What was I thinking?

sparky05084 · 3 Nov 2011 at 22:32

Hey all, hope everyone is well.

Right then, this should be a laugh for you. I'm totally green when it comes to o'clocking and I have never really tried it (been scared to be honest and if you read on you'll see why).

My CPU is a Conroe E6700 2.66Ghz and Mobo is Foxconn P9657AA. Basically, I've been on here asking advice about whetehr or not I should take the jump to Sandy Bridge and an i5-2500k rig. Been looking at the MSI mobo's also, particulary the Z68 chipset. Think It's called the GD-65 revision 3 or something but anyway you get my point.

So, I decided in the end to hold out till new year and in the meantime I thought well my pc is 6 years old now and my Conroe has been running at stock ever since (stock Intel cooling btw), so why don't I try to o'clock it and see what benefits I get?

Big Mistake.........

Read a few guides and Googled "How to overclock e6700 on air" and I get bombarded with all sorts of answers. Well, I know what your thinking, what would you expect? I mean these are bloody good chips in my mind and I've heard they can get to 4Ghz with the right setup etc.

So, after a fair bit of reading I think I will have a crack at it and see how I get on. Restart system and straight into BIOS. Go to Foxconn Smooth o'clock settings and select Enable. Then, go to FSB and change from 266 to 300.

So, basically my multiplier is locked and can only go downwards so at 10.0x I'm thinking yeah I should be able to post at 3.0Ghz on air. Right?

Wrong. . .

Boots up and shows Foxconn splash screen. Then, screen goes blank and long beep for 3 seconds, pause, long beep for 3 seconds and then pause. Basically continues like that and I'm sat there not knowing what the hell to do

I force shutdown, pray that I can get back into BIOS (at this time I'm thinking I'm going to have to reset the CMOS and I have never done that in my life so wasn't so keen on that) and thank god it lets me back in.

Finally, I reset FSB back to 266, save and exit and then comp boots up fine. Go to CPU-Z and see my specs are all ok.

Yep, so that is my first experience of o'clocking. Really put me off but I imagine that if I want to do it then I'm going to have to get used to that long beep but trust me when I say this I didn't like it

Any advice on how to get it to post?

Surely it should boot at 3Ghz?

Thanks all and remember I'm very new to this sort of stuff.

decto · 3 Nov 2011 at 22:43

Hi,

You probably need to reduce the memory speed multiplier.

You most likely have 800Mhz DDR2 (PC6400) Ram.

Increasing the CPU FSB to 300 will clock the Ram at 900Mhz = Fail

You should be able to set a memory divider, aim to keep the memory at 800Mhz or less and you should easily boot at 3Ghz

AD

sparky05084 · 3 Nov 2011 at 23:02

Ah yes thank you for your reply. I do actually remember looking at something in BIOS that said 900Mhz, thus I just ignored and didn't pay much attention. See, told you I was green

Ok, that being said how do I go about setting this memory divider you speak of?

I have Corsair XMS2 ram. 6GB in total comprising 2x 2gb sticks and 2x 1GB sticks. Here are the specs. I hope this helps:

Slot 1 & 3
PC2-6400 (400Mhz)
CM2X2048-6400C5

Slot 2 & 4
PC2-6400 (400Mhz)
CM2X1024-6400C4

Dram Frequency: 400 Mhz
FSB:RAM: 2:3
Ram times are 5-5-5-18
Think that’s been clocked down to slower latencies. Command rate is 2T as well.
So yeah I’m not even sure if my mixture of memory is working to make it DDR2 but I imagine that’s a separate issue.
Does everything seem ok to you and is an o’clock achievable with what I have if not more?

Thanks again.

decto · 4 Nov 2011 at 22:47

Hi

Change the divider FSB:RAM until the memory speed is reduced

The ratio between the CPU FSB and the memory FSB is the memory divider. In the example you give it's 2:3

Leave the memory timings alone for now, just keep the frequency at or below 800Mhz and leave the command rate at 2T. You can experiment with the memory once you have the CPU stable.

In your case it seems to show the memory frequency at 400Mhz which seems a little low. DDR2 actual runs at 200Mhz but completes 4 operations per cycle hence an effective frequency of 800Mhz. There is usually little head room with Ram but providing you keep it below around 830 Max it should be ok.

I wouldn't use the auto clocking feature as it changes multiple parameters. You shouldn't need to increase the CPU core voltage to get 3Ghz. Once you have it clocked you need to check the temperature under stress.

Prime95 (google) for a couple of hours should check this but you'll need to keep an eye on CPU with something like coretemp (google).

Keep the CPU below 60C under stress and you'll be fine. Usually increasing frequency makes little difference in temp but the CPU voltage makes a lot so go in small steps and max 0.2v increase until you are confident.

AD