P4 3.6Ghz - and want more

[dstanley]

Hi,

You may remember me from this thread (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=14241&highlight=vapochill).

Well my current setup is at follows:

Intel P4 @ 3.06Ghz 800Mhz FSB @ 3.6Ghz with a 240Mhz FSB
Asus P4C800 Delux Motherboard bios 1002.001 || North bridge at 35degress celsius
2 * 512Mb Corsair 3200XMS Dimms 400Mhz CAS2
Enermax 431W Wisper Series PSU
Asus Ti4600 AGP Gfx Card with a Zalman heatsink installed
40Gb 7200 2mb ATA133 Seagate Silent HD
200Gb 7200 8mb ATA100 Western Digital HD
Vapochill Profesional Edition Case CPU @ 1degree celsius idle
Shin-Etsu Shin-Etsu Thermal Paste

Below are the benches and screenshots:

http://www.stanley.ie/david/stuff/p43600benchcpu.gif

http://www.stanley.ie/david/stuff/p43600benchcpumem.gif

What i want to do is try push the system harder. At the moment i am getting the above speeds with the motherboard overclock setting set to 20%.

The system did run at 30% (3.9Ghz) and would function fine for up to 2 hours or unless a benchmark was run. It would then freeze up. This could be a driver issue.

So what should i consider doing... a fan on the GPU/a fan on the north bridge/a vdimm mod for the motherboard or a reinstallation of windows when its clocked at 3.9Ghz.

Regards.

[phil stanbridge]

Hi there - I'm a little confused by your specs. The 3.06ghz PIV is a 533mhz fsb processor, not an 800mhz one. Is this what you have? Obviously the latter helps benchmarking consistancy.

The cpu temps seem to be high to me, for starters. Contact is the name of the game, the better contact, the better the overclock. I would expect a temp of more like -10 than 1 degree, unless you are running Prime95 in the background. I'm using a MachII and Asus Probe reports my cpu temps at around -35 idle! I would be very tempted to reseat the vapo head.

Next step - use manual overclocking - do not use that percentage increment stuff. You have more control over what you change.

The northbridge cooling I believe only really makes a difference at high fsb - with the 3.06 you won't really need it as you will hit the limit of the chip first.

Never install the o/s overclocked finally.

[dstanley]

Sorry - the original chip was 3.006Ghz as the FSB was slightly above 200Mhz.

We i dont have the vapochill at maximum. I am running it at about 50% as i want to keep the fan noise down - as the PC is beside my bed.

With the vapochill at 65% the system was at -10c when idle.

I think i may have put slightly too much shinetsu paste the cpu - but it was soo hard to cover the heat spreader evenly.

So what should i do about the northbridge - stick a small fan on it?


Never install the o/s overclocked finally.

So install the o/s AFTER the overclock or BEFORE?

[phil stanbridge]

Ok, that's better. Definitely reseat the head, and reapply the thermal paste. That is very important. As for the n/b I would cool it (for now) with a small 40mm fan if poss - I have been using an 80mm vantec tornado @ 7v and the n/b is cool to touch even at 320FSB! The tricky (ish) part is mounting the fan so that it doesn't interfere with the rest of the system. There are other options available too regards the n/b. I have used waterchill, which was reasonable, although again mounting the block on a canterwood was a nightmare for me. To be honest, at present, the stock heatsink should suffice.

Install the o/s at stock. Overclock after! But make a backup of it and any important data prior to that.

[dstanley]

Can i ask what is you motherboard temp at the moment?

[phil stanbridge]

26-30 degrees.

[hedge]

If you want more, buy a new video card. Then you will have completed your fast system. :D