POST fails on very minor increases

[RinRanRyan]

Hey there,

I have recently been reading the forums and guides on here as well as other information on the internet to make a start in overclocking my CPU. I felt that i had enough information and knowledge to start having a go at it; I downloaded the relevant software used in the process and made a start.

I went into the BIOS and tried an (what i thought was a modest increase) increase of the FSB by 10Mhz to see what difference it would make compared to the default benchmark I had recorded. Once I had saved and restarted, the POST failed and I had to roll it back to the last settings that worked. I consequently turned the increase down to 5Mhz which still didn't boot, 3Mhz didn't and 2Mhz did occasionally but sometimes allowed me to get to Windows.

So I thought I would make a post on these forums before I go and do something stupid and wreck the whole system! Does anyone know what the problem is I am having and how can I fix this? I didn't know whether it could be due to a lack of power or something but I really have no clue. I only want to obtain pretty modest gains, nothing ground breaking.

Here are the system specs:

2.90 gigahertz AMD Athlon II X2 245
Windows 7 Home Premium (x64)
Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. M61PME-S2P
4096 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
400W Power Supply

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps

(Sorry if I am missing anything or have written anything completely stupid!)

 

[EniGmA1981]

Have you increased your cpu core voltage along with the fsb? if not there's your issue - you need to give it more power to make it work faster

That's the same mistake I made when I first tried it - changed the FSB and it died - panicked and didn't try to overclock again for about 6 months lol

To take my CPU from 3.00GHz stock up to 4.11GHz I've had to put the voltage up from 1.22v to 1.45v - might not sound much, but on something as small as the circuits in a CPU that's quite an increase.

For what it's worth though, for 10MHz or so you really might as well not bother... you won't notice much of a speed increase until you start going around 200+MHz over stock speed

 

[RinRanRyan]

Okay that sounds reasonable, how much would you advise to turn the voltage up by? Or how would I work that out still remaining in relatively safe limits?

 

[EniGmA1981]

Depends what cooler you have, if you have a good heatsink with a decent enough fan then you will be able to put the voltage higher - but it is all relavent to what sort of overclock you want.

Start by taking it up by about 0.05v then increase the fsb until it won't boot (into windows, not post), then turn the voltage up a bit more, then fsb up a bit more... repeat the process until it's either really hard to get stable or you feel the voltage is too high (what's your stock voltage by the way?)

Also you want to be checking load temps after each increase really.. so download realtemp and intel burn test or prime95 - then after each fsb/voltage increase let it boot into windows (POSTing doesn't always mean you have a stable overclock - my system will post at 4.5ghz but it never makes it into windows at that speed lol) then load realtemp to monitor the heat then run prime for 20 mins minimum to see how the cpu performs under heavy load - if it crashes, you need more voltage for that fsb...

I'm not sure if my half asleep brain is making any sense at the moment as the words just seem to be falling out of my fingertips but if my ramblings confuse you, just say and I'll try to translate when I'm a bit more awake lol

Just don't try and whack it up too high straight off - it IS possible to fry things ok take it steady and all should be well.