Reassurance needed

[dan653]

ok not overclocked anything before, so after some reading i cautiously started to follow the stickies here, nudging up my fsb, adjusting my ram divider to keep it at ddr2 800 (400mhz), then testing stability for 15-30mins, basically maxing out both cores with orthos and waiting for the temps to plateau and then running it for a further 15 mins or so, rinse and repeat

now i'm at 3.2ghz (400x8) with a 1:1 divider and its been running for the last couple of days, happily idling at 40 (coretemp) and going upto 55-60 under load with no problems whatsoever

the two things i've need some reassurance were...

i never had to up any of voltages to get the thing to boot, like i was expecting, is this normal?

secondly, where should i go from here? keep going or would the 1:1 ratio be more beneficial to me than a few extra mhz

my system is as follows, cpu is air-cooled using a zalaman cnps aeroflower (i dont remember which, its from my old p4 system)

 

[Cob]

3.2ghz on stock voltage isn't unusual. Whether it would be able to pass an 8 hour Orthos run is another matter, but you haven't come across any issues yet.

55-60c under load is grand (~75-78c running Orthos is the sensible upper limit, tho some people are happy to go higher), so there's no real reason not to keep upping the FSB, adding some voltage when needed. Your Ballistix will probably let you run 1:1 til way over 500mhz.

 

[dan653]

cool, i really need to read up on memory as dont really understand timings and what they all mean just yet, i've just got them set to timings on the crucial spec sheet 2.2v 400mhz 4-4-4-12 (off the top of my head)

what kind of test should i be running in orthos for a marathon session to properly test the stability?

 

[Cob]

I would set them to 5-5-5-15 til you've finished clocking the CPU. You may get close to 480mhz at 1:1 and 4-4-4-12, but you can worry about that later.

The Blend test in Orthos tests both the CPU and memory, but your memory should be fine atm and so the Small FFT CPU test should be good enough. And for quick 30-60min tests you can try OCCT's Mix test.