where she stops, nobody knows
Nov 25 '00
1 mhz, 2 mhz, 3 mhz, 4....why is there this hobby for making your CPU run faster? Cause you have too!!! It's in your blood! :) Erking out every last mhz out of that CPU makes you feel accomplished and makes you feel like you are the king of overclocking.
One of the main issues of overclocking is you have to be careful that you don't have too much heat. Heat's bad mmmkay? If you plan on overclocking you must have a good heatsink.
Heatsink - This is a piece of metal (copper and aluminium are the most used) that sits on your CPU and soaks up the heat. To get rid of the heat, there is a fan is screwed onto the heatsink. The better the fan, the better the heat is going to be dissipated. Right now some of the best heatsinks are made by Alpha, Globalwin, and Taisol. There are heatsinks made of all copper. Even though these work really well, the price is not very friendly. (Around 50-55 dollars) There are also some other extreme cooling techniques such as watercooling but those are best left to the utter pros!
Next thing you have to look at is cases. Yes, your case is very important. If you don't get a big enough case, or a case without much ventilation your system will get too hot and kill your entire computer. Good cases are Inwin, Supermirco, Antec, Enlight, and other cases. I personally have an Inwin Q500 and this works well for me. I also run my computer with the side panel off with a oscillating fan pointed directly into my case.
Which brings me to fans. Have enough fans! If you run your computer with all sides on, then have fans inside your computer. Some pointed towards the video card others pulling air into the computer and other pushing air out. And all fans are not created equal. Look at the rated CFM. (The higher the better)
After you select your heatsink, case, and fans then you have to make sure you cpu and motherboard are overclocking friendly.
For Intel PII's, PIII's, Celerons, and Celeron II's the only way you can overclock is by way of the Front Side Bus The reason you can only overclock with the FSB on these are because they are multiplier locked.
Front Side Bus - This is the speed your entire computer is going to be running at. If you overclock using this method, you will also overclock your PCI bus speed and AGP bus speed. Also overclocking by this method will give you more performance because it is making your whole computer run faster.
multiplier - This is the number the CPU multiplies with the FSB to give you your MHZ. (ex. multiplier of 4 FSB of 100MHZ = 4*100 = 400 MHZ)
The celeron's are more overclockable than the PII's and PIII's. The reason for that is the Celeron's are running at a 66mhz FSB while the PII's and PIII's are running at a 100Mhz or 133Mhz FSB. Meaning you have more room to overclock the FSB on a Celeron.
For AMD classic Athlons, Durons, Thunderbirds, K6-2(+)'s, and K6-3(+)'s you can use either the FSB or multipliers. But for the classic Athlons, Durons and T-birds you have to modify a couple things to unlock the multipliers.
For the classic Athlons, you have to either do it the hard way or the easy way. (The thing about overclocking this CPU is you also have to change the cache timing.) The hard way is you have to solder some things. I don't suggest it unless you are good at soldering, or are going to send it to someone else to do it for you. The easy way to do it is get a Gold Finger Device (GFD) that will let you change the multiplier and cache timings with a flip of a switch.
For Durons and T-birds all you have to do is use either a conductive pen, or a regular .5 mechanical pencil. On the side of the CPU right next to the die are a couple of golden bridges. All you have to do is if they are not connected, just connect them with the pen or pencil.
It is quite easy to overclock a Duron, a little harder is overclock a T-bird, even harder to o/c a classic Athlon, harder than that to o/c a K6-2/3+ and REALLY hard to o/c a K6-2/3. With the Duron there have been people who have gotten a 50 percent overclock with just a regular not very special heatsink. (Duron 600) When they got a better heatsink, they were able to get that CPU up to a gigahertz!!! (Which is REALLY REALLY fast!) The T-bird is able to get around 100-300 more mhz. The classic is able to get about the same. The K6-3/2+'s are able to get 100-200 and the K6-2/3 you are lucky if you get a 50mhz overclock.
One thing about overclocking all these CPUs are if you increase the Mhz you are might have to increase the voltage the CPUs run on. This is something you have to be VERY careful with. Put the voltage too high and without proper cooling your CPU will make a very nice keychain. (aka it will die a most horrible flaming death) Raise the voltage by the smallest increments you can until your CPU is stable. Without the right voltage to the CPU you computer will be very unstable.
As for the motherboard you have to make sure there is some way to change either the FSB or multipiers. This will be accomplished by either physically having to set jumpers or being able to change this by means of the BIOS.
After you do all this....TEST TEST TEST! You can use Prime95, 3dmark, looping a game, anything! Just something to use to stress your CPU and make sure that it is stable at that speed. And don't just test it once! Leave it running all night or a couple hours. (You can also do this before to "burn in" your CPU) Sometimes burning in your CPU makes it more easily overclockable or makes it so that you can run it at a lower voltage.
So, as you can see, your overclocking success depends on the quality of your components. You get crappy motherboards, cases, RAM, etc., you will not have much success with your overclocking. But, get good cooling, good components, you will not only have a better non-overclocked system, you will have a better chance at overclocking.
Here I only talked about overclocking your CPU, but you can also overclock your video card and RAM and other things. I will talk about that in a later epinion.
My experience with overclocking is quite good for the CPUs I have had. My K6-2 300 got up to 333 with a .2 lower voltage. And the CPU I have now, a K6-3 400, is now at 450 with a .2 lower voltage. Once I get my T-bird, I'm going to be trying for a gigahertz! :) Weee!!!
A couple sites that will give you a couple hints to overclocking are:
www.tomshardware.com
www.anandtech.com
www.sharkyextreme.com
www.tweak3d.com
And there are other but I can't name them off the top of my head.
Have fun! More power...auugh auugh auugh!
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Epinions.com ID:
graingerguy
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Member: Welby Lo
Location: Angwin, CA
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 6 members
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