Gotchas for novice OC'ers

[dreddfunk]

I'd be very appreciative if a few of the many folks on the board who overclock could pass along some of their Homer Simpson moments when overclocking, in part to help prepare me for my first attempt, but mostly just for fun. While I understand the basics, and can find plenty of excellent guides, I'm curious to hear some first-hand, possibly humorous, possibly tragic stories about OC'ing for the first time.

I finally took the plunge, thanks in large part to SerpentRoyal, when the HP branded DDR2-667 he recommends dropped to $8.95/GB AR (http://www.techonweb.com/produ...detail.aspx?id=D30292) and the Abit IP-35E he recommends dropped to $69.99 AR at newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16813127031). I really couldn't pass up 3GB of memory for $27.00 and a good P35 MB for $70; add in a 2140, and I'll be ready to play around in a few days.


Though it's not OC-related, I had my own Homer Simpson moment a few weeks ago.

After convincing a friend that it was far easier and more cost effective to build a high-end system himself, I walked him through the setup over the phone, but while his PSU would power on, nothing would happen.

After more than 45 minutes of going back and forth, reconnecting all of the cables, etc., I had my own 'DOH', as I realized that I'd never told him to hook up the CPU power cable...



Cheers.

 

[tno]

My worst Homer Simpson moment came when I was doing a big upgrade to my old rig (more like prior evolution of this rig). A buddy of mine had just gotten a brand new Mac Pro (for work) and an Xbox 360 (for play), so he decided he didn't need his aging gaming computer. Five years ago (probably less) this would have been considered a top rig, P4 3.0C, 1GB Corsair XMS 3200, ChenMing case, tons of HD space, a 22" Mitsubishi CRT and the gem, a Gainward 6800GT Golden Sample, just about the fastest card of its generation, out pacing even the Ultras of its time. Now all of this stuff would cost a mint originally and he basically just tossed it in my lap at an unbelievable loss. From what was undoubtedly a $4000 system, I took the memory, the hard drives, a tv tuner, the sound card, the video card and the CRT for about $200. Coming home with my hands full of new goodies I set out to install everything as quick as I can. At the time my mobo could only had two memory slots, and I hastily filled them with the black heatspreader clad memory. I hit the power button and heard a most unsettling pop. Having been stopped in my tracks I carefully backtracked and proceeded to trouble shoot each and every component that I had just added, eventually realizing that I had installed the memory backwards, yielding two dead sticks, luckily I had purchased two more. DOH!

My mother had a better story. I had promised to visit her and build her a new computer, but kept putting it off. So one Sunday I get a call from her, very angry and upset, blaming me because having drug my feet for so long she finally decided to take initiative and went to BB to buy herself a new eMachines. Having watched me put these things together for years she figured she could follow the instructions and figure it out. Yet after all her efforts all she could get was a lot of fan noise and buzzing but nothing on screen, and it was at this point that upset at having spent $500 on a pile of worthless that she chose to call me. On visiting just a week later to put together a new rig for her and return the eMachines, I saw her error. The monitors power cable was still in the box. Doh!

 

[BoboKatt]

Well although this has more to do with trying to cool my CPU to get better levels of OC, I went out and decided to use that metallic liquid that is advertised that replaces the AC5 which supposedly gives lower temps... hence better OC.

I removed my HS/F, cleaned off the original AC5, took the syringe of that metallic stuff... squeezed out some one the CPU and then I decided to move my board to get better light and as I moved I actually just picked up the board and .... DOHHH ME... the metallic stuff flows like.... well... liquid metal. It went EVERYWHERE on my board. I then tried to use a paper towel to get at it and all I did was to manage to cover a good part of my board in a nice layer of metallic liquid. The board to was totally fried. I even had to spend hours trying to bend the pins back to normal on the CPU as the stuff got in there when I removed the CPU. Christ... why did I move the board or ever use that stuff in the first place.

And on another note many years back was I was clueless (well more clueless than I am now) I bought 2 new sticks of RAM, which again I hoped would improve my performance and overclocking potential. I had no idea that RAM fits in the slot only one way ? the teeth I mean. I placed one stick in and it was refusing to click in. I pushed with all my might and somehow it finally clicked on the side clips. I had actually forced the stick in the wrong way but physically cut through the plastic divided on one side of my RAM slot and I noted later that it was actually bending. When I powered on all I could smell was smoke? smoke? smoke.

To this day I am amazed that the board is still fine except for that one Slot for RAM. The board still works and actually my dad still uses it. The RAM stick was destroyed? all blacked one side LOL.

EDIT: The funniest part of the RAM story was that my roommate at the time sitting next to me actually thought the system was supposed to "smoke" like that... we actually both thought that's what folks meant by a "burn in stage"... like the RAM has to get a good working... hahahha.

 

[myocardia]

Dredd, there really are no (or extremely few) overclocking horror stories. As you can see, almost all of them revolve around building the system. Of course, that excludes all of the Northwood Sudden Death Syndrome victims. Unlike all other cpu's before or after it, the Northwood P4's couldn't be overvolted any at all, and their were alot of people who found out about that first-hand.

Now, even though I never owned any version of the P4, I bought myself a nice new 2.4 Ghz Athlon 64, a good overclocking motherboard, and not long after, the video card everyone had been talking about, a 9800 Pro. I was so excited, because when I had built the system, I had kept my old card, a Gainward GF3 Golden Sample, which overclocked like no other card I had ever seen.

Well, the 9800 Pro was so fast, I ran it at stock speeds, but occasionally would overclock it when benchmarking. It also overclocked well, though not to the extent that the Golden Sample did. Well, one benchmark, I decided to see if raising the AGP voltage one notch (.05v) would help it clock higher, and it helped it slightly, but not as much as I had hoped. So, I didn't do that for quite awhile, but later decided to give it another shot; the card didn't survive the benchmark. I was sure wishing that I had just left that $300 card at it's already fast stock speed, or at least not ever tried changing any voltages.

 

[MarcVenice]

Best advice for a beginning overclocker is to make sure that he knows where to find the cmos battery and how to reset it. Some mobo's require a small jumper to be switched, some mobo's only need their battery's removed for 30 seconds. After that, it's trial and error if you ask me. The CPU's and Mobo's of today are pretty hard to break, you'd have to SERIOUSLY overvolt a CPU to have it blow up on you. Overheating is a possibility, but it should shut itself down before any damage is. Beginning overclockers should probably start with something cheap, something that can be replaced. If you just put all your livesavings into a new rig, as a 20 year old I mean, and it dies, that's going to hurt Usually I think it's a good idea to overclock your previous PC to get a bit of feeling for it, if you want to overclock your new PC.

 

[dreddfunk]

myo - I wasn't just looking for horror stories--or stories where you broke a part--but also just, "I can't believe I forgot to do that, on my first time", kinds of stories: forgot to loosen the RAM timings, forgot to give the RAM/CPU more voltage, forgot that last stability check. You know, stuff that you never forget to do now, but maybe you forgot once or twice early in your career as an OC'er. I do hear you though, with modern CPUs, MBs and RAM, overclocking seems more of an exercise in patience, than a dangerous undertaking.


Marc's advice is very useful, and it has left me wondering if there isn't a good story in there someplace...


Bobo's story is my favorite thus far, though not hooking your monitor up to power is really close tno!

 

[Matt2]

My biggest DOH came when I was messing around with the BIOS settings to find the fastest speed I could get my RAM. I was playing around with 9x311 and 10x280 on my Opteron 170. I accidentally forgot to set the multiplier back to 9 and ended up with 10x311. Needless to say my computer wouldnt boot and it took me three hours of CMOS resetting to get it to boot properly.

Other than that, overclocking is nothing to be afraid of. I was overclocking computers that weren't mine when I was 11 years old and I dont have any dead computers on my conscience.

 

[stardust]

I had a pump fail on me once while doing many restart cycles while I was testing my hardware and resulted in a CPU temp of 92C. Thank God the Barton was dirt cheap and CPU's nowadays have throttling