Question about overclocking and computer stability

[joshoojbd]

This is probably a dumb question but I keep reading in overclocking guide to online that after you make an adjustment to the FSB speed or your voltage for your different components you need to log onto the OS and conduct a stress test. I have Orthos for this but it says in the guides that you need to make sure and check to your machine has stability after these adjustments. What stability is it talking about? Is this just making sure that the temperature does not exceed the safe standards? Or is there something else to keep in mind as well? As far as I can tell from what I've read you make a small adjustment then do a stress test while monitoring the temperatures of your CPU and graphics cards, if you've made adjustments to it, and as long as it doesn't go over the maximum safe temp your machine is stable. Is this correct or a my way off base?

The fans and power required. How do I know how much power I am going to need to run all of my components. I just bought some new Corsair RAM as well and don't want to over do it. Especially when I start overclocking. Is there a way to add up all the voltage required by my components?

Thanks everyone

[wigseryc]

Temperatures will play a big role, too high and they'll ruin your components.

Stability however, is essentially, having the PC do power-hungry tasks, such as playing games or running orthos, and not having the machine reboot on itself.

I'm sure someone else will be able to explain it better than i.

[Thanh55]

First of al you need to know your PSU can afford for over so vit sit here : http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Temp of the components depend on what cooling you got so keep an eyes on temp mean keep your voltages for your CPU, Ram...ect under control.

[ionicle]

stability, is making sure your operating system can cope with doing anything and everything, while under stress, while your component (cpu) is overclocked

if, while overclocked, due to high temps, the core not being able to keep up, or any other number of reasons, the operating system becomes unstable, then you need to lower the clock speed to a point where the operating system, at peak usage, can do everything without burning out your cpu, or other components...

if that makes sense?

[joshoojbd]

Yes that makes sense thank you. I appreciate all your help everyone.

[Ghaz]

Bear in mind that if prime95 or orthos throws a huge error at you, then your system is not stable. I assume the same is true for orthos, as I use prime, but I know that prime will stop running stress tests and tell you if the system is not stable. It knows what it should calculate, and if it calculates it wrong then it is not stable, I believe.

[joshoojbd]

So I have a 485 W power supply. I have an AMD 4600+ Athlon X2, a single 8800 GT, two 2GB Corsair DDR2 PC-6400, and a MSI K9N Platinum motherboard. How can I tell how much power this is using of my power supply? I basically want to know how much power I have left and how to calculate how much power a fan would take for example. I need to get some more cooling for my case in order to overclock and don't know how to add up the power specs. Thanks.

[Toxcity]

There is no way you can tell for sure.. unless you have one of those gadgets that you plug the PC into then into the wall to monitor the power the PC uses.

I very much doubt you are using anymore than 350watts. And adding a few fans won't make little to no difference in power usage.

[Ghaz]

Fans won't make much difference to power consumption at all really. I run a 750 Watt psu with a power consumption monitor on the back, which rarerly goes past 200 (doesn't seem right, does it?) and I run a quad-core, 2 hard-drives and an 8800GTS. Adding fans won't be a problem for you. Just don't max out your power-usage on an un-branded psu... bad things can happen

[joshoojbd]

alright thanks.