Help with overclocking and new heatsink.

[mountainking]

Hi,
I decided to repost with a new title because aparently the other title wasnt apealing and/or no one felt like responding. I dont know that ive ever had that happen before. But anyways, i really need to get a new heatsink and fan. Im lookin at thermalright heatsinks and i have a amd athlonxp 2600+ barton socket a. Also, it seems that when i overclock too high, my video card loses signal and then my computer obviously wont boot. is this because the cpu is overheating or what? right now i have it overclocked to 2.07ghz from 1.9ghz and thats about the most i can do which isnt a whole lot lol. im usin stock heatsink in it right now. Is it that my mobo just cant handle higher speeds. I was only trying to overclock to like 2.3ghz.

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by mountainking Hi, I decided to repost with a new title because aparently the other title wasnt apealing and/or no one felt like responding. I dont know that ive ever had that happen before. But anyways, i really need to get a new heatsink and fan. Im lookin at thermalright heatsinks and i have a amd athlonxp 2600+ barton socket a. Also, it seems that when i overclock too high, my video card loses signal and then my computer obviously wont boot. is this because the cpu is overheating or what? right now i have it overclocked to 2.07ghz from 1.9ghz and thats about the most i can do which isnt a whole lot lol. im usin stock heatsink in it right now. Is it that my mobo just cant handle higher speeds. I was only trying to overclock to like 2.3ghz.

Have you tried upping the VCore? It's also possible that your mobo is overclocking the AGP bus and that's screwing things up.

For the heatsink, just find one that looks good and seems to cool well. If noise is a factor, you could consider Zalmans.

[mountainking]

i have the vcore set on auto. is that ok? also, if i am overclocking the agp bus, how to i stop it from doing that?

[Tin]

which motherboard do you have? also...a thermalrright would be the best choice...i dont use nothing but thermalright.

[mountainking]

i have an asus n7n8x-x which offers a ton of overclocking features. (can bring my system bus all the way up to 600mhz on it.) I just dont know what to do about cooling and i dont know why i cant get it to at least boot up when the speeds are high.

[Yuanji]

first, set up your AGP/PCI lock to 66/33. i think if you are doing serious overclocking, you need to loosen ram timings and up the vcore manually.

[mountainking]

yea when i changed the system bus, my ram speed went up, and when it got too high, it failed and thats why i got no video or anything. what seems to happen when i overclock too far is, i either boot it up, it says "your computer was shutdown incorectly" and it asks me to click like safe mode or just start windows normaly. when i click start normaly, a white bar goes across and when it finishes going across, nothing happens. the other thing that happens is a blue screen comes up with white text giving me this dumb error message. It says a bunch of stuff about it being unsafe to continue on and windows wants you to shut down to keep your system safe and crap. Will a new heatsink other than stock help me fix these problems. The most i can get out of this stock heatsink is about a .2ghz overclock. Is that a pretty normal amount to get off a stock heatsink?

[Yuanji]

it actually might be the type of RAM you are using. What RAM are you using? you might need some high quality to do serious overclocking.

[mountainking]

corsair value select 512 mb pc3200. Im not overclocking the ram though. Im keeping it under 200mhz so it doesnt exeed its maximium.

[Yuanji]

even though you aren't overclocking the RAM, upping the CPU's FSB makes the RAM perform higher then it's supposed to be for. with my corsair value select, i am able to OC to about 230 FSB.

[mountainking]

I cant do that. The most i can get my chip speed is up to 182mhz not counting the multiplier. If i go any higher, i will usually get a blue screen that has an error message before windows is able to finish loading. Or sometimes, it resets the speed to 1150mhz even though its oc'ed to like 2.2ghz. I think it might know that it isnt safe for the cpu to be run any higher so it just puts it down to minimum speed.

[Tin]

Originally Posted by mountainking i have an asus n7n8x-x which offers a ton of overclocking features. (can bring my system bus all the way up to 600mhz on it.) I just dont know what to do about cooling and i dont know why i cant get it to at least boot up when the speeds are high.

your BIOS has overclocking features but i dont know about a ton. try your hand at a DFI Infinity . your BIOS has FSB settings for 300MHz, but it wont go that high. you might be able to get 215FSB to 220FSB out of that board. its not a bad board, and shouldnt have problems running at 200MHz. i think the culprit is your processor. the 2600+ Bartons werent very good overclockers. most of them came locked, and needed mucho voltage to get 2300MHz. your value select may be good....it just depends on the chips it has. if it has good chips, it will fly.

[mountainking]

im just usin stock heatsink. Im just wondering if getting a new heatsink and stuff will increase my performance? If i got a nice thermalright heatsink do you think i could bring this cpu up to 2.5ghz or more?

[Tin]

Originally Posted by mountainking im just usin stock heatsink. Im just wondering if getting a new heatsink and stuff will increase my performance? If i got a nice thermalright heatsink do you think i could bring this cpu up to 2.5ghz or more?

i dont think that chip will hit 2500MHz. there arent many desktop chips that did 2500MHz, most of them were Tbred B 1700+/1800+ chips. im an owner of one of the 2500MHz 1800+ chips, paid only $50 for it new too . your best bet to get 2500MHz or more right now is to ebay your 2600+ and snag up a 2500+ mobile Barton. thats what im using....theyre OCing machines.

[mountainking]

doesnt newegg sell those amd mobiles?

[Tin]

Mobile 2500+
Thermalright ALX-800
80mm Panaflo H1B

overclocking is evil...theres no such thing as enough clock speed .

[mountainking]

would that be an overclocking beast setup or what? what about the mobile 3000+ things? wouldnt those be able to oc more?

[Tin]

Originally Posted by mountainking would that be an overclocking beast setup or what?

maybe...it also depends if you wanna shell out some cash for a new motherboard too . the A7N8X-X isnt an OCers board, its just built to last. 200MHz isnt a problem for it, but it gives lots of grief the higher you take the FSB.

what about the mobile 3000+ things? wouldnt those be able to oc more?

very possible, but its not a common occurence. a 3000+ mobile takes a rather high amount of voltage to run its stock speed of 2200MHz. that chip runs at 1.65V....the same as its desktop counterpart. the desktop 2500+ runs at 1.65V....but the mobile variant runs at 1.45V stock. .2V is a pretty reasonable margin between the two.

[mountainking]

Hmm im thinkin bout what to do. I finish college in a few weeks so im gona go live with my parents and stuff unil i get steady job and get going. Anyways, while im living at home, my parents are never gona let me get a new mobo and stuff for my computer lol. I just built my computer about a month ago i wana say. If i start changing mobos anytime soon they will have a fit. can you think of an excuse i can give to them for getting a new one? i know it wouldnt really be a very expensive upgrade i guess. If i were to get a new one, what would be a really good one to get?

[Yuanji]

don't tell your parents about what ur doing! lol the abit NF7-S 2 i think are good OCing MoBos

[Tin]

Originally Posted by Yuanji don't tell your parents about what ur doing! lol the abit NF7-S 2 i think are good OCing MoBos

noooooo not the NF7-S2. thats a paperweight . i hope you meant the NF7-S v2.0 .

[mountainking]

dont let them know about it.... i dont have a credit card. I refuse to use credit cards because i would spend WAAAY more money than i actually have. I would have to get my parents to use their credit card and id pay them back. so not letting them know about it wouldnt really work.

[Yuanji]

Originally Posted by Tin Canary noooooo not the NF7-S2. thats a paperweight . i hope you meant the NF7-S v2.0 .

yeah i meant that i'm not too good with the AMD athlon XP boards but i have heard amazing things about the nF7-S and how the NF7-S2 was a big dissappointment

[mountainking]

could i use an excuse like "mine is defective and one of the dimm slots wont work"? i wonder if they would buy that.

[Yuanji]

how about.... not telling them, swapping it out while they are away and then OC the brains out of a mobile chip

[Tin]

Originally Posted by mountainking dont let them know about it.... i dont have a credit card. I refuse to use credit cards because i would spend WAAAY more money than i actually have. I would have to get my parents to use their credit card and id pay them back. so not letting them know about it wouldnt really work.

get a debit card .

[mountainking]

i would but i dont even have a checking account or anything. i know, its sad. i hate banks. GRRR. some day im gona get a checking account but right now i dont even know why i would need one. And i wana be kinda honest with my parents. AND, i was hoping that i could get some christmas presents

[mountainking]

I just overclocked it and brought up the voltage to max which is like 1.85 volts i think. 200mhz is the highest i could get it to go. If i had some more voltage to play around with, i know i could get it to go higher. Right now im idleing at 55 degrees celcius. is that an ok amount or do i need to underclock some?