First system, would you OC?

I would say break it in for a few weeks and make sure everything runs well at stock. However, of course you have to OC it at some point, especially since you have quality components in there.

If you don't want to risk it yet, it's fine. That rig will be plenty fast. But if you want to just push it farther for performance's sake, bragging rights, whatever, then I say go for it.

Depending on how far you OC, yes, you can probably see a noticeable difference in games once you OC.

I would say get aftermarket cooling if you want to get serious about OCing, though. Also, a better powersupply may be needed, given the fact that you have a great, power-hungry video card like that. I love my Enzotech Ultra-X, which also supports socket LGA 775 (can be found at http://www.performance-pcs.com )and it gives me great temps. Your PSU may be able to hold up, but once you start really pumping volts to that CPU to get a higher OC, it may end up being the thing holding you back.

Welcome to the forum, thanks for filling out your system specs, and please make yourself at home and enjoy your stay.

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no, his RAM will limit his FSB to not much more than 400. that's still a 50% overclock, and a big jump in performance. 2.8 on these processors is fast as hell.

Fiya, we love when new people start overclocking it's good that you've been taking your time and reading around a lot before you start screwing around with your computer's brain. keep reading and feel free to ask questions whenever they come up.

the hardware you picked for your first build is great stuff and just begging to be OCed though . when you're ready to do it, this new machine will make you proud.

With my first system - although it was quite a bit cheaper than yours - I told myself that I wouldn't overclock it for at least 6 months, so that if anything broke at least I'd have got some of my money's worth out of it.

IIRC, it was about a month max before I started

I decided to take the plunge, I was fairly worried tho, that with the stock fan as it came assembled from mwave, my cpu was running a bit higher than what I could find others were running at. (Around mid 40's idle at 1.8, 56-57 playing 2142, would hit 60 with TAT). Decided to get some AS5 and at a recommendation of a coworker : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186134

It was either that or : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118003

After reading the reviews, I figured the Zalman would have been more of a pain to install, not to mention all the band-aids. So I went with the AC.

Almost lesson learned the hard way:

I Thought the Installation went pretty well, cleaned up the old heat spreader nice, the AC fits _perfect_ on my ds3 Mobo. Another 10th of an inch and I think it wouldn't have any room. I'm not sure how tight the fit will be between the ram and my 2/4 Ram channel once I add my other 2 gigs back in, but we'll see. Looks like it might _just_ fit. And with the position, the fan should be sucking some air from the ram too to help keep ti cooled.

Put the AS5 on, clamped the cooler over it, had a bit of a problem with one of the legs, thought I got it on solid tho. Attached everything.. booted up, few degree difference, I was thinking ok, maybe its just because my room is hot and all. Tried playing around with the OC settings a tad, but pretty much anything I ran it at (before stressing) It would still idle in the upper 45's - 50c. So silly me, I wanted to see what it would hit if I stressed it, so hit it with TAT and shut it off at around 63c.. heh. So I put it back to 1.8, let it sit overnight. Come back in the morning and it's idling even HOTTER now. around 50-51. So I figure that maybe I didn't do the thermal compound right, and decide to redo it. So I go to take the heat sink off, and wouldn't you know, one of the legs came right out of the mobo, turns out it wasn't even locked down into place.

Took it off, the thermal paste looked like it was good, so I took some extra time this time and made sure I locked it in right, definately more solid now. Went into the BIOS, also turned off the auto-fan control, so it's just "on" all the time, booted up, and wouldn't you know it, 32C. Idle Temp (still at 1.8) Now with the original setup from mwave, it was idling at 42-44, not sure if the stock fan / whatever gunk they used made THAT big of a difference, but damn. Even with TAT @ 1.8 ghz spiking both cpu's, it only goes up to mid-high 40's.

So I let it sit for a few hours, ran super-pi and prime95 a few times with a tutorial I found to run it on both cores, and seemed to be doing great temp wise, decided to turn it up. Now I know you're only supposed to go up little by little, and I found out the hard way what happens if you go up TOO much too fast. (Bios reverts back to default I think, and reboots you with good settings). But after looking at what all the articles did with the stock cooler, I figured I'd try 2.8 to see what happened, so I changed the settings, + .02 for my DIMM voltage (which is pretty much what you need for the 4-4-4-12 timings), multiplier to 2, and .. I forget the name of the setting, but the clock freq? to 400? Damn, I need to take a pic of my settings or something and edit this when I get home from work with the exact settings i used. One thing I'm NOT sure about is the cpu voltage, I left it on auto for now. There is a part where it lists two numbers as well, and at 400 for the cpu, I'm pretty sure they're 800 : 800.

Anyway, long story long... it booted up fine with the 2.8, I load up Everest, speedfan, the works, 34c idle! Hopped into Sauerbraten (Which tends to spike my cpu to 100%), That got it up into the low 50's. Running TAT on spiking both cpu's got it up to about 56-57 tops after letting it sit for a while. So so far so good Not sure where to go from here, but that's where I left it when I came to work today, I did the super-pi benchmarks again, and WOW what a difference, Altho when I'm running super-pi it doesn't peg both cpu's, so I may not have that set up right, but it still went from like 26 minutes for the 32M down to around 18.

I'll edit this later with the actual settings and right fields that I have in the BIOS, and I'm going to look up some more articles now while I'm at work.

Very happy I didn't learn the hard way to _MAKE SURE_ you seat your heat sink properly.

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Oh.. my question, about setting the voltage. What problems will you run into if it's set to auto or less than you actually need, stability? And will I be able to test the stability or for problems that this would cause by running programs like TAT? For instance, if it stays solid running tat @ 2.8 ghz and default cpu voltage, am I ok? Should I look into seeing if I can go higher and still keep the temps down?

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What if it runs stable now? Should I stilll try setting it to 1.30 do? Or shouldn't it be stable now since it's running at the default. Think it's around 1.235 or 1.25 or something, will check when I get home.. (Havn't been able to really play 2142 for a while yet, but sauerbraten / super-pi / tat seemd to be ok. As for being 'stable' is that just as much peg the cpu for a while and make sure it doesn't crash or overheat? Should I try for more than 2.8?

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Thanks a lot MrBungle, I think I am going to leave it at the 2.8 for now and see what happens under some live stress. + It should get a little better once the thermal paste sets in I believe. If I have any issues with it freezing I'll look into the voltage first thing, the mem voltage I DO have set, since you need to set that manually to get the 4-4-4-12 that's promised by G.Skill.

Thanks everyone who replied to the thread also, so far I think my first OC'ing experience has been a decent success

Well, Just ran an Orthos test for close to an hour, very happy with the results temps never went over mid 50's. Without overclocking my ram any, I think I'll stay at 2.8 for a while, about to go give it a 2142 test now and see if I can tell a difference



You guys rock, thanks for all the guids and posts on the site!