Patriot SL overclocking

[pietrek]

Hi everyone!

I've got a 2GB set of Patriot's SignatureLine (5-5-5-15 psd22g800kh) 800MHz RAM, I had to bump 'em up to 889MHz to o/c a Pentium 2160 on an Asus P5B-VM (it's the weirdness of this mobo... Won't let you go to 266 FSB unless you run the RAM at 889MHz, even tho' it officialy supports 1066FSB CPUs).
Now, do you guys think it's safe? A friend of mine told me that they are probably running on the edge, and I should get something better (like OCZ, or GEIL), or give up the overclocking.
I keep them on standard 1.8V (thinking about bumping to 1.85), everything seems to be stable, memtest passes, Prime 95 runs OK (gave it a one hour run), and games play

Memory sticks are slightly warm, the only hot thing there is the chipset's radiator which burns my fingers, but HW monitor indicates 35 degrees celcius. This means the radiator is doing its job which is being hot, I guess

Is he right, isn't that too much for an ordinary (mean no hardcore, OC designed) RAM, should I get something better before these sticks fry?

I'd like to see your opinions... I'm kinda confused... :-/

TIA!

 

[BillParrish]

Gratz, you have done everything you need/should do. It is amazing how many people will never even bother to stick a finger on the ram to check its temp.

No, you have done all the testing I can think of, and most importantly they are not hot. It most likely would not hurt them a bit to go to 1.85 but if all is well there is no need to as it will just generate a little more heat. It is voltage and heat that kills ram.


I would ask your friend, they are not hot, they are not overvolted, what makes you think they are prone to failure ? Then turn you BS meter on, it will likely get pegged.

A lot of "hardcore ram" is nothing but normal ram, tested for high speed and slapped in between fancy looking heats spreaders and the price doubled. You got some good chips that OC well and I am not a big fan of "heat spreaders" anyway, if you have decent airflow in the case (and you must since they do not get hot) you are good to go.


If anything I would consider buying another pair of those while prices are cheap unless you are thinking of upgrading to DDR3 sometime soon. Even if the OS you are using cannot "see" all 4GB it helps and if and when you upgrade to Vista or your hardware in general you will be good to go. Memory is dirt cheap now. Or even better put it towards an new video card if you need one. If you are going to keep that board, a small fan hot melt or superglued to the chipset heatsink/rad would be the best thing you coud do.

 

[pietrek]

Thanks a lot for the reply mate!

That's what I suspected, from the beginning and you confirmed it. See, my friend is trying to convince me, that it's the frequency that kills overclocked hardware, and I wanted to convince him that it's the voltage and heat (heat is usually a combination of frequency and voltage) and with proper cooling everything will be just as durable as it was on stock speeds (unless someone's going like 3GHz or something ).

As for the chipset, well, I like this mobo and I'd like to keep it for some time, so I think I'll get it a small fan some time soon. On the other hand, I've heard that these P/G965 radiators have always been a bit too hot... Dunno if that's true tho', never had an Intel before


Thanks a lot again, best regards.