My Temps and Basic Overclocking

neon.uk

neon.uk

neon.uk

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Hi there, I'm very new to overclocking, but i have read a very extensive guide on another site and the guide on here.

Of course temperature is a big part in overclocking so i went to look at my temperatures. I'm running an AMD 4400+ at stock speed (2.3ghz) with a stock cooler (I will probably buy a decent cooler when I overclock so any suggestions on which are good price performance are welcome - i dont have all the money in the world to spend :p). ASUS PC probe is telling me i have anything between 40-50 degrees when im just surfing the net with a fan speed of 3000RPM and on startup the bios was reading 51 degrees. Here is where i get confused. These temps seemed high to me so i downloaded everest and coretemp. Everest was telling me 5 degrees which i automatically assumed was wrong. CoreTemp was telling me 15-20 degrees on both cores. Which one do i believe? How can they de so different?

I also have some questions about overclocking:

I am confused as to where RAM comes into CPU overclocking, the OCUK guide talks about the RAM divider, but I didnt quite understand it.

The guide says "Decrease the RAM divider if required to keep it at stock or less" what does this mean? What do I actually need to do?

I'm not looking to OC now (got exams :D) but i will be looking to in a couple of weeks or over the summer hols. I just want to make sure i totally know what I'm doing before I attempt ANYTHING.

Thanks for your help - be nice to me :D.

neon
 
Ram comes into it because it derrives it's timing from the same clock as the CPU does.

So if you bash your clock speed up a lot, you may push your RAM too far. Ram dividers (or ratio settings) allow you to run the RAM at a slower speed relative to the master clock.
EG, you have DDR2 800, you have a master clock setting of 480MHz, your RAM may well take great exception to those speeds, so you use a different divider to drop it's speed back to something it can tolerate.
 
How do i know what my RAM can take. Say i try to overclock to ~ 2.8ghz (my CPU multiplier is fixed at 11.5) thats around 240mhz main clock, obviously i go in stages to see if i can make this, but would my RAM take that?

Also, any ideas on my temps?
 
Generally RAM is much less tolerant of overclocking than CPUs are. Different makes and module sizes vary with regards to how far above stock you can push em.

To test if your memory is capable of holding a stable overclock, download and run Memtest86 (linked to in the useful apps sticky :) ). Generally I play around until I find a setting at which my PC will boot into the operating system, then Memtest to determine if the clock is stable. If it isn't, drop the FSB a notch, bump up your DRAM voltage or slacken the timings.
 
Ah ok i think i get it now thanks guys! Well, my RAM is supposed to run at 1.9 to 2.3V and its running at default 1.8V so bumping up the voltage a little shouldnt be a problem. When i go up in RAM voltage, do i do little jumps or could i jump from 1.8V to 2.0V?

Anyone recommend a decent cooler? Preferably under 20 pounds to handle a moderate overclock.
 
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The Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro is a good cheap cooler, it's about £15. If your RAM's able to take 2.3v then stepping up to 2.0v will be fine.
 
so basically i OC my CPU and then test using memtest86. If there is instability i up the voltage (obviously not past 2.3V). Should i up it to 2.0V to start with anyway? As 1.8 is below the optimum range. Also do i need to test memory stability during CPU overclocking or can i just OC the CPU, then test memory stability?

Sorry for all the noobish questions but i just dont wanna make any mistakes and break or fry something lol.
 
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