First I removed the power supply cover and clipped the 6 pin server connector wires at the pc board. Next I similarly removed the square 4 pin connector. My motherboard did not use either connector. This prevents use of this power supply with a Pentium 4 in the future unless I reattach the 4 pin connector. I had seen many cases with the wiring enclosed in the plastic covering as used on autos but I decided to try something a little different. I had several rolls of white electrical tape left from taping my daughter’s color guard flag staffs. White seemed like the least contrast with the interior of the case and would therefore conceal easier. I wrapped each wire loom all the way into the power supply, reinstalled the grommet where the wires pass through the psu case and reinstalled the psu cover. Next task was the preliminary installation of the motherboard and tray. Both side panels are removable from the P160 providing access to the rear of the motherboard tray. The P160 also has usb, firewire and temp displays in a top-front mounted bar. The wires from that area were easily concealed by running them through the holes in the side of the 5.25 bay rack. I mounted the Enermax fan controller in the top bay and moved the concealed CD rom and CD RW drives to bays two and three. The Panaflo fan would not fit in the front mount cage because it was thicker than the Antec cage opening. Problem solved by using the Antec fan that came with the case in the front and a Panaflo in the rear. The front fan was installed with the wiring toward the inside of the case and routed behind the hard drive cage. Same with the wiring for the factory installed led’s. I rerouted it behind the hard drive cage. I only planned to run one hard drive so I removed the other three hard drive slide mounts to promote air flow through that area. I then mounted the hard drive in the lowest position with the wiring all to the inside. IDE ribbon cables were the next challenge. I had seen an article quite a while back about folding the wires to reduce the width and create a nearly round cable. With the help of some cable ties to hold the folds until I could apply the white tape, I managed to create some nice looking nearly round IDE cables that are quite flexible. The excess floppy cable is concealed in the open 5.25 bay between the CD-RW and the floppy. The excess IDE cable between the two drive connectors posed a different challenge. I inserted both connectors into the drives, folded the excess as flat as possible, unplugged the connectors and applied white tape to hold the folds. The only wire that became a challenge was the 1394 cable running from the top mounted front panel to the rear of the motherboard. It was not long enough to run behind the motherboard so I found a path along the surface of the board between the memory sockets. I think you will find the pictures of this project interesting.
Once all the electrical work was completed, it was time to return to the original task of learning the techniques of overclocking. The new system booted perfectly and correctly identified the new Mobile cpu as 1.83GHz at 266 fsb. Before booting to Windows, I changed all the settings to match those of the original Barton 2500+. The multiplier was set to 11, fsb to 166, vcore to 1.65. The system booted to Windows and I ran the benchmark tests to establish a baseline. I had read that changing the multiplier does not affect anything but the CPU, unlike the changing the fsb which can affect other components too. I was able to raise the multiplier to 12.5 before I encountered errors. I exchanged emails with Asus to learn that the Mobile chip restricts the multiplier selection on their boards. When I changed the multiplier to 13, it was actually 5. 12.5 became the maximum. I raised the fsb in 5MHz increments testing each step. Once I encountered errors in Prime95, I applied more vcore and retested. Attempts to correct Prime95 errors by loosening memory timings or applying more memory voltage never worked. Several days of testing and pages of charts brought me to where the system is running today, 213 fsb with a multiplier of 12, vcore maxed at 1.825 (often reads 1.856) for an effective oc of 2593 MHz. The OCZ memory performs flawlessly at 2.5-3-3-6 at stock voltage of 2.6. Prime95 ran error free for 24 hours and temps run at 45c for the CPU and 30c for the motherboard under normal use. Memtest86 ran twelve error free passes.
I consider myself a genuine ‘Newby’ in the oc world and even in the computer world, but I learned a lot during this project. A couple of days ago I exchanged private messages with that guy in Detroit, the guy PC Mech’ers know as Tin Canary. I want to say a big “Thank you” to this young man. He has been an enormous source of knowledge throughout this project. We discussed an L12 pin mod to the mobile chip as a way to open up more possibilities. Let’s see, what if I got the side window panel for the P160, did the pin mod, hmmm. Think I’m getting curious again. Stay tuned!
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