General Question about Wear and Tear if you Overclock

[wildting88]

Hi:

I am very new to this whole overclocking ordeal. My friend has helped me build a P4 1.6A Northwood with an Asus P4B266C motherboard. And some Samsung PC2700 DDR SDRAM is on the way (it is something like 333Mghz).

Anyway. my concern is how long my computer will last if i overclock versus how long it would last if i didn't change the FSB.

IF I increase the FSB then would my Pentium 4 Chip not last very long? Because if my P4 Chip will die (which I've never seen happen to any computer)... then I would not like to overclock. But if I can increase the FSB to like 133 to 150 and not have any effect on the longevity of my Chip, I would definitely do it. ^_^

Any opinions on this from the experts of overclocking... This is all very new to me and pretty cool.

Thanks
Jason

 

[Jwyatt]

Its alwasy sbout your own risk tolerance. There is always a chance of frying your P4 in a year if you OC to 150fsb. I believe at 133 your life cycle will not be altered(much). Like i say risk tolerance.
If the pc doesnt feel fast enough then OC it a little or a lot. Watch the temps!

 

[wildting88]

when you say to "Watch the temps"
how do i know what is acceptable or not... and is temperature the main/only factor in the Chip wearing out/not lasting as long. i fortunately do have software that will allow me to see the temperatures...

what is a good temperature range for the board or processor .... etc...

thanks

Jason

 

[FPSguy]

I am not sure what the risky temperature range is. Your motherboard may actually have settings to shut down if things get too hot (my A7A266 does).

You may want to go to Overclockers.com and check out what speeds others have achieved with your chip and your cooling. That should give you a sense of what speeds you can feel comfortable about hitting.

 

[ZaijiaN]

Since Intel chips have on-die overheat protection, isn't it relatively safe to overclock?? Specifically, I'm recalling the test that Tom's Hardware did where they pulled the heatsink of a running p4 and it automatically throttled down to keep the heat down....

 

[Barrei]

Don't worry about it prices are coming way down overclock and enjoy.

 

[ICEFuZiOn]

Yeah, I only know of a Few people on some Forums who killed their P4 Northwoods's, but they gave it to much juice and used Extensive Voltage Modding on the Mobo itself...
But just have fun...FSB OC'ing is no harm

 

[wildting88]

Thanks IceFuzion. Yeah, that's all I'm going to do is increase the FSB. Thanks for letting me know it won't affect the lifetime of my Chip =)

Jason

 

[Regalk]

" am very new to this whole overclocking ordeal. My friend has helped me build a P4 1.6A Northwood with an Asus P4B266C motherboard. ...Anyway. my concern is how long my computer will last if i overclock versus how long it would last if i didn't change the FSB".

The age old question. What happens if you drive a car at high engine revs all round town? And Keep pumping gas and brakes? Then what happens if you service it on time you get the point. Take the NWood - still relatively new in the o/c arena but achieving amazing O/Clock speeds. And the fact that Intel just released 2.4G NW. Drawing on history - the Celeron 300A o/c to 450/466/504 and some of which are still alive and kicking after 4 years and still going. Increasing FSB/core voltages inevitably increases power consumption and wattage. Therefore it is safe to say that most NWs (1.6-2.0A) should be able to reach 2.4 G without much effort. Intel is way ahead in terms of cpu speeds and release higher speeds only when faced with stiff competition (who knows they may have 3Gs lying around in the wings). The point is given the past successes and NWs not requiring exotic cooling I would say increasing the FSB alone to say 133 x 16 or 18 is safe. Even a small increase in core to say 3-5% over spec should also be fine. However increasing the FSB beyond say 144 would be a different matter since that starts to throw the PCI bus out of spec.

"IF I increase the FSB then would my Pentium 4 Chip not last very long? Because if my P4 Chip will die (which I've never seen happen to any computer)... then I would not like to overclock. But if I can increase the FSB to like 133 to 150 and not have any effect on the longevity of my Chip, I would definitely do it."

Nothing is really guaranteed - no one can come out and say with 100% certainty that an o.c NW can last say 5 years even though it does not really matter since most of todays cpus would probably be outdated long before then.
And finally overclocking should only be done by experienced users as opposed to the average joes - the overclocking crowd are usually ones that love the most speed for the least cost and are generally hard core users.
Enuff of this ramble - do it and be done with it.

 

[Jarhead]

Yeah, I've had a 300A and 366 o/c to 450 and 5xx for about four years now, running 24/7, doing distributed computing stuff, no problems at all.

 

[Duvie]

My basic advice as a northwood owner who may have taken it too far....

I used to do 2.52ghz on a 1.8ghz at 1.775v (default being 1.5v)....eventhough prime95 ran 12 hours no errors and I could do any divx app, and my temps never exceeded 51c full load (mostly in prime95)...

Now I can only oc if I don't go much over default voltage....I am at 2.2ghz with 1.55v...I am happy with this no more tinkering....

I had a week from hell with everything crashing and slowing each day alittle less would work...one day 2.4ghz at 1.65v worked...2 days later 2.2ghz would only work at 1.6v



Do not go over 1.65v...I was stable ther for 3-4 weeks until I got greedy....voltage can kill this thing though many self-appointed Aters think they know sh^t when they know nothing...heat wasn't the problem in my case cause often the crashes happened before temps ever reported to 40c...My top temp was 51c and that is minor compared to many on the boards....


1) Run the board up as high as it will go default voltage first...then bump the vcore to only gain stability....

2) try to get to 133fsb as this is the next step where pci devices will be back in spec with change over to 1/4 divide....131-132 could be far more hazardous to harddrives and pci devices cause the pci devices are too far out of spec with the 1/3 divider....


3) Try to keep temps to 50c or below....