Overclocking the Intel 2.4a Prescott

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Shodin10k

Gawd
Joined
Mar 13, 2005
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I have my prescott 2.4a running at 183fsb 3.3ghz rock stable (gaming on it for 12hours straight without a single hitch)

The system specs is as follows

Intel Pentium 4 2.4a @ 3.3ghz stock voltage
MSI PT880 Neo-FSR
1gig Crucial 3200 DDR

So far on stock cooling ive only tested it at 3.3ghz rock stable. Right now i have a CNPS7000b-CU cooling it right now testing at 191fsb 3.43ghz stock voltage. @ 192fsb and higher, system immediately crashes after a few minutes on stock voltage (testing using ATiTool to bring up cpu load)

I was wondering if I can stay with air cooling, and not have to use liquid to get to 3.6ghz (for anyone who has the same chip thats clocked past 3.4ghz) I was looking at the Thermalright XP-90 for better cooling, think it'll help?
 
Thats a bad ass overclock on air.

But you might have to up the stock voltage to get any further.
 
Ollin said:
Thats a bad ass overclock on air.

But you might have to up the stock voltage to get any further.
Click to expand...

Definitely, i have raised the vcore +0.14v making the system total 1.49-1.50v, and brought the clock up to 3.6ghz before. It would be stable in normal operation, but when i bring up the load, it'll crash in a few minutes. Thats why I was wondering if I can bring up the cooling if it'll help with the high overclock. Any suggestions welcome. Water cooling is an option, but I really want to stay with air, since its so much cheaper, and I plan on using the extra money to buy a videocard
 
Well the only things I could see that you may lack is the power to go any further. It could be your RAM or even you PSU that taps out when going any further. Also if you try to hit 3.6 it could be that the Mobo hits the heat threshold and it resets its self at certain temps. About the air cooling I recently got a zalman 7700cu hsf and it works like a charm (contrary to popular belief). There is other air cooling HSFs that work great out there like the XP120 or even the new zalman 9500(?). Look around see which one you end up liking because air coolin will save you money for that new vid card you want.
 
Wow, if you're running 512MBx2 in dual channel, then we had nearly (NEO-LSR) the exact same setup (I just upgraded.) Tell me you're not using a Fortron PSU :cool:

Honestly-I think you're at the max OC with air cooling voltages, i.e. below 1.55V. I switched from stock to an XP-90, and I couldn't raise my OC at all. I was at 3.3GHz, 1.47 Vcore. I tried upping the volts to 1.535 but I had no gain in stability above 3.3. What the XP-90 did help with was lowering load temps dramatically. I went from 70C full load during half-life 2 :eek: to around 55C during the game.

Even though it didn't help my overclock, I must say the XP-90 is a really nice HS, and you could use it for a LGA775 or s939 upgrade in the future. And I doubt you'd be disappointed with it, as mine didn't really help my OC, but the temp difference may have saved my CPU from an early grave.

However, at this point, I think you're ok with your temps. The XP-90 costs about $25 at some places, and a decent fan probably goes for about $10. So with shipping you're looking at at least $40. I don't think what you'll get from the OC is worth what $40 will do for other components such as the video card or especially the PSU. It's doubtful that your OC will increase much with better air cooling.
 
Thank you for all your input. I have an Enermax 460watt powersupply, should be more than enough for the cpu.

Remember, the cpu is only running at 800mhz bus speed, so its only pushing my ram 400mhz, which its rated for (as noted pc3200) So the ram isn't the problem.

The ram is in dual channel.

And thats true, air cooling difference shouldn't be that big if I switched from a 7000b to an XP-90 (i.e. shouldn't help me to overclock further) Maybe it is my motherboard......... Im going to try giving its own fan, I do have a copper nb fan laying around.
 
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