Overclocking (Main Thread)

Alright, here’s the deal. I dug through the old CD that came with my motherboard and found some utility meant for CPU overclocking. I got it installed and gave it a shot, but every time I crank things up, the software shows the CPU temperature spiking—though it never actually crosses 45°C. The weird part is the voltage reading: it hits 1.85V and the text turns bright red. Sometimes the voltage stays totally steady, and other times it just goes absolutely wild. What am I looking at here?

Check out that link above from Kyle Sanchez4 or Edward Peterson70. If you finish reading it and still feel a bit lost, just go through it one more time. Seriously, if it still doesn't click after a second pass, read it a third time and I promise everything will finally make sense.☕

Doing it through the BIOS is more reliable... check the link above... let me simplify things here: you can overclock an e4xxx series on a Gigabyte board without messing with voltage or worrying about frying your components...
just hit the Del key to enter the BIOS
then head over to Frequency/voltage control
set cpu host clock control to enabled
for the cpu clock ratio, it's 11x for an e4500, 10x for an e4400, or 9x for an e4300
now, increase the cpu host frequency (FSB) gradually, maybe by 10-15MHz at a time... the default is 200MHz
set the PCI express frequency to ASYNC or FIXED at 100MHz
regarding the system memory multiplier SPD = if your FSB gets too high and you can't boot into Windows, drop it from Auto down to 2.66 or 2.00
Memory Frequency (Mhz) refers to the RAM speed... try to keep it near the stock frequency (667 / 800)
there... hope that helps... I managed to OC my own chip from 2.2 to 2.93 before the board hit its limit😁

Kyle Sanchez4 said:First, give this a read.. http://forum.pcekspert.com/showthread.php?t=88200
then if you're still stuck, let me know.

Did I nail it?

Nice... what kind of cooling are you running?

Kyle Sanchez4 said:Nice work... what kind of cooler are you running?

So, how fast is my CPU overall right now?
I've got an Antec Nina Hundreh case and just that tiny little stock fan on the processor.

2 x 3.2GHz..
By the way, your temps are about 5 degrees higher than mine (I'm using the stock cooler too)
Under normal load or gaming, I don't break 60 degrees.,,,
But down the road, you might want to look into getting some better cooling.

Kyle Sanchez4 said:That’s 2 x 3.2GHz...
By the way, your temps are about 5 degrees higher than mine (I'm using the stock cooler too)
Under normal use or gaming, I don't go over 60 degrees...
but you might want to think about picking up some better cooling down the road.

So that means I've got 6.4GHz total? That sounds awesome.
Any good budget cooling options you'd recommend, legend?👍

It’s just not hitting 6.4 GHz... you've got two cores running at 3.2 GHz each.
So, I'm just waiting on my Sonic Tower to arrive...
Then you can just slap another 120mm fan in there—it'll run like a beast.
Or, if you want the budget route, go with the Cooler Master Hyper 212.

Look, just drop the multiplier to 6 and bump the Front Side Bus up by 5MHz at a time. You'll see pretty quickly when you finally hit that wall. Honestly, hitting 400MHz is a killer result.

Man... when am I finally getting my hands on a P35-DS3 and a Sonic Tower? 🙂
I ended up killing my GPU because the CPU just couldn't keep up anymore...

Since I'm pretty much a total newbie when it comes to overclocking, I was wondering if you guys could help me make sense of some of these BIOS terms:
what exactly are these;
1.spread spectrum
2.max cpuid value limit,
3.enached c1 control,
4.AGP/pci frequency,

Does any of this actually impact my overclocking results?

Also, how do I unlock the "advanced cpu settings" in my BIOS? Right now it says ratio status:locked!

And one more thing—how do I change the core voltage? My BIOS just shows me the current voltage, but the other option is set to ignored. Is there a specific software I should use for this, or should I be doing it through the BIOS?

The BIOS is an American Megatrends v02.53

Thanks a ton for the help!

I'm thinking about picking up an Intel Core 2 Extreme and dropping it into an ASRock motherboard. I was wondering if I'd actually be able to push the overclocking limits on this specific setup, or if I'll just be hitting a wall. Thanks in advance for any insight.

Christian Cook932 said:I'm planning on picking up an Intel Core 2 Extreme and slapping it into an ASRock motherboard, so I was wondering if I'll actually be able to take advantage of the overclocking potential on that board? Thanks in advance for the help.

Can I ask you a question?

Do you even realize why you're buying a chip that has BE in the name?
If you actually knew, you wouldn't be asking this. Why? Because it means the multiplier is unlocked—you can just crank up the clock speed without having to mess with the Front Side Bus.

If you aren't following me here, you might want to rethink trying to OC anything... especially if you don't want to rely heavily on everyone else to hold your hand.

Later👍

Alright, figured I'd jump in and show off my own numbers SuperPI 1M
Validation.
Just a heads up, I had about 55 processes running in the background while this was going down...

Nice 🙂

Thanks 😁.
Hey everyone, it’s been a minute since I’ve been hanging out here... just thought I’d swing by to see what kind of trouble you all are getting into lately.

What was holding you back?

I'm aiming for the Front Side Bus

@ rustyrider40: looks nice... what are you using for cooling?

@ all you newbie overclockers: if you can't be bothered to put in the effort to read this thread from the very beginning, then just go hit up PC Expert for some "overclocking for dummies" guides... it’s like saying you want to learn how to write, but you're too lazy to even pick up a pencil... damn...

rustyrider40 said:Well, I suppose it’s finally time for me to step up to the plate and share my own little results with everyone... I was just sitting here staring at my monitor, nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee, when I decided to finally run that SuperPI 1M validation... and honestly, you wouldn't believe how much tension builds up during those silent minutes while you wait for the numbers to crunch... but it’s such a thrill when the results finally pop up on the screen!
Validation... finally reached that milestone we were all aiming for... everything seems to be holding up under pressure just like I hoped it would....
So, I finally ran the numbers, and even with fifty different processes running away in the background like a chaotic swarm of bees... the result still came out exactly as expected...

Way to go... You didn't actually mention anything about the cooling setup, though, and looking at the build, I don't see any Zalman components in there... 😁

It’s such a shame you don't have an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 sitting there, because honestly, if you did, you could probably push that thing all the way up to 4.5GHz without breaking a sweat... 👍

Are you running Regan on the PCI Express bus too...?