Time to abuse the old girl and see how tough she is!

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vae victus

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I just bought myself a new rig. Everything in it is practically top of the line except for the GPU ( a used MSI 560 ti Twin Frozr ii which i intend to migrate into my old bucket when i get a new GPU or break my old GPU).

Thus with an extra 5 year gaming computer which had served me well, i'm gonna have some fun and abuse the ever living crap out of her! I've never tried OCing before since I was a poor student, now that I make money and have my new monster rig...

So my system specs

Win 7 Ultimate SP1
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16 GHz
4 GB DDR2 800 GHz Ram
Gigabyte Tech EP43-DS3L Socket 775
Acer 23" Monitor native rest 1920x1080
896 MB GeForce GTX 260 EVGA 216 shaders 448 bus width
320 GB WD HDD
650 Watt Corsair Bronze+ PSU
Stock cooling on everything

First things first, the most obvious to my laymen's eyes to upgrade would be the RAM. Back in the day, plugging in more RAM made a computer run better, unfortunately I dont wanna shell out money to not only buy new ram but prolly a new mobo to fit DDR3 RAM, i'm gonna take a pass on that unless a friend gives me some old parts for me to cram in.

Thus to boost without spending money is OCing the CPU and GPU. So far most of my research has been on how to OC a GPU. Although when I start monkeying with my CPU i think i'll be using OCCT to test for stability.

For GPU testing, i use MSI Afterburner for settings (although i'm still trying to figure out how to unlock voltage, but from most of my reading its best to leave alone), GPU-Z for status readouts. Kombustor, Unigine, and Furmack for stress testing.

Stock stats
Core Clock 626
Memory Clock 1053
Voltage 1.050 edit bah Speccy was wrong Kombustor says its 1.180 v
Current Highest Tested OC
Core Clock 740
Memory Clock 1250
Voltage same

Unfortunately I'm not too sure how stress testing is supposed to work. From what I understand I just let the program run and see if it crashes or suffers massive graphical glitches (artifacts?), or stop it before it gets too crazy on the heat (>90c). So from my newbie stress testing currently those are the highest I've gotten so far without any hitches whatsoever. When I ran Kombustor at a certain point it was telling me that the GPU throttling was occurring so i cut back a bit and it went away. I'm pretty sure throttling is bad, and my from my research maybe raising voltage might be the key. I've played some of my current favorite games and seem to have gotten a bit of a performance boost. I wonder if I'm on the right step so far and would appreciate any tips on how to push this old machine to the edge.

Haha, its funny, but if i had just OCed the hell out of this machine earlier I may have put off buying a new computer for another year!
 
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stevieboy21

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Yeah, I always push my system to the max when I am close to upgrading my system.

Don't worry about temperatures. Temps just give you an idea of how good you're pushing your hardware. High temps are generally not ideal for the longevity of your hardware if you plan to use them for half a decade or more, thus you should not have very high temps on new hardware if that is your intent. However, if you plan to OC real good, then anything below 130C is OK.

There has been a myth perpetuated by hardware manufacturers about the danger of high temps. This attitude is ill-adjusted and not supported by fact or evidence. If anything, this over-exaggeration on the part of the manufacturer is simply another justification that they can use to void your warranty.

Now, feel free to over clock your CPU and increase voltage. When you notice instability that cannot be ameliorated by increasing the voltage, or if the temperature is about to exceed 130C, then that means you hit the CPU's sweet spot.

As for GPU, keep increasing the core clock until it becomes unstable. Then increase voltage by an increment, and continue raising the core clock until you hit instability. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Do the same for the memory clock next. If you start observing artifacts on the screen (particularly in games) that cannot be removed by increasing the voltage, then you must dial back the mem. clock an increment or two. Another thing to note, the GPU can reach higher heat thresholds than your CPU, so feel free to make things toasty. When you start hitting temps like 160C, then you should think about maxing out the fan, and laying off the OC for a day or two. After this time, if you feel your GPU (or CPU) can handle a bit more juice, then feel free to pump more power into them. Again, don't worry about the temps -- the components will shut themselves down to cool off if they cannot operate. They will _tell_ you when they're hot. For instance, do you need a thermometer to tell you that you are feeling hot? No. It's simply another instrument used by the medical establishment to encourage you to visit hospitals unnecessarily.

The RAM speed can be altered without consequence, save for a simple OS crash. Personally, I like to forgo the incremental increases, and simply start at high clocks and voltages and work downwards. When the OS stops crashing, that's when you know you got the sweet spot.

Happy clocking.
 
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vae victus

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Howdy Stevieboy! Thanks for taking an interest in my quest to break my old PC... err i mean test it to its limits!

My GTX 260 is actually standing up to OCing very well. I think im able to hit 750 core clock 1250 mem clock stable on stock voltage, past that will start artifacting. Heatwise it's doing pretty well, not going past 75 when gaming while on OC settings. I have seen some FPS improvements in some of the games i'm benchmarking for my experiment. So far thats a success, which i could have pushed further upon except...

My CPU is heating up at an insane rate. In the past non OC, stock fan, idle, Win XP, it would hover around 28-34, which is great! Gaming wise rarely saw it go past 75. However, i had a mishap while moving my pc around and the heatsink popped off. No biggie, i got some Cooler Master Thermal Compound Kit, cleaned everything up, watched some youtube, and put the sucker back on.

Now its idling around the mid 40s and when i game it's shooting past 90!!!! Naturally i think i prolly put on too much thermal paste or put the heatsink on wrong (friend helped me put the rig together oh so very long ago), so i did it again. I'm trying to fit it on as tight as i can, but i still feel a bit of a wobble, but still the heat persists at 45 idle and 90+ gaming. This is without OCing even!!!

The temps you stated seem to be pretty darn high! Never imagined that running a CPU or GPU past 100 was ever a good idea. Also i've been reading around and people say even when OCing the E8500 on full load they dont go past 60-70 (prolly using after market cooler, but still even the stock one shouldnt be this bad non oc), so naturally i'm concerned that something is wrong here. Its odd how my GPU temp is running pretty normal while the CPU is going way hotter than standard, i must submit myself to the knowledge of the forums for wisdom on my dilemmal.
 
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iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe

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Jul 4, 2010
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e8500 heatsink
images

^is that your heatsink, thin and flimsy? no wonder it overheats, i dont know why intel packages their cpu's with these thin coolers now, even the new i5's come with them.
heres an e6600 heatsink notice how its thicker, it also has a copper core. the way it should be.
c2de6600_cpuhsk.jpg

you should really get an aftermarket cpu cooler, i used to run a hyper tx3 on my e6600 and OC'd from 2.4ghz to 3.5ghz and it kept quite cool.
 
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vae victus

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Odds are trending towards me getting an after market cooler. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is doing damn good on my new rig. Although it's a bit overkill for my old bucket, i think i can really push it to the edge of max effectiveness by getting it and then OCing the ever living hell out of the cpu. Hell, i think it's such a good cooler i can prolly strip it off in the future and reuse it on a new build, or at least give it to a friend.

35 bucks give it take... man, if i'm gonna spend money i might as well upgrade the mobo, get some new ram...
 
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vae victus

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Yea looks like going with the Hyper Evo is prolly the best move. In theory i can eke out another coupla years of gaming on this computer on low end graphics with an OCed CPU and GPU. I also intend to swap in my used gtx 560 ti from my new computer when when i upgrade its GPU.

So in theory it'll look like this in 2 years

Core 2 Duo E8500 at least @4.00 GHz OCed thanks to the EVO
Gigabyte EP43-DS3L (Socket 775)
1 gb MSI GeForce GTX 560 ti Twin Frozr ii (OCed to at least to 880/2100)
4 gb DDR2 800 MHz RAM
320 GB WB HDD
650w Corsair PSU

So far it looks like i'll be shelling out at least 35 bucks for the cpu cooler. Call it anywhere from 300-400 when i get my new GPU, but i wont factor that into this computer. I wonder if there's a way for my to upgrade my mobo cheap to DDR3 capable RAM. In a way, i kinda wished i had gone all these steps instead of buying a new computer and waited for another generation of CPUs and GPUs to come out. Haha, oh well, live and learn, i'm actually having alot of fun digging deeper into how computers work. This whole OC project is really fun.
 
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iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe

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more like cpu shouldnt exceed 80c (should set that as the shutdown temp on your motherboard), and gpu would say 90c would be absolute max for breif periods. But when putting more voltage through anything you should keep it even cooler, and if using for prolonged periods then even less temp, like 65c for cpu and 80c for gpu. There is no reason you shouldnt be able to achieve those temps with an evo 212, and adjusting the fan speed on your gpu and possibly applying better themal paste like noctua nt-h1 to its heatsink.
 
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vae victus

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Heh yea, when i heard those temps i was thinking to myself "that cant possibly be right"

So far i got a nice stable OC at 3.6 ghz on my CPU. I havent tried pushing it further yet since from what i read and told i can only go RAM speed/2 on the FSB, which in my case is 800/2 and i got a locked multiplier of 9 (although i think it lets me have an option of adding .5 to it if i wanted, although i dunno if i should). Idle temp went up about 3-5 degrees and already tested stable with OCCT and Prime95 with temps never going past 57, which means my EVO is doing a fine job of keeping cool. From what i read i need to "tighten" my ram (currently at 6-8-8-22) so that i can increase FSB so that i can push farther, which i dont have a clue what to do. As stated earlier my goal is 4.0 ghz and i havent increased voltage just yet. I wonder if i can push my FSB higher at stock voltage, the bios has a function that adds .5 to my multiplier so i can get another 450 hz, i wonder if its safe for me to enable.

I wonder which i should push harder first in increased voltage, CPU or GPU. Must... get... more... performance.... heh i'm now a OCing neophyte!
 
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inzone

inzone

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While it can become addictive to seeing what can be accomplished with overclocking and you want to go higher to gain more performance but I always look at what I'm gaining in performance compared to what it takes to get that. Lets just say for example that the absolute top clock speed that can be had by your processor is 4.2ghz and that you can get to 3.8ghz with raising the BCLK and adding voltage and it's completely stable and the temps are good. The performance increase that you got was an added 20 FPS in games and you found out that getting that last .4ghz of clock speed to take you to 4.2ghz would add an additional 8 to 10 FPS to your games would you want to continue to overclock to try and get to that top clock or would you be satisfied at what you have knowing that adding that last .4ghz would shorten the life of your processor because that's what adding voltage does and the more you add the more it affects the processor.
What would you do?
 
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vae victus

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Well, considering this is no longer my main gaming computer i dont mind shortening the lifespan since all the parts inside are now considered old as dirt. Of course i'm not gonna go crazy and OC for the sake of OC, but your point is well made. Is the extra 5-10% extra boost enough of a risk for me to take as well as go through all the time effort and hassle of finding those stable values. I guess no not really. I'm not gonna bother playing brand new games on the rig and it can be a nice computer for me to leave at the office since it's more than powerful enough to do all the daily tasks and as an added bonus i can play not as intensive games on it.

Still the whole exercise was rather fun. And it got me to coming to do research and find my way to this awesome forum, so all in all it was a very rewarding experience!

Hmm.... i wonder if i should OC my brand sparkling newi5-3570k hmmmm.....
 
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inzone

inzone

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Of course you should and with an unlocked multiplier it's a whole different ballgame. You can easily get a nice medium overclock and not even have to add voltage. I would get an after market cooler for it and not try it with the stock cooler. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is a good choice and very popular. There are many others and it would depend on what you wanted to spend and what your target overclock is.
 
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