Can i overclock my computer?

[JN]

This question is asked very often, the simple answer is that it depends what kind of motherboard you are using.

Proprietary Computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, IBM and most manufacturers use Intel motherboards that have the necessary BIOS options locked. For those users there is always hope, you can try using software overclocking programs, they do not work as good but can give you a boost.

One of the best software overclocking programs is Clockgen

If you are using a custom built computer and do not know if your motherboard has the required options, please download CPU-Z and post its output on this forum to enable us to help you.

 

[Anlix]

Also there are other ways, like one simple software called Speedfan, is free and is easy to use, will give you options to overclock very easy.

here is the link

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Any question so far? go and ASK!!!! show your post!

 

[Dav0s]

im not sure that speedfan can overclock. are you sure??

 

[Anlix]

Yes, but only with certain motherboards...

 

[JN]

Excelent. Good tip

 

[Aman]

Hi guys, first let me comment, this is one nice and clean looking forum and i know its new, but hopefully it can stay this way as long as we dont get a lot of losers registering, anyhow...i have a question about overclocking. I am an intermediate user who built my first computer recently, yeah! lol. well when i registered for this forum i had to put my pc specs in but i dont know how u guys can see that so i will list them in this post.

-cpu: p4 540 3.2ghz ht with 800fsb and 1mb l2 cache lga 775

-gpu: geforce 6800 (not the gt or ultra : ( i was too poor for those but i can overclock this card from 325 gpu 600mhz memory to 440mhz gpu and 840mhz memory and have it run completely stable, i lucked out u could say although 12 instead of 16 pipes is a major limit, and it would be nice to have gddr3 memory but oh well)

-memory: dual channel Corsair XMS 3200 (2x512mb) i think the timings are 2-3-3-6

-mobo: Asus P5GDC-Deluxe

Those are my basic system components, i also have a MSI tv@nywhere master tv tuner card and a seagate sata hard drive along with 2 western digital pata drives for a total of 400gigs.

Well the asus mobo comes with some nice built in overclocking features but I cannot seem to overclock over 5% without random crashes what gives! i spent tons on that Corsair XMS memory for this purpose, and can the Asus mobo handle much over 800FSB? i thought it could but maybe not my model, im sure my memory can get as high as 450mhz from 400 which is a 25 mhz increase on the FSB but pc crashes, temps are all fine as i have kickass after market cooling on everything. Ive read up on my cpu and it can get to the 4ghz range easily so Im really scratchin my head here about whats goin wrong. Sometimes after the PC crashes I get a msg that it was a system driver error and the system has recovered from a serious error (is this overclocking related?)

The asus mobo keeps my pci devices and my pci express graphics card seperate when i increase the fsb so its not a problem with those devices, im really stuck guys and would love to hear your input, i APOLOGIZE for this long ass message but I figured I would be as detailed as I could, thanks agian guys!

 

[JN]

Hi guys, first let me comment, this is one nice and clean looking forum and i know its new, but hopefully it can stay this way as long as we dont get a lot of losers registering, anyhow...i have a question about overclocking. I am an intermediate user who built my first computer recently, yeah! lol. well when i registered for this forum i had to put my pc specs in but i dont know how u guys can see that so i will list them in this post.

-cpu: p4 540 3.2ghz ht with 800fsb and 1mb l2 cache lga 775

-gpu: geforce 6800 (not the gt or ultra : ( i was too poor for those but i can overclock this card from 325 gpu 600mhz memory to 440mhz gpu and 840mhz memory and have it run completely stable, i lucked out u could say although 12 instead of 16 pipes is a major limit, and it would be nice to have gddr3 memory but oh well)

-memory: dual channel Corsair XMS 3200 (2x512mb) i think the timings are 2-3-3-6

-mobo: Asus P5GDC-Deluxe

Nice system you got there. if you need to view others specs, just click on their name on one of their posts and choose 'view profile'. We are working on a way to make it easier tho.

Those are my basic system components, i also have a MSI tv@nywhere master tv tuner card and a seagate sata hard drive along with 2 western digital pata drives for a total of 400gigs.

Well the asus mobo comes with some nice built in overclocking features but I cannot seem to overclock over 5% without random crashes what gives! i spent tons on that Corsair XMS memory for this purpose, and can the Asus mobo handle much over 800FSB? i thought it could but maybe not my model, im sure my memory can get as high as 450mhz from 400 which is a 25 mhz increase on the FSB but pc crashes, temps are all fine as i have kickass after market cooling on everything. Ive read up on my cpu and it can get to the 4ghz range easily so Im really scratchin my head here about whats goin wrong. Sometimes after the PC crashes I get a msg that it was a system driver error and the system has recovered from a serious error (is this overclocking related?)

The asus mobo keeps my pci devices and my pci express graphics card seperate when i increase the fsb so its not a problem with those devices, im really stuck guys and would love to hear your input, i APOLOGIZE for this long ass message but I figured I would be as detailed as I could, thanks agian guys!

I'm willing to guess that your CPU is power hungry. Some processors are more hungry than others when overclocking.

Have a look in your BIOS for an option that allows you to increase the voltage of the CPU, then increase it by around 0.025 - 0.050 to see if that makes things more stable..

With your chip you should be able to go up to a maximum of 1.5750 volts.

 

[Dav0s]

asking 450MHz from 400 is a bit much. the ram will probably give up before then so try increasing the fsb slowly until you are not stable. also try slightly looser timings like just take the 2 to 2.5 for now.

also i am assuming that you are using software for your overclock? try using the BIOS toget a better idea of when you are stable etc.

 

[Aman]

asking 450MHz from 400 is a bit much. the ram will probably give up before then so try increasing the fsb slowly until you are not stable. also try slightly looser timings like just take the 2 to 2.5 for now.

also i am assuming that you are using software for your overclock? try using the BIOS toget a better idea of when you are stable etc.

I've been fooling around with the bios leavin the memory at auto settings to get the timings from the spd and the pc has crashed not right away but eventually at 215mhz fsb (x4=860 and 430mhz memory) , 214, 213, 212, 211, 210 and now i am currently testing it at 209 fsb (x4=836fsb and 418mhz memory).

Personally I think this is bullsh** because this is expensive overclocking ram with an expenisve processor and an expensive asus overclocking motherboard. What is my limitation? The memory or the mobo or the cpu and how can i tell which of these it is? thanks! btw, timings on auto are at 3-4-4-8 instead of 2-3-3-6

 

[imported_admin]

I've been fooling around with the bios leavin the memory at auto settings to get the timings from the spd and the pc has crashed not right away but eventually at 215mhz fsb (x4=860 and 430mhz memory) , 214, 213, 212, 211, 210 and now i am currently testing it at 209 fsb (x4=836fsb and 418mhz memory).

Personally I think this is bullsh** because this is expensive overclocking ram with an expenisve processor and an expensive asus overclocking motherboard. What is my limitation? The memory or the mobo or the cpu and how can i tell which of these it is? thanks! btw, timings on auto are at 3-4-4-8 instead of 2-3-3-6

Def. give the voltage a go...you won't get anywhere without a small voltage increase.

I only managed to get to 4.5ghz by increasing my vcore all the way up to 1.6v

 

[Dav0s]

hmmm def the ram but although i hate to say it that was a bad buy. you would have done better getting some faster speed stuff, even generic ddr533 would get you a better overclock! it is not so much about the brand name (although this matters) but speed should come first.

 

[Aman]

Def. give the voltage a go...you won't get anywhere without a small voltage increase.

I only managed to get to 4.5ghz by increasing my vcore all the way up to 1.6v

lol, ok I will try that (again). The voltage in my bios starts around 1.375 and goes up to just under 1.6V but the odd thing is when I have it set as 1.4 or 1.45 in the bios, cpu-z and everest detect voltage at 1.58 or 1.59 which is high! but the asus overclocking software I have reads it lower, sometimes around what its set as in the bios and sometimes a bit higher, it is very dynamic. Why is this so and if I set to 1.6 in the bios I am afraid it will show up higher to 2V in cpu-z and I dont want to fry this expensive cpu. The only other thing I can think of is that my X-connect power supply only has a 20 pin main power hook up for the mobo but my mobo has a 24 pin recepticle for the main power. There is also the 4 pin by the cpu which is hooked up though so I really dont think that is my limiting factor, is my system getting enough juice? in the meantime i will try increasing voltages. thanks for the help guys.

 

[Dav0s]

for extra 4 pins are for the pci express sockets. if you are using them then that may be a problem with voltage readings, otherwise you should have no probs.

always trust your BIOS for vcore readings and although it is normal for the rates to fluctuate slightly, yours does seem a bit too far off. maybe try another sensor?

 

[Aman]

hmmm def the ram but although i hate to say it that was a bad buy. you would have done better getting some faster speed stuff, even generic ddr533 would get you a better overclock! it is not so much about the brand name (although this matters) but speed should come first.

Im kicking myself in the ass because I should have got a gig of dual chan 667mhz DDR2 ram because my mobo can take 600mhz native ddr2 ram and it would have only been a 100 more (this corsair ram was over 300 canadian when i got it). i didnt know much about overclocking when i built this pc though but now im really regretting it, maybe someone wants to buy some kickass corsair dual chann 3200 xms twinx ultra low latency memory off of me lol. still, i have red reviews on this ram hittin much higher frequencys stable then what im at, so i dont know, thanks for the input.

 

[Aman]

for extra 4 pins are for the pci express sockets. if you are using them then that may be a problem with voltage readings, otherwise you should have no probs.

always trust your BIOS for vcore readings and although it is normal for the rates to fluctuate slightly, yours does seem a bit too far off. maybe try another sensor?

only my graphics card is on the pci express but it doesnt have an intake for extra power from the psu. so its not a problem i dont think. second, when my pc crashes sometimes the error comes up after i submit to microsoft that tells me problem was caused by a graphics device driver? this never happens at stable speeds and the gpu runs seperate from the fsb as it is locked. just dont know if this means something, i recently upgraded my graphics drivers, im thinkin a reformat is near in the future.

 

[Dav0s]

may have found your prob... i dont tihnk you understood what i said i apologise....

normal atx psu;s have 20pins but when they released the power hungry psi express gfx cards they added an extra 4 pins to power it. i am not quite sure of the consequences of not having the extra 4 pins but it might be related to your problem.

you can buy 20/24 pin adapters though.

 

[Aman]

may have found your prob... i dont tihnk you understood what i said i apologise....

normal atx psu;s have 20pins but when they released the power hungry psi express gfx cards they added an extra 4 pins to power it. i am not quite sure of the consequences of not having the extra 4 pins but it might be related to your problem.

you can buy 20/24 pin adapters though.

are the 20 to 24 pin adapters actually working solutions or are they just cosmetics? i dont see how they could draw power from the existing 20 pins and make it into a more powerful 24 pin supply? i just bumped the vcore up to the mid 1.5s in my bios and cpu-z now reads voltage as 1.66V! and so does everest! although my asus overclocking software reads it as 1.57-1.58, well thanks again for your help.

 

[Dav0s]

by directly supplying power to those mobo pins then the gfx card can draw the power from the right place. otherwise it is drawing power from the motherboard supply and causing probs with vcore etc.

and you are welcome sir

 

[Aman]

by directly supplying power to those mobo pins then the gfx card can draw the power from the right place. otherwise it is drawing power from the motherboard supply and causing probs with vcore etc.

and you are welcome sir

and the adapter cable will supply this extra power somehow? im just really confused how a 20 pin cable can be successfully transformed into a 24 pin, but if it can i will just order it, ive found it for about 17 dollars which isnt much if it fixes the problem, the vcore goes about 0.6-0.8 volts higher than what i set it too in the bios when looking in the asus overclocking software and even higher than that in cpu-z.

 

[enVias]

the asus overclocking thing or cpu-z might not give very accurate readings