Poor Man's Dream Machine

[maddog107]

Anyways if you want me to quickly explain how to OC (or at least the process i used) lemme know and ill post something here.

Yes, post OC tutorials please.

This is my current BIOS settings.

Super Pi Results.

Ok ill make it breif. So from that screen enable CPU Host Clock Control which should enable the row below it "CPU Host Frequency". That is the FSB frequency that you are going to want to mess around with. Essentially to start with its 266 by default, your gonna want to increment this by 2-5mhz each time (you can possibly do 10ish each up to say 300mhz) Anyways each time save your setting and boot into windows, if windows loads restart and do 2-5mhz more. Repeat this process until windows fails to load. At that point reboot and depending on the motherboard you will either have to move a jumper around to reset bios defaults or (more likely) this is a OCing MB so it should auto restore to the last stable settings. Anyways what you will want to now do is increase the CPU voltage a bit to see if you can get it in a stable state. As you can see at the very bottom of your screenshot, if you change the CPU Voltage control to something along the lines of "manual" you should be able to control the voltage. Anyways increment the voltage in .025 steps (or whatever the default is for your MB) save settings and try booting again. I would suggest NOT going above 1.5V unless you got a really good fan.

Anyways the extra voltage should allow you to get a higher FSB. Once your happy with the FSB and not an insane voltage boot into windows and see if you can successfully run superPi to 1mil without errors. I would have the temperature monitor (ususaly included with the drivers of the motherboard) and make sure it doesnt go above ~65degrees.

If superPi fails either keep increasing the voltage or go ahead and decrease the FSB by 2-5Mhz and try again till it works. Anyways once that is done they your gonna wanna run "CPU burn" and SuperPi and CPU Z is good to know what speed your getting http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-138.zip

Here is CPU Burn. http://users.bigpond.net.au/cpuburn/downlo...CPU_burn-in.zip

So go ahead and burn your CPU probabaly for 24hours to make sure its stable. While its running you will want to make sure (during the first few minutes) taht it does not exceed the 65degrees or whatever temp your confortable with. If it does you gotta reduce the CPU voltage.

Anyways as always i aint responsable if you toast your new computer and ill post some more info if i remeber it (Since im using my laptop and not my computer). Good luck

[SympathysSilhouette]

I got my pc today. Assembled it this afternoon. Configuration was as described, but I decided to go with the Nvidia 8800GTS instead as GPU. Installing windows as we speak.

[maddog107]

sweet, im still waiting for the R600, damn ATI making me wait :trout:

[SympathysSilhouette]

Finally got my RAID 5 configuration working as well. Now all I need to do is transfer my data from my old computer to my new one.

[schadenfreude]

I just changed the frequency from 266 to 320.

I can still go higher, and windows will still load, but it will automatically change back the settings to default 266. Gigabyte motherboard is crash-proof?!

Speed: 3.20GHz

Temp: 42 degrees

Super Pi (1M): 16.125sec Checksum matches!

Stability: Played Rome: Total War graphics, audio settings at medium. No problem at all.

What else to OC now?

The RAM? The GPU?

[maddog107]

well you still are not even close to hitting the max speed on the ram (theoretically 400mhz, your currently at 320 unless ratio is off, read below)

can you run CPU-Z and see what speed the ram is running at? FBS:Dram should be 1:1 and freq should be 320mhz in your case. here is my screen shot.

also verify the voltage of your ram and check the packaging of the ram it should say how much it should be at. I belive mine was 1.9v and yours is the same but double check.

and from 19sec -> 16sec superpi sweeeeet im sure you can still get it lower, try beating mine of 14.328sec

[maddog107]

oh and here is some info that may or may not help

http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboard...te-ds3-faq.html

essentialy see if there is an updated bios for your MB, and sometimes there are "dead spots" in the FSB so perhaps 320+ is one of those, try jumping to 350 or 360 (or even all the way to 400 if you really want). Your memory is rock solid at 400 so anywhere below that should be fine, its all about your processor, you may want to try say droping your multiplier one (from 10 -> 9) and increasing your FSB more agressivly to say 370 that would be 3.3ghz, or you could drop multiplier to 8 and do a full 400mhz and then if that boots try multiplier of 9 and 400mhz tahts 3.6ghz right there (max i was able to get on mine stable although i was able to hit 4ghz unstable)

hope some of that helps, try bios update first though

[SympathysSilhouette]

I'm still getting used to the fact that my MB gets hotter than my CPU!

Right now, the MB is a 36at

[schadenfreude]

Had to downclock back to default (266).

For reasons unknown, it crashes when I tried to run

some game software with a very mediocre system requirements

(1.6Ghz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM & GeForce 6600).

It seems to crash only when I am running that game.

After I downclock, there is no problem at all.

As suggested, I tried to update my BIOS.

But it seems like I need a floppy drive to do the updating.

I don't own a floppy drive. How can I update my BIOS?

Thanks in advance for the help.

----------------------------

@SS:

What do you use to measure the temperature?

^ My systems' temperature when idle.