how hot is too hot?

watchinthewheel

watchinthewheel

watchinthewheel

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Joined
24 Sep 2005
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17
hi, im a bit of a noobie at overclocking, i have overclocked my system and it seems to be running fine but im a bit worried about the temperature readings im getting, I dont know whats a safe level to be at.

i have a p4 775 3ghz running at 3.6 and a Zalman CNPS7700-ALCU cooler the temps i am getting are roughly 40c idle and up to 55-60c under load (thats under load of a game not 100% load from prime etc) I have no idea if this is too hot or not, the intel site only seems to have data on temp for the 478 chips and i have read that the 775 ones are quite different.

Please can you let me know if i should be worrying about those temps or if they are fine, thanks a lot. :)
 
ok I just looked in the bios again and checked a few things. I found a handfull of menus/settings i dont understand at all and was hoping you could tell me what im looking at:

in the power bios section:

system memory frequency: i have no idea what that means, i know very little about ram, im ok with most other parts but not ram, the options are:

1)AUTO (DDR 640)
2)1:1 (DDR 480)
3)3:4 (DDR 640)

which should i select, i have it on auto now simply because 640 is a bigger number than 480 and so i assumed better (not technical i know but it was all i could come up with)

the second one:

real time turbo mode:

the options are a list of frequencies in mhz its currently set at 266mhz which is as high as it will goi, but lower than my cpu clock. what exactly is this? is it a type of dynamic overclocking if you dont want to run a real oc system? should i turn it off in that cae?

finaly:

PCI-E frequency, the settings are either 100 to 150Mhz. i didnt think you could really overclock pci-e cards as such, can you let me know what im meant to be doing with that setting?



sorry for all the questions, but im really eager to understand a bit more of this overclocking lark ;)
 
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Jack Bauer said:
They are fine m8, dont worry. Not entirly sure what the limits are on intel chips as I dont buy them but that should be well within them
Click to expand...


great, i just needed someone to say dont worry its not going to melt lol. I had it in my head that it should be running between 30-40 i dont know why. Thanks. :)
 
I will try my best but I have not owned an intel for 12 years ( amd in sig ) and they use diffent names for stuff now.

system memory frequency . This is the ratio of your FSB ( or what ever its called on a intel board ) speed to your memory speed. You see the ratio in your post. Set it to the speed your memory is rated at unless you want to overcxlock your memory.

real time turbo mode: sounds like some silly auto overclock thing, increase bus freq a bit, lowers memory timings, but I aint 100% sure on that one.

PCI-E frequency, speed of the PCI-E bus. default is 100 but it wants to be just over that. I heard 101 and 105 are the best but ive got no direct experiance of it. Just changed mine and never saw much differnce. Its ment to be more stable tho at 101

lee

EDIT: you are better off finding some one who knows more about intel boards for more info on overclocking it.
 
thanks for the reply, i will turn that turbo thing off it sounds useless.

i am thinking of oc'ing my memory but i need to learn more about it first. Im even having trouble with this, the options for frequency are 640 or 480 but my memory is rated at 533Mhz so which should i use? im guessing 640 because i would rather slightly overclock it than underclock, or is that not the way it works?

ill get onto changing that pci-e freq when i restart my pc, thanks for the advice.

any more help/advice would be greatly appreciated :cool:
 
775s can go up to 75-80C no problem. Thermal throttling may kick in around 73.5C.

However, almost all recent Intel mobos do not correctly detect the actual temps. Most are between 10-15C too high!!! so you should be fine. A lot of this seems to be related to the placement of the actual sensor on the mobo (usually too close to a hot component like the chipset passive heat sink!).

As for ocing. I have the same ram as you. Best results seem to be as follows:

1: Enable the bios setting which allows your CPU to have an unlocked lower muliplier.

2: Raise your Ram speed to its default 266/1066FSB.

3: Do some reliability tests in windows for stability. If stable then increase the FSB speed a little more until you reach the point it is unstable. Then back off a little by say 5% and that is your approx max oc with the ram+cpu you have.

Leave the PCI-E on the standard setting as overclocking that can seriously mess up your mobo & corrupt windows.

Obviously all the usual commonsense rules apply with regards to volts/temps etc etc.

I have found that the DDR2-533 ram runs best @ a ratio of 3:4 with it on the 266FSB running @ 800Mhz. Sandra gives a good 2000+ more benchmark points as opposed to 200FSB @ 800Mhz. The beauty of the 775 is that lowering the CPU multiplier and raising the FSB does not increase the stress on the CPU if you leave the vcore settings alone as most mobos which have native 1066FSB are designed to take the increased load anyway so have stronger than usual heatsinks/mosfats.
 
i kinnda hit a brick wall with step 1 lol, i cant unlock the multiplier. its greyed out and i have no idea how to un-grey it do i need a whole new bios? The one i have is aimed at overclockers and so is my mobo so it makes things very very easy, to the point to calculating the overall clock of your cpu for you as you change the fsb, which is nice of it.


i had a look on the memory overclock forums and read how to do the ram, its in a totaly different section to the cpu in the bios and seems pretty simple to do, i have tried now and managed to utterly break my pc, thankfully (again because of my oc friendly mobo) i cleared the cmos and started again, i have upped (or more accuratly downed) some of the timings, does this sound right to you?

it was set to:

4
4
4
8

its now at

3
2
2
8

i tried booting with

3
2
2
5
and it wouldnt have it at all.

thats all latency timings and i havent tried fiddling with the frequencies, i need to know more about how its related to the cpu and whats possible to do before i want to mess with that.
 
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ok more poking arround has been done,
i have optimised the timings for my ram: 3,2,2,8
checked my fsb 960Mhz
checked the actual frequency i have oc'ed the processor to 240Mhz
set the pci freq to 101
set the ram to 3:4 DDR640

though in the post is still says my ram is running at 320Mhz! a lot slower than its meant to, i thought if anthing messing arround with ocing other components would push it up not down! the ram is meant to be pc2 4200 (533Mhz) :confused:

any advice on unlocking that multiplyer or sorting out that ram frequency would be great guys :)
 
Your memory is DDR memory so the effective speed is double the actual speed. The manufacturers sell the ram on the effective speed

With your ram set to DDR640 it should be running at 320MHz which is correct :)

I don't know how to unlock the multiplier though unfortunately

Nice overclock and great timings for DDR2 too
 
watchinthewheel said:
i kinnda hit a brick wall with step 1 lol, i cant unlock the multiplier. its greyed out and i have no idea how to un-grey it do i need a whole new bios? The one i have is aimed at overclockers and so is my mobo so it makes things very very easy, to the point to calculating the overall clock of your cpu for you as you change the fsb, which is nice of it.


i had a look on the memory overclock forums and read how to do the ram, its in a totaly different section to the cpu in the bios and seems pretty simple to do, i have tried now and managed to utterly break my pc, thankfully (again because of my oc friendly mobo) i cleared the cmos and started again, i have upped (or more accuratly downed) some of the timings, does this sound right to you?

it was set to:

4
4
4
8

its now at

3
2
2
8

i tried booting with

3
2
2
5
and it wouldnt have it at all.

thats all latency timings and i havent tried fiddling with the frequencies, i need to know more about how its related to the cpu and whats possible to do before i want to mess with that.
Click to expand...
Perhaps list your exact mobo + bios version + ram on this thread as its hard to know without these how best to advise you! If you can see the bios multiplier then its usually possible to unlock the lower one on almost all 775 mobos.
 
I had a reported bios temo of 186F :eek: on a Northwood P4 in Aug2003 when the ambient air temp in London @ the time was 100F!

This CPU & the mobo it was installed in still work perfectly to this day!
 
ok sorry it took so long to reply but here are the specs you need.

mobo-epox5LWA (alderwood)
RAM-OCZ PC2 4200 Platinum, dual channel.
Bios-5lwa:5607 (released 7th June 2005)

if i manage to unlock the multiplyer will I be able to push the clock much further? i thought 3-3.6 was pretty good going, but if i can squeeze any more out of it that would be great.
 
Page 7-19 of your epox mobo manual read from there on as it tells you exactly how to overclock this mobo. That Real Time Turbo Mode appears to be the dynamic ocing utility this mobo supports.

Try this forum to see if you can get someone to examine your bios to see if it has any hidden options.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=136

Page 4-21 says you can manually type in a CPU Clock multiplier.
 
hmmm thats interesting, your right it does say that you can just type in a number for the multiplier, but you cant, its greyed out and cant be selected. the manual doesnt say that you need to do anything to enable the option either. :confused: would unlocking the multiplier be a big deal though? im already running a 3ghz chip at 3.7 would i be able to get any more out of it if i unlocked the multiplier?
 
watchinthewheel said:
hmmm thats interesting, your right it does say that you can just type in a number for the multiplier, but you cant, its greyed out and cant be selected. the manual doesnt say that you need to do anything to enable the option either. :confused: would unlocking the multiplier be a big deal though? im already running a 3ghz chip at 3.7 would i be able to get any more out of it if i unlocked the multiplier?
Click to expand...
Unless your CPU is an ES sample you can only unlock the lower multiplier anyway. Check out that URL in my previous post as some helpful guy on there will unlock any hidden bios settings if you ask him nicely!
 
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