Asrock Dual Sata2 Overclocking

[Syd]

I am looking for some advice here guys. I have dabbled in the black art with varying success over the past 5 or so years, and acheived by best result with a P4 2.53 getting her up to 3.1 aircooled. This time I bought a AsuTek Water cooling system, The Asrock Dual sata 2 motherboard, a Venice 3200 939 and my Legacy 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS2700.
As yet I have not tried o/c ing at all, mainly due to my uncertainty of what the ram can do, but with this watercooled rig I feel as though I should do somthing!!!

Any of you guys got any experience or advice and i'd be most grateful.

Thanks in advance.

[BUFF]

It's pretty much the same as any 939 board except with the stock BIOS Asrock seem to have prevented it booting past 274HTT but you can get modded BIOS that remove that block.
With your RAM you'll have to be using dividers from the start.

best forum for it that I've found http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ulti.../forum/30.html

[kalniel]

The guys at ocworkbench have pretty much done it all with this board.

It's got two limitations for overclocking - 274mhz limit on the CPU clock, and inability to significantly overvolt the RAM or CPU.

RAM overvolting can be done via a volt mod (discussed on their forums) or using OCZ ram boosters. But you won't get around the 274 limit which means the maximum overclock you will be able to get is 2.74ghz, regardless of cooling method.

But you will have to use a divider with that ram.

[turgid]

I like the price of that board, 274 isn't a bad overclock. It's supposed to be a bit slow though isnt it?

[farooqm]

The guys at ocworkbench have pretty much done it all with this board.

It's got two limitations for overclocking - 274mhz limit on the CPU clock, and inability to significantly overvolt the RAM or CPU.

RAM overvolting can be done via a volt mod (discussed on their forums) or using OCZ ram boosters. But you won't get around the 274 limit which means the maximum overclock you will be able to get is 2.74ghz, regardless of cooling method.

But you will have to use a divider with that ram.

The OCW 1 & 2 Bios both let you go higher than 274 limit on the CPU Clock.

[kalniel]

I like the price of that board, 274 isn't a bad overclock. It's supposed to be a bit slow though isnt it?

Er.. no It's about as fast as any nforce 4 board at the same settings. The thing is you can't enable 1T timing on the memory stabley, which if you do enable on other boards gives you a % or two better speed.

[turgid]

wouldn't mind trying to overclock a 146 opteron on one of those baords then, £105 for an opteron 146 oem atm. Would put a scythe ninja on it and pair it with some corsair pc4000 2gb ram.

[kalniel]

Yup, would be good. BUT you can't get the voltage into the opteron for the best overclock. Most of the opterons great overclocking ability comes from the fact that it can cope with large overvolts without dieing. Thus I suspect an opteron wouldn't overclock any more than an A64 or X2 on this board.

[technophreak]

Yup, would be good. BUT you can't get the voltage into the opteron for the best overclock. Most of the opterons great overclocking ability comes from the fact that it can cope with large overvolts without dieing. Thus I suspect an opteron wouldn't overclock any more than an A64 or X2 on this board.

You cant get enough voltage into an Opteron for the best clock when this board is standard but there is a vcore mod you can do on it. It's documented on OCWorkbench. I did it to mine and I can get upto 1.7v vcore now. I only had to solder 2 points together and I have managed to get my 146 upto 2.9ghz prime stable with it. I'm not really comfortable with overvolting a cpu 24/7 though so I've dropped it back down to 2.6ghz at stock volts.

[kalniel]

*nods to the above*

[BUFF]

BUT you can't get the voltage into the opteron for the best overclock. Most of the opterons great overclocking ability comes from the fact that it can cope with large overvolts without dieing. Thus I suspect an opteron wouldn't overclock any more than an A64 or X2 on this board.

I disagree to a certain amount, most of the good Opterons go further on stock Voltage than the regular A64s - 2.8GHz on stock isn't uncommon. I wouldn't want to be running more than 1.55-60V continuously on air anyway & to me the 2.7Vdimm unmodded is more of a drawback.
It's a good board for the value conscious overclocker but for someone that must extract that ultimate last .5% then no

[asteroth]

my 146 is sitting at 2.5ghz on the asrock dual-sata @ default volts... haven't needed to push further... watercooled though, been up to 2.7 at default volts, didnt seem any faster, but was a bit wiggy, so backed off a bit. for 42 squid this board is awesome.

[mattio]

make sure you look for the beta bios lets you up the volts coz i think it's locked to 1.45 at the mo

[technophreak]

make sure you look for the beta bios lets you up the volts coz i think it's locked to 1.45 at the mo

1.45v is the highest you can go, no matter which bios you are on. That is of course unless you do the vcore mod on it.

[Syd]

Thank you all for your input, can someone please tell me what 'dividers' on RAM means.

[kalniel]

'Dividers' is simply running your RAM at a different speed from your CPU clock. So for example say you normally run your RAM and CPU both at 200 (DDR400 for the RAM) but you wanted to overclock your CPU to 250. Your RAM might not be rated at 250 (DDR500) so you might want to keep your RAM running at a lower speed than your CPU.

It's called divider because you usually chose a fraction to run at (eg 1/1, 5/6 etc.)