Ok, so I just found out about overclocking CPU's... So I decided to try that on my old Celeron 600mhz. At first I could only set it to 76/35 mhz. But after overriding FSB, I can set it WAY higher . It's at 900mhz right now!!! LOL, I just know something is gonna go wrong.

So question is, WHAT can go wrong? Overheating? Frying of components? How much is TOO much? I dont really care about this computer, I just wanted to try it outand so far, applications have been running great! Games are running at their full framerate! Anyone ever overclocked theirs?

 

Most of the time the only failure is the CPU. Keep a very good cpu fan on the unit. A $12.00 fan won't cut it and you need to use the high end fans $30.00 +. If you don't have a second case fan, add one and if the case will take 2 that is better. Heat is a very bad thing.

 

You better put alot more air across that chip if you want it to last a while. Overclocking any cpu is going to shorten its life expectancy.

 

Don't mean to take a anything away from this site, but a GREAT and I do mean great website for info about overclocking and computers in general is http://hardforum.com.

Edit: It seems Hard Forum is down for upgrades.

 

You're OS can become corrupted due to the CPU becomming unstable. As for decreased longevity, not always the case. An AMD Athlon 2500 is the same as a 3200 except for the FSB and a fan. Now why in the world anyone would pay more money for a 3200 is beyond me.

Have I overclocked mine? Sure did, about 1/2 hour after I got the system built. All has been fine for a year now.

 

Copper core heatsink with a high-volume 110mm or larger ball bearing fan if you're going to overclock. That's the minimum. I don't know how you overclocked 50% more power out of it with a stock setup, but you're lucky. I have a habit of frying things WITHOUT overclocking.

Generally overclocking doesn't get you enough to be worth the tradeoff (heat, noise, failures).

 

Lol, well I found out that 900 is the MAX without problems ocurring. I overclocked it ALL the way and the computer will be be running, but thats it! Continously running with nothing displaying on the monitor. Tried a lower setting which gave me 927mhz. Everything ran fine until an application froze. Rebooted and I had Fatal Exceptions until computer rebooted itself.

Sooo, I'm keeping it at 900mhz, which seems to be doing fine so far. I'm also surprised how I got 50% more power out of this. I guess it makes up for my motherboard only reading 128mb when I have 256 in there . Oh well!

 

I had a Celeron 266 overclocked to 50% @ 400, had it for over a year and sold it to a friend, he still uses it regularly. I didn't use any extra cooling on that unit.

Otoh, I had a 700 AMD Duron that I overclocked slightly and it developed problems with playing mp3's, eventually it was just a bunch of spueeks and hisses, but otherwise everything else seemed to run fine and it did it overclocked or not. AMD warrantied the chip.

 

Personally, I am not a fan of overclocking. It is like equipping a motorcycle with a V8 engine. Bad stuff will happen.

What you need:

- Ball bearing cooling fan for CPU and RAM
- High end heat sink
- Your case must move air through fast. If it is a store bought case it probably sucks (dell, gateway, etc). There are special cases just for this purpose.
- Make sure all of your wires are neat in the case so air doesn't have to move through them
- Your worst enemy is heat. Also more dust will accumulate inside the case with more fan power.

 

Check a site called nvmax at: http://www.nvmax.com/

 

502ci V-8
Mike

 

I'd recomend a cryocase for over clocking.. It's a refrigerator for your computer... It even has a wet coolant system for the CPU, RAM and VIDEO CARD.

 

My current system is overclocked, and no problems as yet(been a year). Currently running an AMD 2600 XP+ which is stock at 1.917Ghz@2.34Ghz on stock cooling, with added case fans...120mm drawing in at the front, single 80mm drawing in on the side(cooling the ram) and 2 80mm's exhausting the rear. I run folding@home 24/7, never shut this thing off, and it barely hits the high 40's(celcius) if it's really hot in the room, which is almost never, unless there's a strong winter wind blowing in the window and I need to shut it, even then, the worst I've seen is 51 degrees, which it will hit at stock speeds gaming, or running folding as well.

The older Celeron's, especially the copper core cpu's will fry rather quickly if overclocked to far, so bear that in mind. If your pc is only reading half your ram, likely you have one stick that is the wrong density for it to be able to read, or you've exceeded it's max capability, or you're running one stick of slower ram(pc 100 vs pc133, etc) It's best to take in the stick that is working, and match it with the same brand/speed of ram for best results. Adding a chipset cooler will be of value to you, as the cpu is not the only thing to get hot. I had to bump up the voltage on my chipset to get it stable at the current speeds, as well as bump up the voltage to the cpu. This is where the extra cooling comes in. Granted, a better cpu cooler and bigger cpu fan would aid cooling even more, as would switching to liquid cooling for a more quiet environment. If you really want to get things going, get a set of ram sinks and get your ram cooling better as well, and then you have more head-room to overclock the ram, and play with latency settings. AMD systems seem to benefit from broadening the gap in latency settings(mine are 11-2-27 currently, and get the best overclock at those speeds) where Intel chips seem to like tighter timings.

Check out www.ocia.net as well as http://www.pcper.com/index.php for more overclocking tips.

 

I have overclocked a quite a few cpu's in my day. Celerons like the 500 overclock very nicely without too much extra cooling. Usually you overclock in small increments until it won't boot or you get lockups and then drop it back down a notch. Except for the celerons where you can get 50% more speed, there is not much need in overclocking. You would not see much of an improvemtent going from say 2.7 to 3.2 or 1.7 to 2.0+. You might get a few more frame rates in games, but if the game you play runs smoothly it doesn't matter. I had a 733 PIII coppermine that I had running at 977 or something like that. I never saw a difference. It also depends on what other bottle knecks you have like video card or hard drive. If you want more speed from a modern computer like PIV or AMD Athlons, look for bottle knecks. Do some research on your hardware and see if the processor is too slow for it or if you can go faster.

 

Check out www.overclockers.com. These guys have been doing it forever!

That link actually takes you to the portion of their site where many have posted picts of how they are water cooling their cpu's!

Good site for some research.

Good Luck!
Tim