It's watercooled... so do I overclock now?

S

Symon14

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
Messages
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Hey everyone. I recently just gathered enough money together to build a nice gaming rig for myself. I asked my friend to build it because, well, he's a guru and I am not. I had him watercool my CPU and everything.

So, now that I'm watercooled, I think I want to overclock... but the problem is I am a complete noob at overclocking. Before you start linking me to the above FAQs (which I have read) and various guides... link me to one (or explain to me) that has a step by step Complete Idiot's Guide to Overclocking or something. I have read guides, FAQs, etc, but just cannot comprehend (for the most part. I'm not a complete idiot). Which brings me to my main question... should I even overclock?

System specs:

Mobo: ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
CPU: 4600+ (AM2)
GFX: BFG 7950 GX2 (edit: lol, I had 9750)
RAM: 2GB Corsair DDR2 800 (PC 6400)
 
Nice rig BTW! Want to donate it to Charity? I will change my name to charity if you will :D
What does your water loop consist of? IE pump, block('s), tube size, Rad('s) and what not. Also what are your temps running now at load and idle?
 
cre8chaos said:
Nice rig BTW! Want to donate it to Charity? I will change my name to charity if you will :D
What does your water loop consist of? IE pump, block('s), tube size, Rad('s) and what not. Also what are your temps running now at load and idle?
Click to expand...

Hey cr8chaos, thanks for responding.

Everything I got, I got from Koolance via Frozencpu.com.

Case/cooling system: http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=28_43&products_id=180

CPU Cooler: http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=333


As far as the temps go, the temperature sensor my friend installed (which is then displayed on the front of the case) says I idle at 27-31C, and up to 35C when I play games...

But with PC Probe II (mobo software) it says my idle temp is around 45C.

Could the sensor my friend installed be reading my mobo temp and not my CPU temp?
 
You have that rig...and you don't know a thing about O/Cing? WTFMATE? lol well, i'd rather O/C through bios than software like asus speedbooster or whatever it's called. to begin with ocing you gotta know how to get into bios and cpu settings (DEL) My multiplier is 12 and the HTT is 200 stock. so 12x200 = 2400MHz which is 2.4Ghz. You want to try to up the HTT by intervals of 3 or 4. So you might try 12x203=2436mhz. You should get the idea. If you want extreme O/C's you might want to up the voltages too not too high. Right now i'm running at 12x218 which is like 2.62GHz on stock cooling :)
 
If you're asking if you should overclock, then I say don't do it. Overclocking requires dedication and patience. Do you really want to be bothered with an activity that might become tedious?

Wait a bit until your system starts to show some age. Then you could OC to squeeze out a bit more performance.

Also, approaching OCing with the hopes of acquiring an "Idiot's Guide" indicates that OCing might not be for you. When dealing with something like this, things can and will go wrong, and guides might not be able to help you. That said, if you do get into it, there are plenty of people who could answer any questions you may have.

But yea, if you do want to dabble a little bit, epiks had some good suggestions.
 
Stuey83 said:
If you're asking if you should overclock, then I say don't do it. Overclocking requires dedication and patience. Do you really want to be bothered with an activity that might become tedious?

Wait a bit until your system starts to show some age. Then you could OC to squeeze out a bit more performance.

Also, approaching OCing with the hopes of acquiring an "Idiot's Guide" indicates that OCing might not be for you. When dealing with something like this, things can and will go wrong, and guides might not be able to help you. That said, if you do get into it, there are plenty of people who could answer any questions you may have.

But yea, if you do want to dabble a little bit, epiks had some good suggestions.
Click to expand...

Hey Stuey, thanks for replying. I appreciate your frankness. :)

Patience and dedication are things I do have, I just haven't found anyone who can explain the process to me in a way that really sticks to my brain.

Epiks, using your method, are there any real permanent risks I should be aware of?
 
You might Fry your CPU but no one has ever seen a A64 FRY!!! lol no since you're a beginer don't go above 1.475V. Other than that you're on the go. If your comp doesnt boot then try again you can always reset CMOS. For the first O/C you shouldnt raise voltages unless you want a big o/c but always b safe

edit; i forgot you're on water cooling like i said i'm @ 2.6ghz on STOCK COOLING and temps haven't reached 40c yet. you should be able to push a lot on that chip with an h2o setup
 
and still with a kooliance setup you are not @ the capacity to go to much. they are made to make mild OC's not major ones. So don't even think of doing the Htt yet just see what you can squeeze out of the FSB and ram and such.
Take screenies if you need help understanding what is what. GL
 
Read the guide the (cf)Eclipse wrote for Athlon64 overclocking in the AMD section. That is about as "Step-by-Step" as guides come. He basically tells you everything you need to do in order to overclock. Very simple to follow and you should be overclocking in no time.
 
Symon14 said:
Hey Stuey, thanks for replying. I appreciate your frankness. :)

Patience and dedication are things I do have, I just haven't found anyone who can explain the process to me in a way that really sticks to my brain.

Epiks, using your method, are there any real permanent risks I should be aware of?
Click to expand...

Well, so you already know that your computer's performance is based on the speed end efficiency of its various components. Some of these values are not set in stone and can be modified so that the system sees better performance. However, once you tamper with these values, the system can becaome unstable for any number of reasons. Increases performance usually comes from increases speeds, which essentially means that the electronic signals are transmitted quicker. Since you have increases electricity flow, you will have increased heat, and this can cause instability issues in the components. That's why a lot of people use watercooling with an OCed computer - so that they can dissipate more heat quicker and reach better OCed values.

Now, there are other factors involved as well. I'm not too familiar with them, but I can BS my way to a decent explanation. Now, certain components require power from the motherboard to do their tasks. For example, ram must be run at certain voltage levels to perform stabley. If you adjust the FSB of ram, or the timinings, they might become unstable. When this happens, the ram might behave odd behavior, or the system may reboot because of the instability. Although two chips of ram might have identical ratings, they allow for different levels of OCing. I myself had issues with a certain brand of ram when I tried to run them at the advertised speed and timings. One set of sticks kept forcing my computer to reboot after a minute no matter what I did. Thinking they were deffective, newegg rma-ed them for me and sent me a new pair. This pair was stable for a about a half hour before it crashed the system. Increasing the voltages allowed me to squeeze more stability from the ram, but there must have been an incompatibility with the system because they eventually kept rebootin the system no matter what.

If you're adjusting ram timings, you would proceed slowly. You'd make a slight increase in the front side bust or timings, and then run windows. There are certain programs which tax the system for benchmarking which can be useful in determining whether or not the system will be stable at the new settings. If it proves to be stable, you would then go and bump the settings up a bit further. If they proved to be instable, then you would bump the settings back down slightly, or you'd increase the voltage supply (within a certain amount is ok, but too high can be dangerous for the chips), by a certain amount.

Then, there are other values to be messed with as well, but most systems allow for at least the FSB to be adjusted. I'm not sure what other options may be available to you.

That's why I said it might be tedious... OCing is basically finding the values at which your system becomes instable, and then setting the values as slightly below that. Increased cooling allows you to further push the envelope of stable values.

I hope at least some of this helps. Good luck!
 
Thanks a bunch everyone. This is really useful information. If I run across any other questions or problems in my overclocking I'll be sure to post them here! :)
 
epikz said:
You have that rig...and you don't know a thing about O/Cing? WTFMATE? lol well, i'd rather O/C through bios than software like asus speedbooster or whatever it's called. to begin with ocing you gotta know how to get into bios and cpu settings (DEL) My multiplier is 12 and the HTT is 200 stock. so 12x200 = 2400MHz which is 2.4Ghz. You want to try to up the HTT by intervals of 3 or 4. So you might try 12x203=2436mhz. You should get the idea. If you want extreme O/C's you might want to up the voltages too not too high. Right now i'm running at 12x218 which is like 2.62GHz on stock cooling :)
Click to expand...

One question about this. If I'm raising the HTT, do I need to worry about my other components such as my RAM?
 
Deffinatly time to overclock.

Looks like a killer system. Cant wait to see the results of what you can get out of it.

Just remember to go slow, monitor your temps and dont up the voltage too much (.2V and up)
 
How do I know when I need to start adjusting voltages? Will the system start to do something? The stock voltage right now is 1.41V

Also, if I'm adjusting the HTT which is the bigger number.. that affects my RAM and other components, correct? Do I need to do anything with those?

One more thing, kind of a noob question. What is CMOS and how do I reset it in case my computer won't boot?

Sorry for all the questions, I just want to make sure I have all of my bases covered before trying anything. I'm one of those kinds of people that has to have everything spelled out for them before I feel comfortable doing something risky.
 
Okay, here's what I have so far. Does everything look good to you guys? What's my next step?

ocing.jpg
 
1) reboot, go into your asus bios
2) find the jumperfree settings
3) fraise your FSB speed (small amount) reboot
4) boot up windows and run a benchmark or something
5) if you system crashes or gets a benchmark/torture test error, lower you FSB or try raising the CPU voltage slightly
6) repeat until you're a huge oc nerd

if you really want to push it, there are a few tricks you can do, like locking pci bus speed, changing memory timings, etc.
 
nanoschizzle said:
1) reboot, go into your asus bios
2) find the jumperfree settings
3) fraise your FSB speed (small amount) reboot
4) boot up windows and run a benchmark or something
5) if you system crashes or gets a benchmark/torture test error, lower you FSB or try raising the CPU voltage slightly
6) repeat until you're a huge oc nerd

if you really want to push it, there are a few tricks you can do, like locking pci bus speed, changing memory timings, etc.
Click to expand...

Thanks nanoschizzle.

Using this method I'm up to 2.6GHz and an idle CPU temp of 32C. I probably could go a lot further... but for now I don't feel like paying for a fried piece of hardware, so I'll leave it here at least until QuakeCon is over probably.

I also tried my hand at overclocking the 7950, and so far so good! I'm at 583/740 stable and cool!
 
Ok here is a much easier way to overclock, with a lot less rebooting. This is essentially the same as what (cf)Eclipse recommends in his guide which is no longer stickified in the AMD section.

Step 1 : Find the Motherboards Max FSB

  • Go into the BIOS and find the setting for CPU Multiplier, lower it to 5 or something
  • Now find the Memory Divider, set it to 1/2 or as low as it will go
  • Now boot into Windows
  • Start two instances of Prime95 (one on each core)
  • With Prime95 running, use ClockGen to increase the FSB in increments of 5 every 15 or 30 seconds
  • When a Prime95 errors, lower the FSB. From here on out keep testing with Prime and lowering FSB as needed until Prime can pass for 12-24 hours with no errors, this is your max FSB

Step 2 : Find max CPU Clock

  • Go into BIOS and change the CPU Multiplier back to stock, but leave the memory divider
  • Repeat all the ClockGen steps, except now not only are you increasing FSB, but the CPU speed will be going past stock as well
  • Get it to the highest Prime95 stable speed. You can also repeat at a lower or higher multiplier to see if that gives you a little bit more. Also you can raise the CPU Voltage to get increased overclocks, dont raise it more than .1 or .15V though.


Step 3 : Find max Memory Speed

Well...this is a bit more advanced, and I dont really feel like going into it. So you could just set the memory divider so that the memory is as close to stock speeds as possible. For example if your FSB is 300 and you set the memory divider to 2/3 the memory will run at 200 (PC3200 / DDR400 speeds). This way you dont have to worry about memory timings and what not, and you wont lose too much performance by not overclocking the memory at first, you can always go back and learn how to do it later.
 
Symon14 said:
How do I know when I need to start adjusting voltages? Will the system start to do something? The stock voltage right now is 1.41V

Also, if I'm adjusting the HTT which is the bigger number.. that affects my RAM and other components, correct? Do I need to do anything with those?

One more thing, kind of a noob question. What is CMOS and how do I reset it in case my computer won't boot?

Sorry for all the questions, I just want to make sure I have all of my bases covered before trying anything. I'm one of those kinds of people that has to have everything spelled out for them before I feel comfortable doing something risky.
Click to expand...

If you run the FSB too high and there isn't enough voltage one of two things will happen. It depends on how short it is on voltage. If its just short of the voltage it needs for stability, it will boot but then if you run a stress test and it freezes or crashes, then thats not enough voltage (or too high an FSB if your not gunna mess with the Vcore)

The other scenerio is that its really short on voltage and it just flat out wont go past a bios post, it starts to boot and just crashes before windows even starts.

Also, the CMOS is the chip that you access when you are booting into your BIOS. If you need to reset it for one reason or another. There is a jumper near the CMOS battery (looks like a watch battery). Just move the jumper over one pin and then hit the power button on your computer (it wont boot). Then move the jumper back into the original place and boot it normally. The only problem with this is that it undoes EVERYTHING in yoru BIOS that you have messed with or changed.
 
kill4killin said:
If you run the FSB too high and there isn't enough voltage one of two things will happen. It depends on how short it is on voltage. If its just short of the voltage it needs for stability, it will boot but then if you run a stress test and it freezes or crashes, then thats not enough voltage (or too high an FSB if your not gunna mess with the Vcore)

The other scenerio is that its really short on voltage and it just flat out wont go past a bios post, it starts to boot and just crashes before windows even starts.

Also, the CMOS is the chip that you access when you are booting into your BIOS. If you need to reset it for one reason or another. There is a jumper near the CMOS battery (looks like a watch battery). Just move the jumper over one pin and then hit the power button on your computer (it wont boot). Then move the jumper back into the original place and boot it normally. The only problem with this is that it undoes EVERYTHING in yoru BIOS that you have messed with or changed.
Click to expand...

Thanks a bunch for the clarification kill4killin.

One question. Do I have to mess with my RAM at all when I overclock my CPU? Right now I have my CPU overclocked to 2.6GHz, but I've done nothing with my RAM and I seem to be running stable.

I have 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
 
It depends really. Most of the time, you dont have to do anything with the RAM. Since your running DDR2, im not sure if this is any different then when your running DDR, but, with DDR, usually if anything you have to change what is called the RAM ratio. For example, say your RAM is at 200Mhz and your FSB is also at 200mhz, then you are running a 1:1 ram ratio. Now, say your in my place and you have your FSB at 255, using a 1:1 ratio, this means that my RAM is also now running at 255mhz (whenever you change your FSB, your RAM will change the same amount, or an equal amount determined by the ram ratio automatically). However, in my case, my RAM did not like this speed, so i had to change my RAM ratio to 9:10 meaning that for every 10 mhz my CPU ran at, my RAM would run at 9. This made things more stable for my system. However, since your RAM is DDR2 800, that means that your RAM is running at 400mhz (i think thats right) and your FSB started stock at 200. This i think means that your running a reverse ratio of 2:1, meaning that for every 2 that your RAM does your CPU only does one (i could be wrong about this as i have no expereince with DDR2 yet, please correct me if i am wrong about this). Generally speaking, unless you start to experience instability, you can up your FSB about 50mhz using a 1:1 with now problem, so you can probably get away with 25mhz before you notice any instability. If instabilities do start to occur, its just a matter of changing your ram ratio so that your RAM is running at a slower speed than its rated for so that it has more room to increase.

(forgive me if i never actual answered your question, i started to answer i think and then my mind wondered a little, but i think you should be able to understand your RAM a little better from that)
 
Look at your RAM under CPU-Z, it will tell you what speed it is running. If you'r just upping the FSB speed without lowering the RAm divider, you're overclocking your RAM as well.
 
Erasmus354 said:
DDR2 800 corresponds to an FSB of 200, not 400.
Click to expand...


Are you sure? DDR 400 corresponded to a FSB of 200. I thought that DDR2 400 would correspond to a FSB of 200, and DDR2 would correspond to a FSB of 200.
 
-=Antimatter=- said:
Look at your RAM under CPU-Z, it will tell you what speed it is running. If you'r just upping the FSB speed without lowering the RAm divider, you're overclocking your RAM as well.
Click to expand...

According to CPU-Z, my RAM is running at 434.0 MHz. Is this safe or should I change the RAM divider?
 
DDR2 800 means that the RAM is running at 400mhz, DDR400 means that the RAM is running at 200Mhz, you take the number and divide by two since DDR means dual data rate, and that means that whatever the clock speed is, DDR multiplies it by 2, and your effective speed is doubled, much like a processor such as an AMD does with their dual pumping to the CPU.
 
Symon14 said:
According to CPU-Z, my RAM is running at 434.0 MHz. Is this safe or should I change the RAM divider?
Click to expand...


You should be ok, just be careful, i was only to get my RAM to 240 or 245 stably. After that it started to crash on occasion. You may wanna change the RAM ratio pretty soon though if you keep going. Im guessing that since your RAM is in the 400's that your running a 2:1 ration, so try changing that to something like 10:9 if you have the option to do so in your motherboard.
 
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