n00b OCer - Bumping up the 3500+ to 2.4

[Brickster]

Recently purchased the A64 3500+, and am thinking about bumping it to around 2.4Ghz.

Should I drop my multiplier from 11 to 10, and then bump the BUS to 240?
Or, why not just keep the multiplier at 11 and have a system bus of 220, to acheive 2420 MHz?

I am new to overclocking, and have never done it, so am trying to gather information.

I currently have the Gigabyte K8NSXP-939 mobo, and Corsair XMS 3200XL DDR400 RAM. Stated to have timings of 2-2-2-5 at 2.75V.

I am running stable memory at 2.7V with everything stock at the moment. Would anyone have any suggestions for me reaching 2.4Ghz?

Comments on stock HSF?

Thanks,
Brickster

 

[Mik3y]

u will need a better hsf to overclock. the stock fan doesnt take heat away very well.

 

[Brickster]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
u will need a better hsf to overclock. the stock fan doesnt take heat away very well.

Even with the gobs of thermal paste I used?

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: Brickster

Originally posted by: Mik3y
u will need a better hsf to overclock. the stock fan doesnt take heat away very well.

Even with the gobs of thermal paste I used?

Gobs of thermal paste will worsen your situation. The best thing to do is apply a very thin uniform layer of thermal paste. Use a plastic credit card to flaten the layer out.

Thermalright SLK948U + 92mm panaflo M will allow you to OC without worry of heat problems. However, since you are new to OCing, Thermalright heatsinks are not the easiest to install. Somebody else here may have a better suggestion.

Basically when you OC, raise the FSB by 5mhz increments. Test it with UT2k4 or any of your favorite recent computer games. Play for 30 minutes. This by no means your system is extremely stable, but it gives you a quick idea. Generally, if a system is not stable, it crashes outta UT2k4 within 15 minutes.

There is a OC guide on this forum. I believe it is stickied - Read it.

You may have to play around with CPU Core voltage and Ram voltage, possibly chipset voltage. All of this is covered in detail in the OC guide.

 

[Mik3y]

yes, even with the gobs of thermal paste. more thermal paste then needed is also bad. it makes the cpu run hotter. amd, like intel, dont support overclocking. the reason for the stock fan is to keep it cool at stock speeds. unless you have a barton 2500+ oced to 3200+ by stock fan, you'll need a better hsf. the xp3200+ and 2500+ are the same cpu's and use the same hsf.

 

[charloscarlies]

The stock A64 HSF really isn't all that bad, but "gobs" of thermal paste is not a good idea.

 

[Tiamat]

Also, if there was a square of TIM on the heatsink, I hope you removed that before you put the thermal goop on. Its even worse if you have both the TIM square AND gobs of thermal goop

 

[xdouble]

I have the same hardware as you do (k8nsnxp-939, 3500+ with stock heat sink/ fan, 2x512 Corsair XMS XLPT.) I have managed to get a stable overclock at 209x11 (2299mhz) with the memory in dual channel mode at 2-2-2-10 timings. The memory is at 2.7V and the CPU is at 1.55V. So far, I have not been able to get the bus to 210 or higher. As soon as I change it to 210, the bios pauses on startup and resorts to 200x11. I've tried relaxing the memory timings, but that doesn't seem to help. Maybe I need to reduce the hypertransport multiplier from 5x to 4x. Maybe someone else has an answer for this?

At any rate, you should be able to get to around 2.3ghz since you have the same hardware. Just make sure, as others already noted, that you only have a thin layer of thermal paste on your processor. Too much thermal paste is less efficient.

Hope this helped.

 

[Yanagi]

Either reduce HT multiplier or increase vcore one notch.

 

[Brickster]

Originally posted by: Tiamat
Also, if there was a square of TIM on the heatsink, I hope you removed that before you put the thermal goop on. Its even worse if you have both the TIM square AND gobs of thermal goop

<self disgust and sarcasm>Sweet.</self disgust and sarcasm>

Yeah, they are both on. It wasn't really "gobs", I was just exaggerating, but good to know. Thanks people!

Any other recommendations for good cooling? (not water)

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: Brickster

Originally posted by: Tiamat
Also, if there was a square of TIM on the heatsink, I hope you removed that before you put the thermal goop on. Its even worse if you have both the TIM square AND gobs of thermal goop

<self disgust and sarcasm>Sweet.</self disgust and sarcasm>

Yeah, they are both on. It wasn't really "gobs", I was just exaggerating, but good to know. Thanks people!

Any other recommendations for good cooling? (not water)

You are not the only person to make that mistake! At least you didnt break anything!

Good air cooling - folks here like Zalman CNPS 7000 series heatsinks.
Also, Thermalright 900series heatsinks with panaflo/vantec tornodos are common.

If you have enough space the Thermalright XP120 is supposed to perform marvelously.
It requires a 120mm cooling fan.

None of these heatsinks are very simple to install. If you take your time, and are patient you shouldnt have trouble though. These are required if you want to Overclock a good bit.

 

[Tetsuo316]

I believe i read that the xp120 does not fit on the giagbyte board. This may have been on hardforum.com.

Like others mentioned, the Thermalright SLK948 and the Zalman 7000 series both cool well with air cooling but are harder to install (for example, to install the SLK948, you would need to remove the standard mounting bracket and backplate from the motherboard and then assemple the new heatsink assembly). The Thermaltake Venus 12 may be easier to install (I haven't tried), but Thermaltake's quality may not match the quality of the Zalman and Thermalright. I have heard many comments regarding the 'hit or miss' nature of the Thermaltake heatsinks.

Also, once you have your desired heatsink/fan combo, I would recommend lowering your multiplier to 10, lowering your HTT multiplier to 4x and raising your FSB 5mhz at a time until you hit your limit. Typically, out of two overclocks with similar total clock speeds, the overclock with the higher fsb will end up performing faster. This should be the case here as with either overclock you mention, your HTT multiplier would need to be lowered to 4x.

 

[Brickster]

Originally posted by: Tetsuo316
I believe i read that the xp120 does not fit on the giagbyte board. This may have been on hardforum.com.

Like others mentioned, the Thermalright SLK948 and the Zalman 7000 series both cool well with air cooling but are harder to install (for example, to install the SLK948, you would need to remove the standard mounting bracket and backplate from the motherboard and then assemple the new heatsink assembly). The Thermaltake Venus 12 may be easier to install (I haven't tried), but Thermaltake's quality may not match the quality of the Zalman and Thermalright. I have heard many comments regarding the 'hit or miss' nature of the Thermaltake heatsinks.

Also, once you have your desired heatsink/fan combo, I would recommend lowering your multiplier to 10, lowering your HTT multiplier to 4x and raising your FSB 5mhz at a time until you hit your limit. Typically, out of two overclocks with similar total clock speeds, the overclock with the higher fsb will end up performing faster. This should be the case here as with either overclock you mention, your HTT multiplier would need to be lowered to 4x.

Tetsuo - thanks for the good advice, dude. That was some good information!