acceptable temps and some cooling questions....

vibe666

OK, so I have my new P4 3ghz (Northwood) and my ABIT IC7 mobo, but what am I going to do with it?

Video is the ATI 9600 SE Sapphire 128MB

I have generic PC2700 DDR RAM (2x256's) a bit of a loud PSU and a loud CPU and case fan (there's a bit of a loud theme here at the mo).

CPU temps are 40-42c at idle, and maxxed at 53c with the stock HSF. is this OK? what would be the temp that I should say hold on a minute here and stop?

so where do i go from here?

I don't want to go mad and spend 100's on mods and such, but i'd like to quieten the thing down a bit and get a bit more from it with a little overclocking (nothing too extreme), but i'm not sure where to start.

so where do I start?

what's the deal with all the multipliers and clock speeds and all that? (my maths is terrible btw).

i've been working in IT for the best part of 10 years but I've never really bothered overclocking until now, and I just wanted to have a go being as I have the hardware for it now.

thanks in advance.

***viBe***

dubdvd

vibe666 wrote:

OK, so I have my new P4 3ghz (Northwood) and my ABIT IC7 mobo, but what am I going to do with it?

Video is the ATI 9600 SE Sapphire 128MB

I have generic PC2700 DDR RAM (2x256's) a bit of a loud PSU and a loud CPU and case fan (there's a bit of a loud theme here at the mo).

CPU temps are 40-42c at idle, and maxxed at 53c with the stock HSF. is this OK? what would be the temp that I should say hold on a minute here and stop?

so where do i go from here?

I don't want to go mad and spend 100's on mods and such, but i'd like to quieten the thing down a bit and get a bit more from it with a little overclocking (nothing too extreme), but i'm not sure where to start.

so where do I start?

what's the deal with all the multipliers and clock speeds and all that? (my maths is terrible btw).

i've been working in IT for the best part of 10 years but I've never really bothered overclocking until now, and I just wanted to have a go being as I have the hardware for it now.

thanks in advance.

***viBe***

ok then sorry i didnt get back on to you earlier...Anyhow the the cpu and mobo are not the prob ..the mobo is one of the best if not the best for overclocking and if you up the fbs on the cpu ...you should get about 3.6ghz with a bit of luck ?????
your temps are normal for the set up you have with a stock hsf so dont worry about that ..yet..
The gpu will not get you good scores on the likes of 3dmark and so on it is a mid range card which is fine btw "seems i sold you this set up" i better not say anything bad ..........your memory will hold you back at the moment thats where you trouble lies .....you will need at least pc3200 or get some pc4000 adata is cheap and good for overclocking it runs to 500mhz and above

so to put it simple youll need memory and maybe a new gpu if you plan on running any of the latest games and so on


Also just go into the bios at boot up and put the fbs up buy about 5 at the begining to see how high she will go when you start getting it up high and she wont boot anymore try increaseing the cpu voltage "a little" remember only a little at a time ....with the set up i have at the moment i can increase the fbs up to 240 ...you will try get it up to 20 for starter but do it step by step then download sisoft sandra and each time you up the fbs see what increase you get in the cpu and memory benckmarks ....and to really test if the system is stable download a program called prime 95 and run it for a couple of hours to see if it is sable
i can go on and on about this for ever ..have you read any of col loki,s stickys above there very good and the is tons of stuff on the web ...its really down to hit and miss.. just get stuck in and if you need a hand the lads here will help you out
best of luck give us a shout if you need a hand

vibe666

right, late night posting (for me) cos the silly cow upstairs is moving out and 'absolutely' has to move all her crap around at 12.30am (i was up till 2 last night until i went up and told her to stop) and she's got wooden floors which i'm told isn't allowed in my apartment block for that exact reason so i hear everything (even when she has a dump i might add) she does up there. christ know's why she can't do it at normal times of the day, but anyway i digress (yet again).

so anyway....

ok, that's fine about the setup, i'm more than happy with what i got off you, i'm basically just wanting to tinker with it now. i'm very much a 'if it's not broke, fix it till it is' kinda guy anyway. (not that I want to break it, I'm just wanting to play with it to find out how it works (overclocking) and what it can do for me.

I don't mind about the GPU not being 'top of the range', it'll do for my needs. tbh i got (actually went out and bought, aren't i the grown up;)) doom3 with high hopes, and i've spent more time playing civ3 than anything else (got hooked back when it was just 'civ' and was playing it on a friends amiga 1500 while i was babysitting in my teens. anyway graphics aren't an issue, i just wanted to be able to keep up with modern games. i've got the broadband and everything now and tbh i've not even ventured into an online game once yet, even though i used to play quite a bit of quake back in the day (damn i'm getting old! :rolleyes:).

so how much is my ram going to hold me back? i've just booted with the fsb (i think) set to 220 (someone is going to have to explain the numbers to me, i'm baffled) with gave me (according to my bios) 3.28ghz out of the CPU and my temps are still floating around the 41-45c mark just surfing the interweb here and now.

as for the prime95 thing, i'd heard it was people tend to use for stress testing, so i tried it, but tbh i've found BOINC, the new seti@home + 'anything else that wants a go ' project much better for keeping my CPU busy absolutely 100% of the time without fail. oh, and it's still just hitting 54-55c running that for the last while, so I might try for a little bit more out of it, what do you think?

edit:
OK, upped the fsb to 222 (which is 3.33ghz, and this is starting to make some sense now) and it's idling between 43-45c and it's just about hitting 57c now, although it's fluctuating between 56-57c most of the time.

thats it for the CPU today, i'm going to try and push a little more out of the ram with some slightly more aggressive settings and see what we get.

handily enough this mobo comes with some bios settings to push the ram a little harder which i'm going to do (overclocking for dumies or what!).

edit 2:
tried the memory settings thing and even the most basic changes resulted in a blue screen, but it might not even be my memory that did it because a read a review of the board and the reviewer had the same problem with top rated ram.

anyway left the PC overnight running BOINC and encoding a DivX and it was still sitting pretty at 56c this morning, so i guess that's that.

might try and push it a little harder today. what temps should i stop at?

Dempsey

I wondering what would be the limit on the Vcore with Air Cooling for a Northwood P4?

vibe666

dunno mate, i'm just learning it all meself (dubdvd or col_loki might know tho).

btw, been stress testing (boinc running 2x threads and encoding an XviD from DVD) at 3.41ghz and it's dancing around 57-58c (with the odd trip to 59c) and stable.

only thing changed so far is fsb too.

same voltages and everything else as it was.

only thing is that one of my hard drives has disappeared. what might that be?

only thing i can think is that it's topped out the PSU and it can't feed enough juice to it so it fell over on boot.

gonna reboot and see what I get.

Dempsey

I have a IC7-G that is why you cant monitor the rpm of those fans.

CPU Speed = Multiplier * Clock Speed
2.8GHz = 14 * 200
3.2GHz = 16 * 200

When Overclocking the cpu the multiplier is locked..

Make sure the AGP:PCI is "Fixed"

vibe666

k, thanks. why? (out of curiosity)

right, i'm up to 240fsb now (3.6ghz) and since i took dempseys advise and fixed the ratio thingy i got my missing drive back, although i'm still not sure why. i'd have understood if it had affected them all (given they are all similar drives apart from size) but i'm kinda puzzled that it just affected tha tone unless it was because it was plugged into the sata port rather than the ata one.

anyway it's back now, so all is good.

just about to stress test this now. idle at 45-46c (still) so far.

i'm not going to push the cpu any higher i don't think, as temps are starting to get high'ish, so what can i do with the ram and video card, and how do i go about that?

oh, and voltage had to go up a bit too, as it keeps hanging. when will i stop putting that up? it's at 1.625 at the minute although MBM reports a vcore of 1.58 - 1.6v. is that ok?

edit: ok, so it's still hanging after 5 or 10 minutes with those settings and until i know more about the vcore settings and how much harm they could do, i'm going to back off a bit. I'm back down to 235fsb with 1.600v core and i'm going to let it get used to that before i start playing again.

maybe it is the memory holding me back, i don't know. maybe we will be able to find out and fix it.

thanks again.

vibe666

BloodBath

The most commonly accepted vcore for the Northwoods is 1.65-1.7. On air I wouldn't go higher than 1.65.

For Prescott's it's 1.525-1.55 but again I wouldn't go higher than 1.525 on air.


BloodBath

vibe666

cool, thanks.

i couldn't get it stable at 3.6ghz no matter what i tried (think it was my memory holding me back as dubdvd said) so it's now sitting pretty at 233fsb (3.495ghz) and vcore of 1.525 and idle temps are back down to 43c so I'm happy for now.

maybe I'll have a look at getting some better memory and go from there.

actually, can't i play around with the memory on it's own? give it more agressive timings etc? (just to see how it does under a different sort of pressure).

Dempsey

Bloodbath, i aint doubting ya or anything but do ya have a link to a website where it tested chips for safe vcores

the raven

hey vibe,
just wanna make sure o something,
did you lock the agp/pci?

BloodBath

Bloodbath, i aint doubting ya or anything but do ya have a link to a website where it tested chips for safe vcores

No. You can't really test for that kind of thing. It's not like the chip will instantly die, unless you put an insane vcore through it. It's just from overclocking forums where people have lost their chips after running them for a few months at a certain vcore. I've heard of people losing prescott's at 1.6vcore and northwoods at 1.75.

The cores I listed are generally agreed to be safe with no reports of chips dying after running for long periods of time. I think 1.55 was intels original listed max vcore for the prescot under they lowered the voltage with the D0 stepping but it's still safe to go that high with a D0 but i'd keep it to 1.525 to be safe.

I use this forum a lot. Theres a lot of knowledgable people there that can help with all sorts of things. I found out how to mod my psu to get the 12v rail up there and a hell of a lot of other things.


BloodBath