Beginner overclocker - advice needed...

[StevieP]

I have just purchased an E4300 C2D with an Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA mobo and want to start overclocking....

Basically I have upped the FSB to 210MHz and dropped the DDR memory to 166 and using Intel TAT, I am getting 33 and 35 degrees on the two cores when idle and they jump to hovering around 46 and 49 degrees when I put them under the 100% load...

My question is - are these temps normal/OK and what are safe temps to be going up to???
I'm assuming that the "100% Workload level" is pretty much what a game will put on it???

Any advice will be appreciated....

StevieP

 

[StevieP]

Thanks for the advice, I've just read a bunch of posts stating that Intel TAT isnt all that accurate for temps, especially on the E4300's...

I've downloaded Coretemp and that says my cores are 32 and 34 degrees but I need a program to run alongside it to stress the cores - any suggestions??

StevieP

 

[StevieP]

Thanks for the info

Anyone got any idea why my memory frequency dropped to 150MHz when I raised my FSB to 240 from 230? Every 10MHz increase on the FSB upto 230 seemed to raise the FSB about 10-12MHz too - but then it dropped itself?!?



StevieP

 

[StevieP]

I was running the memory at 200 when I first installed the CPU (at stock) but then when I upped the FSB by 10, the memory frequency went to about 210MHz so I then dropped the Memory to 166 in the bios and on the 210FSB, the memory was running at around 172MHz.
So I did a couple of increases, to 220 and 230FSB and each time the memory frequency (still set to 166 in the bios) jumped about 10-11MHz so I ended up on 230FSB and the memory at 191MHz - I thought no problem!

Then when I upped the FSB to 240, the memory frequency dropped to 150MHz?!?!? (still set to 166 in the bios)

Does this mean my mobo has recognised the memory would have jumped over the max 200 and automatically dropped the frequency to 133 to accomodate?? (even though it still says its set to 166 in the bios?)

As you can tell.....I pretty new to this!

StevieP

 

[StevieP]

I'm impressed so far, this is the first time I've had a crack at overclocking anything but its apparently a crime to get an E4300 and NOT overclock it!

When I first installed it, all I ran was 3DMark and got about a 500 point increase from my A64 3200 (obviously mainly aimed at the graphics card) and going up to a 230FSB as mentioned above, it was up to about 9500 (1000 over my AMD system)

I know my memory is not the best so I'm not expecting miracles, was just surprised that the memory frequency dropped automatically rathern than me having to adjust it to 133???

What is the best overall system benchmark to run to guage what impact my OC'ing is having??

StevieP