Help me - I'm an Overclocking Beginner

Soldato
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Well I've been poking at my new Intel 805D chip and have overclocked it somewhat but I do have some questions because I don't really know what I'm doing.

I've got the chip running at 3.8 at the moment, and I've managed that with a little bit of increased CPU voltage but how do I tell when it's stable at that speed? Is this where I run Prime95? And if it isn't stable do I just keep upping the CPU voltage at all?

Annother thing I've noticed is when I boot into windows I hear all the bits and stuff loading up, but the screen sticks on the welcome screen for a while, is this due to my Ram? I am using no-name ram in dual channel mode with timings that are most likely looser than something very loose. (4,4,4,12).
It's meant to be 533 stuff, so my aim was to get the chip to run around 4gHz with the ram at default, is this roughly what I'm meant to be aiming for?

And what exactly would higher quality ram do with regards to my overclock, will it help, or will it just add annother performance gain ontop of the CPU?

Thanks in advance,

Sorry bout all the questions so far :)
 
OK tried that and got the message "Hardware failiure detected please consult stress.txt"

Not much in there other than try to work out what's broke..

new ram, mobo, cpu, psu - any thoughts on where to start?

[edit and mbm doesn't work on this pc either :(]
 
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Anyone got any ideas here?

Ram is fine, Superpi runs fine.. what program can I use to check voltages with as MBM just won't do anything.
 
I tried running 3DMark 2k6 and it quit out when it got to the landscape bit where the tank battle starts (all CPU calculations). Games, I can play CZ fine for a few hours then it will just quit out randomly, and Oblivion works ok until it has to load outside bits then it just quits as well (though I need to patch it again as I forgot about that).

Here's what everest says about my voltages though:

Sensor Properties:
Sensor Type Winbond W83627EHF/EHG (ISA 290h)
GPU Sensor Type Diode (NV-Diode)
Motherboard Name Asus P5LD2 / P5WD2 Series
Chassis Intrusion Detected No

Temperatures:
Motherboard 33 °C (91 °F)
CPU 49 °C (120 °F)
GPU Diode 40 °C (104 °F)
WDC WD2000JB-32EVA0 [ TRIAL VERSION ]
Seagate ST3250824AS [ TRIAL VERSION ]

Cooling Fans:
CPU 2576 RPM
Power Supply 4623 RPM

Voltage Values:
CPU Core 1.38 V
+3.3 V 3.41 V
+5 V 5.39 V
+12 V [ TRIAL VERSION ]
+5 V Standby 5.19 V


It has just occurred to me though - on the motherboard there is an additional molex in along with the 8pin P4 and the 24 pin ATX header - am I meant to have that hooked up as well? It's not at the moment and I've not had any errors in the BIOS about the EZ connector not being in use.

PSU is a Tagan 480W unit as well.
 
Running OCCT (with Speedfan running) it doesn't seem to recognise my 5V line, I have the 3.3v, the 12v and the CPU voltage displayed.

Tried running the torture test, CPU got to 57 degrees, the voltages didn't look to change too much, but I did get an error about the CPU..

"CPU Not stable, as a security measure OCCT stopped measuring your computer. It generated a compututational error, and thus might not be 100% stable."

So have I pushed my CPU too far?
 
Plugged in the molex and started the test again and it's reached 7% already, didn't even get close to that last time.

Fingers crossed...
 
Yep that molex seems to have been the issue :) (please feel free to point and laugh).

Had it up to 4gHz, but it wasn't entirely stable with 1.475V for the CPU, so I'm dropping back down to 3.8gHz as that runs happy with much less voltage and I can't see myself noticeing the difference that much :)

Out of curiosity is it better to run my Ram at a 1:1 ratio with the fsb at tighter timings (4,4,4,9) or do I leave it at the 533 with default timings (4,4,4,12)?

Cheers!
 
Well at 3.8 it idles at 38 and load tops out at 50 degrees so I'm happy with that.

Just tried running 3DMark and it crashed on the CPU bit, will up the voltage a tiny bit more to see if that helps it along. OCCT passes fine, and Prime95 doesn't error straight off anymore either which is good.

The heatsink I have is the Zalman CNPS9500-LED with the fan blowing the air upwards, which is ideal as the Case is an Antec P180 so the 120mm fan above it sucks the hot air straight out. There is another 120mm fan sat at the back of the case (basically right next to the top exhaust) also blowing out the hot air - is this good? (I never really paid much attention to airflow before in all honesty).

The northbridge also has a Cooler Master RT-UCL-L4U1 Blue led fan heatpipe jobby which keeps the northbridge temp static at 32 degrees which is ok I guess.
 
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