I dont now a thing about over-clocking!

[Danlennon3]

I have a custom made computer and I am sure I could juice it up a little with overclocking. I do not want to screw anything up or fry anything so I could use some help and pointers.I am curious if and how I should safely overclock this computer. Here are the specs...

Windows XP 64bit
service pack 2
direct x 9.0

AMD athlon 64 X2 dual core 6000+

ASRock motherboard - A780GXE/128M

BIOS Ameican Megatrends Inc. version P1.30
graphic interface PCI-express
Max supported x16

4 gigs of RAM - Two OCZ 2GB chips
DRAM Frequancy 386.7 MHZ
max Bandwidth PC2-6400 (400MHZ)
part # OCZ2P10662G

DUAL Nvidia Geforce 9800 GTX+ video cards

700 watt OCZ power supply

if there is any more info that is needed just let me know.. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Antec-User]

What heatsink are you running? Stock? If it's stock, then you won't be able to do much. Just keep an eye on your temps during Intel Burn test. If it goes above 65*c LOADED then drop the clock down a little and leave it.

-You basically raise the FSB clock until it will not boot windows (but for the Athlon, don't go over 220 FSB.) If it doesn't boot then you will have to raise the VCORE or your primary CPU voltage feed. DON'T GO MORE THAN .125v at a time and try to stay away from 1.5v until/unless you have a good water cooling setup or a very good air heatsink.. The main problem with OCing is heat dissipation and our elecronics don't like the heat.

--Idle temps should be no higher than around 40*c -45*c, and load temps should be no higher than 65*c - 70*c.

There was a youtube vid that I had bookmarked that helped me but I can't find it now. Download HWMonitor to keep an eye on your temps while you are doing this. -you will find yourself using it frequently.

-The easiest way to start is to download CPUz, install it (Very small program), and run it. It will tell you all sorts of info about your current, stock, clock. IIRC: you won't be able to mess with the core multiplier, so you will have to step the FSB freq up LITTLE by LITTLE.. FSB x Multiplier = CLOCK Ex: 14x x 200 FSB = 2800 or 2.8g. I guess.. It takes your FSB (Front side buss) and multiply it by your CPU Core Mult will give you your clock.

The things you are concerned with here are your CORE VOLTAGE, CORE CLOCK and CORE MULTIPLIER. Here's one of my CPUz shots.

-The following is all done through the BIOS.
For a basic start, slowly up your FSB from 200 to 205, then restart.. then from 205 to 210... Restart... then up it again from 210 to 215. At this point you may reach the limit of your STOCK voltage., but that may not occur until around 220 FSB. It may be a good idea for you to run 2 cycles of Intel Burn test between your initial runs to get an idea of what is STABLE. You will have to up the voltage SLIGHTLY at this point. run Intel burn test @ 4 cycles to see if it is stable.. If it bluescreens, then you are not stable.

-Once the VCORE and MULT increase will no longer yield a bootable OC, it's time to start upping the frequencies of other aspects of the board. Do some research on this first as it gets kind of complicated. This will be the OVER 30% clock range.. Up to 30% OC is relatively easy..