upping the FSB

[Jstyr]

Well I've decided to inch my system up a bit by raising the FSB. I've only upped it 5mhz as of now but everything is stable.

My question is, at one point will I have to start raising voltages to meet the power demands? Also, my RAM doesn't have heatsinks or any active cooling on it besides the space fan blowing over the side...is it dangerous to up the FSB too much without knowing how hot the RAM is running?

[extreme]

What is you fsb at right now?

[Jstyr]

138 :p

However my mobo is spec'd at 266. I'm assuming there is some kind of multiplier on the FSB that makes it operate at 266 when set to 133. However I'm not too sure about this.

[Jstyr]

I think the 266 is only concerning the memory interface. A blurb in the instruction manual says it supports 66, 100, and 133mhz standard bus speeds. Exceeding those speeds is not guaranted...yadda yadda yadda.

I also noticed my DRAM settings had my memory clock set at 133 so I upped it to 266. Everything is running stable after a few hours of stress.

[deksecurity]

i think u talking about ddr2100 if that then i'm sure u can do 140+ fsb so go for it maybe up ram voltages to 2.8. i can take my ddr2100 up to 150fsb with 2.8voltages but my guess is can your cpu take it....

[Jstyr]

I do in fact run pc2100 DDR modules. I'm just worried about possibly damaging my RAM as I don't have any heat spreaders on them.

Right now I'm running at 40o C on my CPU and 27o C on my system.

Not sure what my processor will take as I'm only using a stock heatsink and fan on it. My main concern is that I don't damge anything...which is why I'm kinda nervous about fooling with volatges :P

[downhill]

Originally posted by Jstyr
I do in fact run pc2100 DDR modules. I'm just worried about possibly damaging my RAM as I don't have any heat spreaders on them.

Right now I'm running at 40o C on my CPU and 27o C on my system.

Not sure what my processor will take as I'm only using a stock heatsink and fan on it. My main concern is that I don't damge anything...which is why I'm kinda nervous about fooling with volatges :P

If your using quality ram, I'd not worry about it. You should blue screen long before you heat your ram up too much.

[aagiants]

dont worry about heatsinks on ram.. they do very little to help you out. Just keep raising ur FSB and sooner or later ur system will become unstable. By either Windows wont boot, or random lock ups. THat is when u increase voltage

[Jstyr]

Thanks for the info guys...gonna punch it up another notch or two tomorrow when I have more time. I want to get this 1800+ over 1.6ghz

[extreme]

Goodluck!!!!!

[Jstyr]

I'm running stable at 140FSB with no voltage modding yet.

That puts my proc just a smidge over 1.6Ghz!!! It's registering as a 1900+ now :D

[terrancelam]

congrats on your stable oc :D Let us know how its goes! BTW you won't need any active or passive cooling as long as you aren't massively overvoltaging your ram.

As for power supply needs, a good rule of thumb for stability is to have atleast 350W for a any AMD XP rig.

[terrancelam]

also about cooling, with your current temps, nothing to worry about, just see how far you can take it. I think the limit I heard with this board and my personal limit was 155mhz for the FSB.

[Jstyr]

Thanks man,

I'm actually hitting 46 degrees C after running 3dmark 2 times through. So my loads are higher than i first thought.

How do you guys view temps WHILE running stress tests??? Seems I always have to exit out of the test fast and check my gauges.

[aagiants]

just run the temp guage simotaneous to your testing prog, its should have a log on previes temps

[terrancelam]

Originally posted by Jstyr
Thanks man,

I'm actually hitting 46 degrees C after running 3dmark 2 times through. So my loads are higher than i first thought.

How do you guys view temps WHILE running stress tests??? Seems I always have to exit out of the test fast and check my gauges.

don't worry about full load temps too much, but you can usually check by running other loop programs all night long (I.E SiSandra)

[Jstyr]

Allright I put her up to 145 FSB and experienced a boot loop then corrupt windows file.

Seems like it's time to up the Core voltage a bit. Should I also up the DRAM and I/O voltages any?

[terrancelam]

i/o voltage I think was for the videocard and the dram voltage for ram, hmm raise the ram and cpu first, don't do the I/O unless your doing the some videocard ocing.

remember the step, steady and slow :D

[Jstyr]

Well I upped the FSB to 145 and raised the memory and core volatages one notch. Default core is 1.75, default DRAM is 2.55. Every step is .10 increase in voltage on my board.

Now running like this I was able to get into windows but had genral protection fault errors and a reboot. So I decided to raise my I/O voltage one notch as well. Default is 3.50..went up to 3.60 I believe.

This was still unstable and caused a reboot right after reaching desktop.

So I decided to drop back to 143 FSB. After tweaking voltages at this setting I still had a reboot after playing 15 minutes or so of Army Operations. Status-Unstable.

So I'm back at 140FSB with no volatge mods..steady as a rock.

Not sure what I can do to fix this issue. Maybe I need to give it more more voltage??? I'm afraid of frying the RAM or a PCI card though. My CPU temps jumped to about 42 or 43C idle with the .10 increase in voltage. I'd probably hit 49C full load under 3dMark or 47C running my most grueling games.

I do also have my vid card OC'd slightly but I don't think that's a factor. I'm just baffled because I know temps can't be causing instability with the voltage up just one notch. It has to be a power issue.

Any insights or thoughts would be appreciated. I am at least having fun :D

Oh yea...I decided to try and squeeze out some extra juice from my RAM by lowering CaS Latency on it from 2.5 to 2.0 :p Hehe, couldn't even get into BIOS and had to reset the CMOS. Oh well. Maybe Corsair next time instead of Crucial :)