Athlon XP 2500+ Barton overheating?

[imported_Apathy]

I wanted to overlock my CPU because it seems it's limiting Oblivion with my X800 Pro. I downloaded motherboard monitor to check my temps and noticed the cpu socket is 52c and cpu diode is 79c. I haven't done any overclocking on this cpu before and it's using the stock heatsink/fan.

 

[dguy6789]

Take the heatsink off. Dust it and the fan out really good. Apply a new thermal interface compound to the cpu, such as Arctic Silver 5. Make sure you have some available before you rub off the current cpu grease, as any is far better than none. Once you have put one rice sized grain of Arctic Silver 5 on the center of the cpu core, then put the heatsink on. Triple and quadruple check that you have put it on correctly as socket A has a terrible mounting mechanism that can cause problems from overheating to breaking the cpu core.

Check your temperatures again. If your cpu was overheating, then it would crash your system rather than just slow it down.


As for overclocking, with a 2500+ Barton, it is rather easy to get to 3200+ speeds. If you have an older Barton, you can raise your multiplier up to 12.5. 12.5x166(your likely fsb) would equal 2075Mhz. Also, by keeping your stock 11 multiplier, you could raise the fsb to 200, bringing you to 200x11, or 2200Mhz, or Athlon XP 3200+ equivalency.

If your machine crashes overclocking to these settings be sure you have made sure your memory is not the bottleneck. Also up your cpu voltage bit by bit to see if it helps. I would not go over 1.75Volts on the vcore.

Hope this helps.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: Apathy
I wanted to overlock my CPU because it seems it's limiting Oblivion with my X800 Pro. I downloaded motherboard monitor to check my temps and noticed the cpu socket is 52c and cpu diode is 79c. I haven't done any overclocking on this cpu before and it's using the stock heatsink/fan.

I have the A7N8X-X, with an XP 3000 in it, (late model, for PC 3200, it is running at a small amount of OC, forget how much, maybe just the FSB at 215 or so), and I can reach into the case (Kingwin 424) with the side off, and wrap the Vantec Aerocool TMD's heat sink in my hand/ fingers comfortably when readings such as 62-64 Celcius are being reported for the CPU.

At idle, the temp reading for the CPU is seldom below 54 C, at which point, the heat sink base literally feels cool to the touch (cooler than my skin temp, anyway). That is with both the Health Monitor in the BIOS, and with MBM5. I've never seen this one showing more than 66, which is still "luke warm" or less, to the touch. The last stock retail HSF unit I've had is on a PC with an XP 2600 in it, and it reports warm temps, but FEELS fairly warm to the touch also.

Run a few searches if you can get AT's search function to cooperate (it never will for me), and see if I don't remember A7N8X's and perhaps Asus s7 MB's generally, seem to make it a habit to exaggerate the temps. Try touching your own HSF (be careful at first, of course!)

 

[mindwreck]

90% of the time you cant trust the temp monitor on the motherboard. Some can be scaled wrong or just calibrated wrong.
My friend gets a reading of 190C on his p4.:Q My roommates abit shows his cpu runing 10C cooler than ambient.:disgust:

 

[imported_Apathy]

I cleaned out all the dust (lots) with an air compressor. The heatsink was 50% covered with dust. The temps went down considerably.

Before: Idle
socket:56c
diode:83c

After: Idle
socket:45c
diode:60c

I don't have any thermal compound and wonder if I should try and overclock it to 2.2ghz with the stock hs/f and original thermal pad/compound.

 

[imported_Apathy]

Since I have pc2700 (166mhz) ram, it would be bottlenecking my cpu if I overclocked it to 2200mhz, correct? So it doesn't seem worth overclocking afterall. What if I used a 12.5 multiplier, would that work with my pc2700 ram?

 

[dguy6789]

Your multiplier adjustments will not affect your memory clock. Feel free to run at 12.5x166 if you want to. That is assuming your Barton is one of the older ones. The newer ones cannot go above 11x multiplier. You can raise your fsb to 200, as your mainboard should have a way of decreasing memory speed so that the memory does not have to go beyond the rated 166mhz. If your fsb is a 200 and your memory is at 166, that will be just fine.

 

[imported_Apathy]

I tried setting the fsb to 200 but the computer wouldn't start. So instead I tried setting the mutiplier to 12.5x, same problem. I tried 12.0 multi and it worked, but that's only an overclock from 1832hgz to 1996ghz. This gave Oblivion a framerate increase from 17 to 19.

I get the same framerate at 1680x1050 as I do at 640x480.

 

[Fern]

Go ahead an OC your FSB. Back down on the CPU's multi to remove it from the picture.

That looks to be decent PC2700 ram. Maybe a little extra vdimm (voltage to ram) and loosening timings will get your FSB up closer to 200.

Fern

 

[dguy6789]

Try increasing the voltage a little bit.

 

[imported_Apathy]

I don't see any option for vdimm in the BIOS. You'll have to forgive my ignorance, it's my first OC attempt. Here are some pics of the options available.

Bios 1

Bios 2

I tried setting Cpu External Freq. to 200 and increased CPU vcore a tad, but computer still didnt start.

 

[gwag]

ddrv reference voltage is ram voltage, maybe try 1.75 on the CPU core