Hi All,
I wanted to first thank you all for the help you have given me in deciding what parts to build my new computer out of. I was not an overclocker, but I decided to give it a shot on my new computer. I upgraded from an Athlon XP 2200+ on a basic nForce2 board to an A64 3200+ Winchester on the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 board. After reading tons of advice I decided to go with cheap ram and save my money, which turned out to be very good advice. I purchased a gig of the basic Muskin PC3200 (~$140 for a gig if I recall).
After much tweaking and many silly mistakes like forgetting to turn down HT from x5 or changing the memory multiplier I got the chip from 2.0Ghz up to 2.6Ghz very stable. The memory is set to 166Mhz lock, I'm not sure which fraction that is, but it is running at 215.8Mhz with timings of 1T, 2.5, 3, 3, 5; it would not be happy with 2.0 CAS latency, but that was to be expected. I was able to run the memory stable up to 240Mhz at 1:1, but I noticed greater performance with a ratio in place and running 200Mhz faster on the processor and 25Mhz slower on the memory.
My question though is at idle the chip runs a nice 40 degrees C, but under maximum "real" load it gets up to 55, and running PRIME95 with the second option which claims to generate the most heat it gets up to 64 degrees C. That is by far the warmest I have ever run a chip... I am pretty sure it is OK, but I was curious what everyone else's thoughts were. I am using the stock/retail heatsink/fan and overvolting a touch to 1.5V. In addition the case temperature never varies much from 25C; it is well vented with a top blowhole and a fan right over the top of the heatsink blowing out the side.
I am not a gamer for the most part, but I do run video compression and rendering routines that can put many hours of 100% load on my processor, and I want to make sure I am not cooking this processor slowly, I would like to get 5 years of use out of it by passing it on to others who do not need a top of the line computer in a year or two.
And one other question I had was regarding amount of memory. Besides video work I also run virtualization programs such as Microsoft Virtual Server to simulate a lab of computers. With only a gig of ram I am limited to about five concurrent machines, two gigs would let me raise that significantly. However I have heard if I go with two gigs of ram I will have a difficult time overclocking, is that correct or am I mistaken? I would hate to have to run 600Mhz slower just to have more ram.
Thanks!
Eric
I wanted to first thank you all for the help you have given me in deciding what parts to build my new computer out of. I was not an overclocker, but I decided to give it a shot on my new computer. I upgraded from an Athlon XP 2200+ on a basic nForce2 board to an A64 3200+ Winchester on the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 board. After reading tons of advice I decided to go with cheap ram and save my money, which turned out to be very good advice. I purchased a gig of the basic Muskin PC3200 (~$140 for a gig if I recall).
After much tweaking and many silly mistakes like forgetting to turn down HT from x5 or changing the memory multiplier I got the chip from 2.0Ghz up to 2.6Ghz very stable. The memory is set to 166Mhz lock, I'm not sure which fraction that is, but it is running at 215.8Mhz with timings of 1T, 2.5, 3, 3, 5; it would not be happy with 2.0 CAS latency, but that was to be expected. I was able to run the memory stable up to 240Mhz at 1:1, but I noticed greater performance with a ratio in place and running 200Mhz faster on the processor and 25Mhz slower on the memory.
My question though is at idle the chip runs a nice 40 degrees C, but under maximum "real" load it gets up to 55, and running PRIME95 with the second option which claims to generate the most heat it gets up to 64 degrees C. That is by far the warmest I have ever run a chip... I am pretty sure it is OK, but I was curious what everyone else's thoughts were. I am using the stock/retail heatsink/fan and overvolting a touch to 1.5V. In addition the case temperature never varies much from 25C; it is well vented with a top blowhole and a fan right over the top of the heatsink blowing out the side.
I am not a gamer for the most part, but I do run video compression and rendering routines that can put many hours of 100% load on my processor, and I want to make sure I am not cooking this processor slowly, I would like to get 5 years of use out of it by passing it on to others who do not need a top of the line computer in a year or two.
And one other question I had was regarding amount of memory. Besides video work I also run virtualization programs such as Microsoft Virtual Server to simulate a lab of computers. With only a gig of ram I am limited to about five concurrent machines, two gigs would let me raise that significantly. However I have heard if I go with two gigs of ram I will have a difficult time overclocking, is that correct or am I mistaken? I would hate to have to run 600Mhz slower just to have more ram.
Thanks!
Eric
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