Far enough @ just short of 2.8 on an Opteron 146?

Meetgrinder · 15 Feb 2006 at 16:23

I'm thinking I've pushed my Opteron 146 Cabne 0545 as far as the Artic Freezer pro/cheapo Motherboard will allow.

Currently running prime95 and temps are in the mid 50s

Speed 2785.2 mhz memory on a divider and running at 232mhz HTT is 278.5 (x10 multiplier)

I think maybe the problem (aside from the heat going up) is this cheap ass motherboard - a foxconn winfast all in one thing. When I try for 280mhz fsb it puts itself into 'safe mode' and I drop down to 279 fsb to go into windows.

Will i get much further out of this chip by getting a better HSF (I think only a Scythe Ninja or G Power pro will make any diff here) or Watercooling, and a decent motherboard - if so, what brand? Just so long as it's not asus I am open to suggestions. Got an asus a8n premium on my non overclocked X2 and it's crap in my opinion.

Or am I kidding myself thinking this chip will push any further? The memory is the OCZ ddr500 running at stock volts and underspeed (should be ok up to 250mhz on that yeah?).

What's max safe-ish volts on this chip/temperatures?

Thanks for any help on this, my first real attempt at overclocking. So far it's dropped superpi 1m time down from 42s to 32s, but haven't seen an increase since the chip was at 2.6 and the memory running at 1:1, so unsure of any benefits by pushing further.

Meetgrinder · 15 Feb 2006 at 17:52

Arrgh. Just got a hardware error in Prime95 after 17 mins. Vcore is at 1.44. I've a feeling this chip isn't going to give much more, if anything. Bit dissapointed as I'd been led to believe when I bought the chip it could get 2.8 @ stock volts on this stepping. Not so it seems

With regards the cooling issue, the Freezer 64 isn't the best, I know from testing on my G Power Pro on my other machine. Am running case open on it's side but no other fans at the moment. Plan was to get water cooling but I'll need another motherboard first I think.

Hoping altering the volts will make it stable enough to finish prime95, but will try reseating the cooler as well - I thought it was ok at 28 deg c idle and 43 under max load pre overclock.

Meetgrinder · 15 Feb 2006 at 18:03

Further to this I bumped volts up to 1.48, got Prime running more stable, except the temps were nudging uncomfortably upwards - saw 57 degrees before I chickened out and stopped prime.

New cooling needed!!!

Meetgrinder · 16 Feb 2006 at 20:35

I've been kicking myself today whilst at work - the HTT frequency is still at 5x (it isn't obvious where it is in the cheap ass motherboard bios so it missed my attention when o/clocking) so that definitely needs knocking down to x3. That does mean it's been running at 5x 279mhz or 1395 HTT, instead of 1000, so no wonder it finally decided to cry uncle. D'oh! knew I'd forgotten something! Strange I thought it would give blue screens etc, but my superpi 1M time of 30.625 wasn't bad at all - much faster than my x2 4400, and no other crashes/errors.

Have also reseated the cooler but to do so I had to take a dremel to the northbridge heatsink.

Dremel 1 Heatsink 0

Thanks for those tips though - as my signature says I'm in the process of sorting out a water cooling solution. As usual I won't try things the easy way by buying an off the shelf kit though. If it works I'll post details but till then I'm not saying anything for fear of looking daft :S

Will advise on the results of the tweaks/mods/dremel carnage tommorrow - the thought of tackling this with a pounding head and full of cold/flu is making me ill. More ill that is. :S

Meetgrinder · 19 Feb 2006 at 15:35

Further to this I think I've gone as far as I can go on this cheap motherboard/with this cooler. After reseating HSf (AF64 Pro) it's made no diff to temps - I saw 58 deg c whilst running prime95 and that's just after a couple of tests on the first run, so not even sure if it's fully stable. Changed HTT to 3x (it was previously running at 5x 279) and it didn't make any difference.

My own conclusion is that the artic freezer pro 64 is overrated as a cooler. It may well work great for other people in other systems, but for me it's not been great. Cheap motherboard isn't great either - some more memory tweaking would be nice to squeeze out a few more mhz from the OCZ ram.

Maybe gonna order another Gigabyte G Power pro (it's great on my x2) until I can get my water cooling sorted, and another motherboard bought (roll on payday - again

). Just short of 800mhz overclock is great value for this chip, and maybe I'm expecting too much of a HSF - time to up the cooling and the machine specs, and aim for 3ghz!

(or I might have hit this particular chips ceiling and be wasting my time!)