First time Over Clocker (Suggestions)

[Khross]

Ok, I am building a new system, and I plan over-clocking it. After reading reviews and posts from varies sites, I've decided to go the P4 route. I'm still undecided on the actual chip (1.6a or the 1.8a). I also need help on determaining the Motherboard and Memory. Any recommendations on hardware will be greatly appreciated. I would also like some opinions on possibly waiting for the Nforce2 board at the end of the month. Thanks in advance to all the guru's!

The difference in price between the 1.6a and 1.8a is roughly $7-10, so it's not really a matter of price. Seeing as this is my first time over-clocking, I would like to go the safest, most reliable route. I am "hoping" to get to around 2.4ghz OC'ed. I would also like to attempt getting the FSB over 533mhz, which I have read is fairly easy as well.


My System looks like this thus far.

Processor: p4 1.6a or 1.8a

Motherboard: EP-4G4a+ or Asus P4533(I am open to other suggestions.)

Memory: Samsung 2700 DDR or Corsair XMS 2700 C2, Corsair XMS 3000 C2, Corsair XMS 3200 C2.5 (Need Suggestions here as well)

Hard Drive: IBM 80GB 7200 120 GXP (Good, Bad, Better?)

CDRW: Lite on 40x12x48

Sound Card: Hercules Muse XL($20) or Hercules Furtissmo II(sp?) or Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. (I Only need this for games, I do not do anything with movies or MP3's.)

Video Card: Hercules 8500 128mb DDR. Or stick with my old Crappy Radeon 7500 and wait to see what happens with the new Video cards.




<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Khross on 07/30/02 03:59 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Venom_IL]

You seem to have built up a great system, regardless of the choices you make in each category
I can help you with several things:
Corsair XMS 3000 C2 ~= Corsair XMS 3200 C2.5 performance-wise, so the latter would be a waste of money.

About the Graphics card - do not, under any circumstances, buy a 8500, as the Ti4200 costs about as much and is much better. if you want to wait for the new developments (NV30, R300, etc) then ok - but at the present Ti4200 is the best choice.

About the OC...
well if you want 2.4 I'd go for the 1.8A for a clean FSB->133 OC (although ive had extremely bad luck with it, that wont happen to u cos you wont buy MSI :frown: ), but if you want to play it <b>extremely safe</b>, take the 1.6A and OC it to 2.13GHz (FSB->133)

Oh, and if youre not scared of <A HREF="http://www.hexus.net/review.php?review=278" target="_new">PIN WRAPPING</A> (although they claim its VID PINNING...NM-same all, same all), then by all means, take the MSI 645 Max2-LRU - its simply superb in terms of stability and performance (only problem is low Votlage options but thats what the VID Pinning is for) - thats the board i have and im very happy with it (except for said voltage problem which can be easily solved). you could also save some money by using the onboard audio (AC97 - its not Audigy but its good)

Best of luck !

-------------------------
<font color=blue>Rest easy...
Venom is here</font color=blue><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Venom_IL on 07/31/02 02:09 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[qazwsx]

WHAT?
Why Did You take P4 instad of ATHLON XP?
HAVE YOU COMPLITLY LOST IT

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Can someone say biased?

"When there's a will, there's a way."

 

[Crashman]

d00d, you don't need to wrap pins! You can drop a u shaped wire into the socket holes for the same result!

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had ask more questions first!</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

I'd get a Maxtor drive

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had ask more questions first!</font color=blue>

 

[chuck232]

Ok:

P4 1.8A

Those are good mobos, but I'll put in GigaByte GA-8IEXP and an ABIT BD7II RAID.

Depends for the RAM. If you're only going for 533FSB, then the Samsung PC2700/Corsair PC2700 would suffice since they'll reach DDR354 with the 3:4 divider

I'm probably gonna be getting a 60GB version of that HDD. They're the cheapest and seem to perform pretty well. Seems like IBM have fixed the problems that were evident with the 75GXP series HDDs.

Good CD-RW

Not sure about sound card, although the Santa Cruz seems pretty good.

If you don't need dual monitor support and DVI, then get the Gainward Ultra 650TV 128MB Golden Sample. They're $168 IIRC from newegg.com.

:lol: Finally, I get a capitalized title!! WOOT!! :lol:

 

[Sir_Spunk]

Yeah try the Maxtor or even WDC Hard disk.

Also, the Gigabyte 8IGX or GXP is a great mobo for overclocking. picked it up myself. Runs stable and all you have to do is change the freq. from 100 to 133 in the bios - and voila - my 1.8a runs at 2.4.

And I'd prob wait for the new Radeons - dunno how much they'll be though.

 

[Cooj]

AMD's don't have the OC potential that P4's do.

Cooj

 

[evolart]

I'm a first time ocer as well..........

System specs (ordering my system in the next few weeks)

Epox 4g4a --(4g4a+ has onboard vid and nic........which just means more stuff i need to disable)

P4 2.0A Ghz - (OC'd to 2.6....I believe thats what I need to reach 133)

Samsung 256Mb DDR333 (Gonna buy another stick)

Arctic Silver 3 (Not necessary)

Arkua 8568 (Heatsink/Fan) - One of the top rated P4 socket 478 fans I've seen.........beautiful fan as well

 

[lhgpoobaa]

i have the following advice for you:

First and most important, Take your Time! a rushed job leads to uncertainties. record your progress. what settings work and what dont.

ive just done a minor OC project (posted in this forum) and it was done over the span of 5-6 days.

next thing. the right tools. got a list of useful programs to test for stability, and run them all for over 30 mins a piece

Memtest86 - good for testing mem & hard mem timings.
prime95 - good for rooting out cpu calculation errors, typically induced by high mem or fSB speeds. also good for heat generation.
UD cure for cancer - my usual background task.
3dmark - useless results in my opinion, but good for GPU stressing.
arj integrity archiving - good test for and IDE problems associated with high FSB.

and thats about it. slow and methodical.

<b>P4 'Wilty' Celleron 1.7, 128Mb PC100 Cas3 SDRAM, 5400rpm HDD, Integrated everything. YUM!<b>