Some OC tips.

[Holst]

Iwrote this in reply to a guy on OC.com who had killed like 10 peices of hearware in 5 months basically through trying to be an extreme overclocker with no real idea about what he is doing.
I though you might find it interesting/helpfull.

1 - Durons.....if your testing a waterblock voltmod or heatsink that may cause damage go buy a duron 600 and test on that for a few hourd/days. If you kill it, who cares just buy another. You dont want to kill a expensive Xp.

2 - One step at a time. If you want to unlock your CPU voltmod it then increase the FSB drop the multiplyer and overclock it, dont do all that in one go. Take things slowly, unlock the CPU and test it carefully once your sure its ok pop in a duron volt mod and test that out. Then put the unlocked CPU in choose a 6x multi and slowly increase the fsb untill you are unstable. Then increase the multi to overclock. If you do it all in one go you wont know whats not working and why, and your much more likely to kill something.

3 - Good PSU. without a good PSUyou wont get a good overclock..period. I recomend any PSU based on the fortron scource 400watt (such as a sparkle 400) simply the best overclocking PSU avalable.

3 - Dont run before you can walk. If you have never soldered in your life dont do a volt mod, or at least do some good practice before hand on a dead/cheap board, the same goes for CPU unlocking and other hardware mods.

4 - DONT RUSH... Stop and think, then think some more. Before you hit that power swich make sure you havent missed anything, one slight mistake can cost you dear.

5 - Research... Oppainter and Macci dont just buy random components and get great overclocks they spend allot of time and effort picking the absolute best and working hard to overclock it. There is some luck involved but if you pick the best components you have a much better chance of a great result.

If anybody else has any handy tips please share them.

[r0l0e]

aside from researching each and every components, i don't think each components are exactly alike. each of your components has its different quirks. much like girl friends ....

so know the PCI bus and agp bus limitations on each parts your using. for example, on boards that don't have /5. some pci cards, and apg cards will only reach ~38mhz and some ~45mhz or higher.

i can't stress more about Holst's point #3 (both of them )

[edit]

i forgot one thing, got problems? never forget to use google.com and AOA Search. if that don't work, ask questions on forums likes these. these people here are the friendliest people to ask. i think...

[SteveI]

Good Tips Holst...
I agree on all counts... especially, the research part. Not only the quality of components for overclocks, but also the theories and concepts behind them. I've seen many attempt to overclock, without understanding many of the critical basics, like multipliers and dividers.

Often, knowing what can go wrong can help avoid it going wrong in the first place.

[EPoX Tech]

Nice Holst. Only thing that worries me is your ability to kill even Durons !!

BTW - crimps and filters.

[JayJay]

Id like to add one piece of advice,

READ UP ON MULTIPLE REVIEWS OF THE SAME PRODUCT YOU ARE PLANNING TO PURCHASE

[WyrmMaster]

Well, i have never killed any hardware, so its possible to overclock without doing any damage. Good tips.

[EPoX Tech]

Sorry to be evil WrymMaster - not been as low as 156Mhz FSB though since before our 8KTA3+ which I had with Nanya PC133 CAS 2 at 162MHz maxed out at 8 x 162MHz.

I'll tell you I have killed some bits and bobs!!

[Random Nonsense]

And dont throw a wobbly if it wont work! Try to isolate the problem and if you still want to overclock replace that component. I've had multiple "bad" cpu's but found out that on my new set up the RAM was the bottleneck. Now i have some samsung in there i think the bottleneck is cooling....... though that needs more testing.

[The Spyder]

1 - Durons.....if your testing a waterblock voltmod or heatsink that may cause damage go buy a duron 600 and test on that for a few hourd/days. If you kill it, who cares just buy another. You dont want to kill a expensive Xp.

Holy crap! How did you know what i did :-D when I got my maze 3- i wanted to slap it on- and sigma STILL has my xp... so i found a dead duron with cracked ore laying around- and mounted it- it showed my how to apply the pressure of each spring.

Heres my tip!
Measure twice- cut once! With copper, plexi, lexan, casing, its all the same, on somethings, like a case, it cant be fixed...

[WyrmMaster]

Originally posted by EPoX Tech
Sorry to be evil WrymMaster - not been as low as 156Mhz FSB though since before our 8KTA3+ which I had with Nanya PC133 CAS 2 at 162MHz maxed out at 8 x 162MHz.

I'll tell you I have killed some bits and bobs!!

Yah, i was at 172 untill i got another stick of ram. I can still do 172 cas2.5, but i have found that i would rather have 156 cas 2 than 172 cas 2.5. Performance is almost exactly the same, 3d mark is about 50 points different and sandra memory benchmark is almost the same.

[Random Nonsense]

i've blown up my fair share of things, never overclock related though, two incidents with a screwdriver, on coolant leek and thats about it.

[WyrmMaster]

And you dont considera coolant leak to be overclocking related??

[MasterPooBaa]

here's one, others may not agree, but i think its useful.

Let your CPU overheat, at least once.
Do this slowly, with the cpu under full load and carefully monitor the CPU temp at which it freezes.
i found with both my old Tbird and my XP is that they have critical temps... anything under is fine, but even one degree over means a crash.

As every CPU + system + temp probe is different, so too are the temps, and ive found it useful to know what my system limitations are.

e.g.
with my epox mobo + tbird 1200C + undersocket probe the critical temp is a low 52C.
but with the same board and the XP with the internal probe the critical temp is a very high 74C