I put toghether an asus crosshair motherboard, amd 5600+ windsor, 2gb gskills ram it also has 2 500gb hard drives, 1 300gb hard drive with vista, 1 150 gb raptore drive with xp, 2 geforce 7900gs pny video cards running in sli and an auzentech sound card. I am new to the pc world and wanted to put together something that really kicked some booty. My problem is I can overclock useing the auto clocking feature with my mobo but for some reason things tend to get unstable and and errors from explorer wanting to close to test drive acting buggy to my cpu gets to 110 degrees f. Can anyone give me some info on where I should put my setting to overclock my system to 3-3.2 gigs? I spent some bucks here and would like to make the most of my money. Also when you overclock is the stock cpu heatsink and fan good enough for that or do you have to invest in an aftermarket cooler to get the job done. I'm a little scared to just get in the and change my bios cause I don't wanna blow this thing up lol. Someone pease HELP!!

Quote: Originally Posted by godofthunder67 I put toghether an asus crosshair motherboard, amd 5600+ windsor, 2gb gskills ram it also has 2 500gb hard drives, 1 300gb hard drive with vista, 1 150 gb raptore drive with xp, 2 geforce 7900gs pny video cards running in sli and an auzentech sound card. I am new to the pc world and wanted to put together something that really kicked some booty. My problem is I can overclock useing the auto clocking feature with my mobo but for some reason things tend to get unstable and and errors from explorer wanting to close to test drive acting buggy to my cpu gets to 110 degrees f. Can anyone give me some info on where I should put my setting to overclock my system to 3-3.2 gigs? I spent some bucks here and would like to make the most of my money. Also when you overclock is the stock cpu heatsink and fan good enough for that or do you have to invest in an aftermarket cooler to get the job done. I'm a little scared to just get in the and change my bios cause I don't wanna blow this thing up lol. Someone pease HELP!!

I would certainly look into getting a better cpu cooler, you might could get 3ghz on the stock one but it would be pretty damn hot. Ok now for the overclocking...I wouldnt try using the software overclocking utility, do some homework and read some good guides. When you understand exactly what you are doing, then go into the bios and overclock manually. As for your question, if a 5600+ runs at 2.8ghz stock (which is 200x14) you would need to increase the fsb value to about 215 to achieve 3ghz and 229 to achieve 3.2ghz, since you cannot raise the multiplier. Essentially you would want to increase the 200 by increments of 5, testing for stability each time. Then, once benchmarking apps begin to spit out errors, you would increase the cpu voltage by a tiny amount. Also, any more specs on your RAM? is it ddr2 800? Your ram is going to play a huge factor in overclocking.

Quote: Originally Posted by hazardous I would certainly look into getting a better cpu cooler, you might could get 3ghz on the stock one but it would be pretty damn hot. Ok now for the overclocking...I wouldnt try using the software overclocking utility, do some homework and read some good guides. When you understand exactly what you are doing, then go into the bios and overclock manually. As for your question, if a 5600+ runs at 2.8ghz stock (which is 200x14) you would need to increase the fsb value to about 215 to achieve 3ghz and 229 to achieve 3.2ghz, since you cannot raise the multiplier. Essentially you would want to increase the 200 by increments of 5, testing for stability each time. Then, once benchmarking apps begin to spit out errors, you would increase the cpu voltage by a tiny amount. Also, any more specs on your RAM? is it ddr2 800? Your ram is going to play a huge factor in overclocking.

yes the ram is ddr2 800, I notice that when I auto overclock the board the ram voltage is changing also, dont know if this is leading to instability issue or not, can you tell me where I can get a good benchmarking app? Your help is greatly appreciated!

Quote: Originally Posted by godofthunder67 yes the ram is ddr2 800, I notice that when I auto overclock the board the ram voltage is changing also, dont know if this is leading to instability issue or not, can you tell me where I can get a good benchmarking app? Your help is greatly appreciated!

Yes the Ram voltage will need to be increased as you overclock, but not by much. Anyways, the most popular way of testing if an overclock is stable is by using a program called Prime95 and running a torture test. While I wouldnt recommend it for fine tuning, you could also use the latest 3dmark just to get a general idea if you are close are not. If the app crashes during the cpu test portion, your overclock is not stable. Prime95 will yield more accurate results but must run for a longer period of time. Also it might be helpful if we knew what kind of power supply you were using. A bad power supply will lead to unstable overclocks due to inconsistent voltage.

Another good program to check for stability is OCCT. You can just run a test cycle with it which will run for about 30 minutes and if it finds any errors or instability it will stop the test and tell you, if it finishes then the system is stable and you can try to push a bit further.

Quote: Originally Posted by hazardous Yes the Ram voltage will need to be increased as you overclock, but not by much. Anyways, the most popular way of testing if an overclock is stable is by using a program called Prime95 and running a torture test. While I wouldnt recommend it for fine tuning, you could also use the latest 3dmark just to get a general idea if you are close are not. If the app crashes during the cpu test portion, your overclock is not stable. Prime95 will yield more accurate results but must run for a longer period of time. Also it might be helpful if we knew what kind of power supply you were using. A bad power supply will lead to unstable overclocks due to inconsistent voltage.

Better than Prime95 is Orthos. Basically some guy ripped Prime apart, and turned it into a purpose-built stress-testing program. Check it out here - Download Stress Prime 2004 BETA

Quote: Originally Posted by hazardous Yes the Ram voltage will need to be increased as you overclock, but not by much. Anyways, the most popular way of testing if an overclock is stable is by using a program called Prime95 and running a torture test. While I wouldnt recommend it for fine tuning, you could also use the latest 3dmark just to get a general idea if you are close are not. If the app crashes during the cpu test portion, your overclock is not stable. Prime95 will yield more accurate results but must run for a longer period of time. Also it might be helpful if we knew what kind of power supply you were using. A bad power supply will lead to unstable overclocks due to inconsistent voltage.

I have a FX epsilon 600 watt power supply, also my case is a 3d aurora, I think the fans are kind of crappy, they only spin at about 1000 rpm and dont seem to move much air, I am currently looking into some thermalTake 120mm fans that spin up to2800 rpm to move more air in the case and an ultra chilltec thermal electric cooler I have noticed that my pc can actually warm up the room that it is in, the video card I have tends to get pretty warm in games that tax them I've actually have seen them as high as 130 degrees f this cant be good for the cpu either since heat rises which is why I am going with such an extreme cpu cooler. As far as the benchmark apps, I am very paranoid about downloading anything from the net because of the obvois reasons can you purchase any of these tests at any stores or online?

you can purchase benchmarks from here. Futuremark - Download Ive personally never gotten anything bad from filefront guru3d or majorgeeks .com ,but as you said you never know