200+) runs at a certain speed which is dependant on two things - the external FSB (or hypertransport on A64s - I think they roughly equate) and an internal multiplier. In your case, I think that the 2.2GHz is 200FSB (or HT) and an 11x internal multiplier.

It used to be that you could change the multipliers on these things, back about a year ago they started locking multipliers so the only way to overclock was to change the speed of the FSB.

This is actually very easy to do, in your BIOS there will be an option to set this manually. Basically, the best way to go about this is to up it by, say, 5 at a time, and each time check whether windows still boots and is stable. The way I do it is to overclock until windows doesn't boot, then pull back 5MHz, and use a program called prime 95 to see if the computer is stable.* If it isn't, I just pull back 5MHz at a time until it is. :)

The other issue is with the RAM. I don't know how far your RAM will clock, but the FSB (or HT) is, unless otherwise set, normally the same as the CPU. Seeing as RAM nowadays is DDR (double data rate) this is doubled. So at stock CPU speeds, the RAM would be running at 200MHz, doubled, which is 400MHz. This is what your RAM is specced up to do, so any overclocking of the CPU will overclock the RAM as well. The RAM may well be OK with a bit of overclocking, but if it doesn't cope well and holds back your overclocking speeds, you can set it, through an option somewhere in the BIOS, to remain at 200FSB. If you are a beginner at overclocking, I'd probably do this, so you're just overclocking your CPU and not the RAM, it removes one thing that can make things more complicated.

The final thing is about making your computer able to go higher by putting more olts through the CPU. Whereas you might normally be able to overclock, without extra volts, to say 225 FSB, if you up the voltage through the chip it will remain stable higher, to say 250FSB. The numbers I used are just demonstration numbers and not related to any overclocking of a 3200 I've done, so experiment with them. Don't push the voltage up too high however, 'cuase the more volts you put through the chip the hotter it gets, and you put too many volts through and itll overheat. I'll normally put an extra 0.1V through without worrying at all, so up from say 1.55V to 1.65V. I take it you're using an OEM chip, so the HSF (heat sink and fan) is the standard AMD one? If so, you wont be able to put too many more volts through it, as the HSF is quite small and the chip will overheat with too many more volts. You can probably check the temperature of the CPU somewhere in your motherboard options in windows. Somewhere below 45 degrees is ideal really.

So, anyway, thats a very disjointed summary of how to overclock your chip. There are many things that determine how well your CPU will overclock, your motherboard, power supply, your RAM etc, so just experiment. As long as you up the FSB slowly, and don't push the volts too high you should be fine. :)

*Prime 95 (available here) is a tool that simply makes your CPU work to its full ability calculating numbers etc, then checking if your CPU is giving the right results. Just install the program, and run a torture test, and leave it. If it lasts a few hours without making any mistakes then your computer is probably stable.

Hope thats all of some help,

Alex

thats properly good info man cheers! its going to be interesting to see how far i can get it to go, but isnt there a danger of frying the chips if it gets to hot? ive heard that 60 is the ceiling temp on most chips, obviously tho i expect that depends on individual chips. Is it worth looking into a way to whack in more cooling to the cpu? the only problem is space. could i oc the x800 as well? also what does HTT standfor? ive seen that written quite alot but not sure about it? thanks again!!

http://www.insanetek.com/index.php?page=overclocka64

I found that last night after posting, its a lot more complicated than I thought! It would explain why I'm getting quite poor overlcoks on my 2800+ though, if my HTT multi is set too high. I think I'll have to flash my BIOS though to get the option to change this. Arse. That means I'll need to find a floppy disk drive then.

One thing: If you're planning on recording using mics, you'll want a quiet PC. Shuttles ain't the best for that (although they can be made fairly quiet, a tower can be made quieter for the same effort).