Just built first PC

[XDRoX]

Well I got all my stuff in the mail today, and just finished building my first PC.
Here is the stuff:

E2200
GA-P35-DS3L
EVGA 256-P2-N733-LR GeForce 8400GS
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Samsung 22" monitor
Zalman 9500
Antec 900

So I got everything together and was very surprised and relieved to see it turn on. I stuck in my Vista Ultimate Disk, and it loaded fine. I downloaded AVG virus scan, Ad Aware, Firefox, Core Temp, PC Wizard, Prime 95, and CPU-Z.

I then restarted and went into the bios. Pls keep in mind that I have never done this before and I don't really know what I'm doing. I bumped FSB from 200 to 250 with a multiplier of 11. I did do it in small increments, running prime95 after each bump. I then noticed that my DRAM frequency was also raising, so I think I was also overclocking my RAM???
So I went back into the bios and changed the ratio to 3:5 to keep the RAM as close to 800 as possible. At a ratio of 3:5 I'm at 833, so I figured that ain't bad.

Am I right to assume I should try to keep my RAM around 800?

So I'm stable at 250 x 11 = 2750mhz.

Should I keep pressing it or leave it be at ~2.8ghz? Also I have not messed with any of the voltages. Is that OK?

Thanks

 

[Pinscher]

Those Ballistix are great for overclocking. You want to keep that ratio as close to 1:1 as you can actually. Overclocking your RAM only makes your system faster and helps with overclocking your CPU. Your ballistix will run fine at 1000 mhz I'm sure.

About the voltage, there is no reason to raise it if your system is running stable. I don't know what the overclocking capabilities of an E2200 are but I think if you got it to 2.75 GHz you should be able to make it to 3GHz. Give it a small bump in voltage if it needs. Only up the the voltage by one increment at a time and test it. No point in giving it more voltage than it needs.

Also, you don't appear to be doing any gaming so what do you need to overclock for? What do you use this rig for?

 

[Redmo0n]

That graphics card is extremely weak and wont play any games.

 

[XDRoX]

Those Ballistix are great for overclocking. You want to keep that ratio as close to 1:1 as you can actually. Overclocking your RAM only makes your system faster and helps with overclocking your CPU. Your ballistix will run fine at 1000 mhz I'm sure.

About the voltage, there is no reason to raise it if your system is running stable. I don't know what the overclocking capabilities of an E2200 are but I think if you got it to 2.75 GHz you should be able to make it to 3GHz. Give it a small bump in voltage if it needs. Only up the the voltage by one increment at a time and test it. No point in giving it more voltage than it needs.

Also, you don't appear to be doing any gaming so what do you need to overclock for? What do you use this rig for?

Thanks for the info. Why should I try to keep the ratio as close to 1:1 as possible? And I do I know if I'm hurting the RAM, since I have no temp gauges for it?

And yes, I don't play any games, I just wanted to OC just to see if I could do it. I guess I just like to see how far I can push things

 

[DawnOfDoom]

you wont be hurting the ram juts dont change the voltages for your ram. bad things happen when you change your Ram voltages. and keep it 1:1 because your ram cna handle that at stock voltages so basicly its making your ram faster and your CPU faster. its just good to keep it 1:1 im not sure on all the logistics of it all but i know its good. Gurusan can get into the tech of it all if you really wana know. The GPU may be bottlenecked causing your system to run slowly. so i would probably bump up to a 8800GT or GS just to have a reasonable clockability.

You do know you can OC your GPU right? with ATI tool even though its an Nvidia ATI tool still works

if you concider doing that i would go with a GTX or GTS 8800 from Nvidia because those can handle a beating on OCing

PS the GPU will run hot if u oc it so it would be strongly recomended that you get an Aftermarket HS for your GPU

if you do go with a 8800 to OC it i would recomend getting the HR-O3

awesome pasive cooler for the 8800 series, it doesnt even have a fan and it still cools better than stock cooling. Put a 120mm Fan on that thing and you got a beast.

 

[Pinscher]

DawnOfDoom, you just wasted a whole lot of typing telling him how to overclock an 8800 when he doesnt want one or have any reason to get one. If you read his post, he doesn't play any games.

XDroX, I'm not sure of the exact reason to keep the ratio at 1:1 but it is better. As long as your RAM voltage doesn't exceed 2.1v, it will be perfectly fine. Your mobo might be setting the default voltage of your RAM lower than that, possibly limiting your overclocking so check that too.

 

[XDRoX]

I'm now up to over 3ghz and seems stable so far. I am worried about the RAM though. My only settings I can find to control the RAM voltage are:
Normal
+0.1V
+0.2V
+0.3V
+0.4V up to +0.7V.
Can I assume that Normal is the 2.1V?
Or where on my PC can I see the actual voltage the RAM is receiving?

 

[Pinscher]

Hmm I don't know that mobo so I don't want to answer and give you the wrong one. My 780i shows me the actual voltages its sending to every part of my computer and I can set these voltages manually if I want. I don't know what that Normal is. Is there anywhere in the BIOS that shows your voltages?

 

[XDRoX]

Not that I can see. I have it at 3.1ghz now and it's stable so far. Gone through a couple tests on prime95 without a problem.
I'm keeping the RAM under 1000Mhz, so I think I'll be OK. I tried to get the CPU over 3.2ghz, but I got blue screen when running stress tests. So I think 3.1 is my max without upping the voltage. I still have not gone over 1.3250V, which is VID. I guess my next step will be to up the voltage and really push it.
My temp's aren't going over 35C even at peak load, so I figure I can up the voltage quite a bit yet. I started around 1.2000V and have only upped it each time I needed to.
Thanks for the help.

 

[Pinscher]

No problem.

If you feel like you want to push it a little further, you may need to get a better after market cpu cooler. Maybe an Arctic Freezer or a TRUE. Thats up to you though. Even just putting some different thermal paste on there would help. I put MX-2 on my QX6700 and it dropped my temps about 8-10C on average from Arctic Silver 5.

Your voltages are starting to get higher so be careful to watch your temps. You seem to be good at watching temps and testing though so you should be fine. Good job so far!