Starter for 10 on Overclocking

a1ias

a1ias

a1ias

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7 May 2003
Posts
69
Straight to the point....Had many systems but never ever dipped my toe into the murky waters of overclocking, never really felt the need to.

However, just upgraded my system again with the following hardware:

E6750 "Conroe" CPU (@ stock cooling)
ABIT IP35-E Mobo
4gb Corsair 6400 RAM (4x 1gb)
OcUK 8800 GTX
Used my existing 74gb Raptor
OS - Vista Home Premium

Now, I've managed to figure out how to go in and adjust the RAM timings to 4-4-4-12 and upped the RAM voltage to 2.05. I've also had a read through the beginners overclocking guide above^ and have to say *GULP*.

What I don't want to do, is spend all my hard earned cash on this system and have it running at well below it's capabilities.

And so, before I start fiddling, breaking, burning, crashing, crying, screaming, banging my head against a wall, attempting suicide, smiling, crying some more..... I figured I'd download CPU-Z and have a look at what I've got under the hood at the moment, hence, the following screenshots:-

CPU.jpg


CACHE.jpg


MAINBOARD.jpg


MEMORY.jpg


SPD.jpg


And now to the point of this post.....drumroll......would you be happy with the above were it your system, or would you suggest that I take the time and effort to learn all there is to know about overclocking and go ahead and add some juice to this baby for some impressive gains?

"What would you guys do....."

Post is aimed at beginners to overclocking as well as experts; I'd certainly be interested in your experiences of the pitfalls to avoid, and I have to say, that initial guide seems like a hell of a lot to digest when you know **** all about the subject!

Thanks in advance for your input guys (and gals of course.... :) )
 
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You should be able to get the E6750 to atleast 3ghz on the stock cooler.

And that's not just a suggestion ;)
 
Take it slowly and don't be tempted to rush. I would advise that you invest in a good aftermarket cooler. There are many threads on here about which is the best etc. Download Orthos to stress your PC and Core Temp to keep an eye on how hot the CPU is getting. Read the stickies and have fun.:)
 
definitely reccomend it, ive had my current rig for about 7 months now, i was a bit cautious about overclockng as well but if you take your time and read the guides it gets a lot easier.
 
Is your 6* multi due to speedstep or did you set it explicitly? and, can you please post your temps?
 
@mk17 Those screens were at default BIOS settings so nothing adjusted.

For the last hour or so I made the following manual changes:

Configured BIOS softmenu to manual (this auto adjusted multiplier to 8x)
I upped BUS speed to 360 and CPU voltage to 1.37 (from stock 1.35)
No other changes and CPU-Z reported as follows:

CPU2.jpg



MEMORY2.jpg


Ran Orthos Beta for about an hour (some of that playing Hellgate: London) and all tests seemed to be passing fine...

I then rebooted to get temps from BIOS (not sure how reliable these are but the following were reported):

CPU - 41
SYS - 41
PWM - 49

And now, back in windows, ran CPU-Z and it seems to be reporting incorrectly! At first boot it kept jumping between multiplier of 6 & 8 and Core speed of 2160 & 2879.
It has now settled down at 6x/2160 but I know that's not what the setting is.

Anyway, enough for now, no rush, more reading tomorrow.... thanks for the advice thus far folks :)
 
if you can play Hellgate while stressing your system, you're probably in a good state. Best to run Prime95v25.4 for about 8 hours or so, and something like Everest to capture the temps.

hit Prime for small-ffts and remember to check "round-off checking" under the Advanced menu.

I think you might look at 380*9 easily enough.

These boards do seem to hit PWM harshly, but you can always place a spotcool over it for some peace of mind. best of luck, mate :).
 
FYI I have this CPU with an artic freezer pro running at 3.6ghz. Temps at idle with all my case fans (1 inlet, 1 outlet) on the lowest speed it idles at 33.

The jumping of multiplier is because you have speedstep enabled in the Bios
 
I think I will upgrade to a non-stock cooler to be on the safe side; is this one considered pretty adequate:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-017-AR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821

I need to do a bit more reading tonight, I'll also grab that software you recommend for the temp and stress testing, thank you.

I also assume that it is better to have speedstep disabled? But before I do, I'll try and learn a little more about what it actually does.
 
The ACF7 Pro is a very good cooler for its price, although not as beefy as say a Tuniq Tower (My recommendation).

Also remember when overclocking, you could also be overclocking your RAM which it seems you already are with your divider, might be best to run your RAM at lower that its stock speed while overclocking your CPU and see how far you can push it before overclocking your RAM to rule it out incase of instability.

If i was you I'd be aiming for 3.6GHz (9*400) and using a 1:1 (Sync Mode) divider as it will be running your RAM at its stock speed of ~ 400Mhz (800Mhz).
 
for the price the arctic freezer is a great cooler, @3.4ghz running orthos my load temps have never gone over 58'c, currently testing @3.6 and still the same temps, idles around 28'c, fan on it can be a bit noisy if running full speed but for 17 quid its a real bargain.
 
You need to find the limits of you Mobo, Mem and CPU seperatly, Never try to OC all at the same time.
Find the max FSB you Mobo and Mem will do and then play about with the Multi and FSB so as to get the highest stable system OC.
3.2 ghz is a good starter, 400 x 8 with your Ram at 1:1 ratio to your Mobo.
 
i would suggest like mk17 said running prime or orthos for about 8 hours, also a good idea to have temps infront of you as its all going, you wanna see the temps at max so when going into bios after its all cooled down again, i use coretemp and pc wizard 2008 both give the same readings.
im also pretty new to overclocking and yes it does get easier but im still confused as hell !!!!
 
adbp1 said:
i would suggest like mk17 said running prime or orthos for about 8 hours, also a good idea to have temps infront of you as its all going, you wanna see the temps at max so when going into bios after its all cooled down again, i use coretemp and pc wizard 2008 both give the same readings.
im also pretty new to overclocking and yes it does get easier but im still confused as hell !!!!
Click to expand...

Your AMD rig is slightly but significantly different when OCing than a C2D based system.
 
I think I need to stick to the 'don't rush it' advice so before I get too carried away, I'm going to get some vantage cooling in place.

I'll go with the arctic cpu cooler as previously mentioned and would appreciate a not overcostly recommendation that would be simple enough to attach to the PWM on my IP35-E (now that I know where it is :) ).
 
Very dumb question, as i'm new to overclocking too, but how can you adjust the multipler of the E6750 to 9 when i thought it was fixed at 8 maximum?
Asking as i have the same cpu :)
 
if so then why are ppl saying things like
"aiming for 3.6GHz (9*400)" or "I think you might look at 380*9 easily enough"?

My interpretation is 9 = multiplier 400 = FSB or wrong and getting VERY confused?!
 
allday247 said:
if so then why are ppl saying things like
"aiming for 3.6GHz (9*400)" or "I think you might look at 380*9 easily enough"?

My interpretation is 9 = multiplier 400 = FSB or wrong and getting VERY confused?!
Click to expand...

They must be refering to a different CPU.
Multi 10 x Mobo FSB 400 = 4Ghz PC6400 RAm running at stock (400) would be running at 1:1 with the other components.
 
ok cool, thanks for clearing that up.
so for 3.2Ghz i'm looking at 400*8. I assume 400 is a reasonably safe FSB overclock.
Also for Blue4ice's 3.6Ghz OC i guess he's gone 450*8? is that high?
 
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