First timer. Need help overclocking my e8400.

[UndeadHero]

Hi all. This is my first time overclocking a PC, and my machine is a little old. I have an Intel e8400 3.0 ghz with an MSI P35 Neo-F motherboard. I'm using 2 RAM sticks that are 1 gb, and 2 that are 2 gb, DDR2/800 PC6400.

Basically I started small and decided to shoot for 3.6 ghz. My CPU handled this just fine, and I took my RAM to 800 in the bios, which should have been fine... but in Speccy and CPU-Z it was still showing up as 355, and when I ran Orthos it crashed after a few seconds due to an issue with the RAM. Any programs I ran would also crash within a few minutes. So I scaled it back to 3.2 ghz, which took the RAM to I think 733, and it seems to be fine... even though it's still showing 355 mhz for the RAM in Speccy. What am I doing wrong? I even tried taking the RAM voltage up to 2.1 from 1.8, which I saw someone do.

Any help would be really appreciated, because I'm at a loss and don't have enough knowledge to really troubleshoot this. If any other information is needed let me know.

 

[inzone]

If your overclocking using the FSB then sometimes you have to lower the ram mhz to get the system stable. Since raising the FSB raises the ram mhz along with it you can run itnto trouble with taking the ram mhz too high even though the cpu ghz is fine.

 

[UndeadHero]

So I'm not going to take the CPU any higher because I'm being limited by the RAM?

 

[inzone]

Well no. I said to lower the mhz of the ram so you can try to go higher and not have the ram interfere with the overclock if you were using the FSB to overclock the cpu. When you use the FSB to overclock the cpu you are raising the mhz of the ram along with the ghz of the cpu.

 

[UndeadHero]

Ah I get you, I was confused because I couldn't find a way in my bios to lower the mhz of the RAM, only make it higher. I tried again and still couldn't find anything... I can change the ratio but I can't touch the actual mhz. I did find that it will remain stable as long as it doesn't reach 800, so it's currently at 780ish with the CPU at 3.55 ghz.

 

[inzone]

I woul think that since you had pc6400 ddr2/800 that if you hit 800mhz you should have been fine since that's the rated speed of the ram.

 

[UndeadHero]

That's what I thought too, but that's what brought me here in the first place. It crashes like crazy as soon as I hit the 800 mark.