ASRock P4VM800 Matx Overclocking - 'elp!

[acidbottle]

hi folks, excellent forum here, taken agaes to register

well anyways, although im no noob to computers, have just finished building my second system .. first one was an ancient celery 450 then i got a laptop etc ...

i specifically engaged a tiny bit thought on hardware i was going to use with a view to do some simple overclocking (400mhz or so extra would be fine)

Hardware Purchased:

2.8Ghz Intel P4 (northwood/Malay)
Zalman CPNS7000 Cpu Fan
1GB 3200/400 DDR Crucial Ram
ASrock P4VM800 Mobo (BIOS 1.30)
X-Qpack Case 450W
250 Samsung Spinrite HDD
Sony DVDRW
WinXP Sp2

ok, well the problem i have is probably extremely simple, but i figured you guys would give me a straight enough answer!!

this mobo is suposed to be a good overclocking (a bit 'safe') but good, as is my ram and cpu. i can get my pc to run stable on all the defaults .. ie FSB 200 and ram set to 400, however upon fiddling with o/c options i can bump up the FSB to 232 easily (max and stressed temp at 45 deg C) .. unfortunate then i have to lower my ram to 166 :? if i want to bump up any FSB speed i need to lower my ram speed. is this normal, would better o/c ram be pointless? are there any other ways i can keep the ram at 3200/400 and able to bump the FSB up?

I am able to keep max temps under the suggested limit (50 degs C) that the mobo will cut off power. also tried upping the ram voltage but i get a black screen at bootup.

i would also like to mention that with 166 ram and 232 i ran burn-ins HotCPU - this worked for 6 hours stable, but Prime95 crashed after 6 minutes! ive ran various apps to test the system and its seems happy .. left on for over 24 hrs running other stress testers and they seem happy to.

hope you understand my nonsense and the answer is simple (ie your setup is rubbish har!) seriously tho, i hope someone has had experience with this kind of setup and can shed some light here. just seems odd the ram wont go any faster when fsb is cranked up.

TIA tho

...oh just forgot to ask .. the P4VM800 manual states 2 DIMM slots .. 1 can handle 3200 and the other only 2700, is this correct or an asrock error .. ive emailed them but with no response.

 

[acidbottle]

ok .. well i upgraded the BIOS and now it magically works, kinda.

o/c cpu up to 3.0ghz with memory on 200/400. if i lower the ram frequency to 166 i can clock to 3.2 and burn-in is stable.

still no idea if P4VM800 can accept 2 sticks of PC3200/400 Ram tho, anyone know please?

 

[Tron014]

Hi
asrock are correct when a motherboard says it can handle upto 2gb ram but as you know 1gb ram = 1024mbs so two of then takes it over the 2 gb that the board can support on pc3200 400mhz, it will support 2 gbs of the lower memory ie pc2700. or lower. also the motherboard you have runs at 800fsb and with your pentium it should run ok. going back to the unstable part it maybe that the thermal compond between your heatshink and processor may not be good enough, you have to cover the whole top of the processor to keep the temp down as I found out with mine.




here is the tech stuff.

Product Type Mainboard
Form Factor Micro ATX
Width 24.4 cm
Depth 20.3 cm
Compatible Processors Celeron, Pentium 4
Processor Socket Socket 478
Chipset Type VIA UniChrome P4M800
Max Bus Speed 800 MHz
BIOS Type AMI
Storage Controller ATA-133, Serial ATA-150 (RAID)
Power Connectors 4-pin ATX12V connector, 20-pin main power connector
Processor
Installed Qty (Max Supported) 0 ( 1 )
Memory
Supported RAM Technology DDR SDRAM
RAM Installed ( Max ) 0 MB / 2 GB (max)
Supported RAM Speed PC2100, PC2700, PC3200
Video
Graphics Controller VIA UniChrome P4M800
Video Memory Shared Video Memory (UMA)
Audio
Audio Output Sound card
Audio Codec CMI9761
Sound Output Mode 5.1 channel surround
Compliant Standards AC '97
Telecom / Networking
Networking Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet
Features
BIOS Features ACPI support, SMBIOS 2.3.1. support, Hyper-Threading Technology
Hardware Monitoring CPU core temperature, chassis temperature, CPU fan tachometer, chassis fan tachometer, system voltage, CPU overheating protection
Sleep / Wake Up Wake on LAN (WOL)
Expansion / Connectivity
Expansion Slots Total (Free) 3 PCI
1 AMR
1 AGP 8x ( 1.5 V )
1 processor - Socket 478
2 memory - DIMM 184-PIN
Storage Interfaces Serial ATA-150 - connector(s): 2 x 7pin Serial ATA - RAID 0 / RAID 1 / JBOD
ATA-133 - connector(s): 2 x 40pin IDC - 4 Device(s)
Interfaces 1 x network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX - RJ-45
1 x storage - floppy interface - 34 PIN IDC
1 x keyboard - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style)
1 x mouse - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style)
6 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 PIN USB Type A
1 x parallel - IEEE 1284 (EPP/ECP) - 25 pin D-Sub (DB-25)
1 x display / video - VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15)
1 x audio - line-In - mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm
1 x audio - line-out - mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm
1 x audio - input - mini-phone 3.5mm
Additional Connectors (Optional) 2 x Hi-Speed USB
Miscellaneous
Cables Included 1 x Serial ATA cable
1 x floppy cable
1 x IDE cable
Software Included Drivers & Utilities
Compliant Standards Plug and Play, ACPI, CE, WHQL, FCC


hope this helps a little.

 

[acidbottle]

thanks

yep, helps knowing i cant use 2 sticks of 3200, whish id done my sums more now lol ... however, is it possible to have a stick of 3200 at 166 (basically 2700) with another 2700 stick?

reapplied thermal gloop, stability is also far far better, again well spotted!