1.6 Software

1.6.1 Temperature

Like I mentioned before; as soon as you start overclocking, the CPU will get warmer than normal, thus a good CPU cooler is very important. To check the temperature of the CPU, you can use a program like Coretemp. This program allows you to check the temperature of both cores separately.

1.6.2 Stressing

It’s very important to check the stability of the system during overclocking. To do this, you can use a program called Orthos which only stresses the CPU and memory. This program will constantly stress the CPU and memory and will also constantly check whether the CPU or memory is making any calculation mistakes. As soon as it detects any miscalculations, it will notify you. It also measures the maximal temperature of the CPU when stressed.

1.6.3 Information

The small program called Cpu-Z is a crucial tool for overclockers. This program shows very accurate information on the frequency the CPU is running.

1.7 Overclocking

Stress the CPU for around ten minutes with the program mentioned earlier just to measure the temperature of the CPU when running the stock speed. Please note that the best way is to keep the maximum temperature of the CPU below 62 degrees with Coretemp. If you reach this temperature while running on stock speeds, it’s wise to replace your cooling solutions with a better cooling solution before you start overclocking. If the temperature is way below the 62 degrees, than you will have enough space to overclock.

Restart your PC and go into the Bios. Please refer to the manual instructions of your motherboard or the POST screen how to access the BIOS. In most cases you can access the BIOS by pressing Delete of F2 button during the POST screen.

I will be using an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard to demonstrate this. As each motherboard uses a different menu, you will have to check your motherboard manual for entrance of the overclocking options in the BIOS. With this ASUS motherboard, we will be heading to the Advanced section and choosing the Jumperfree submenu.

Once we enter the Jumperfree menu, we see the option, “AI overclocking�. Here you can choose how to overclock. We will choose “manual�, as we want to set everything up manually.

Once we set the option to “manual�, we enter the menu with the settings for FSB, the memory, the used voltages, etc. We see that the CPU is set to 266MHz FSB which gives us a 2400MHz clockfrequency.

We set the memory (DRAM) frequency on 533 to get the 1:1 ratio with the FSB as mentioned earlier. The PCI-Express frequency should be set on 100MHz and the PCI clock on 33.33MHz as these are the standard values for both busses. We need to setup these 2 setting or else they will be increase automatically while we are increasing our front side bus. The hardware connected to the PCI-Express and the PCI bus are things like soundcards and graphic cards. By increasing the PCI-Express and/or PCI bus, we will cause failure on the graphic card or other hardware connected to these busses.

After doing the things mentioned before, we will be checking out the voltages of the main components. The ASUS motherboard that I am using enables me to set the value of these voltages. A higher voltage generally means a higher overclock, but it will also cause more heat generation. It’s surely not wise to set the voltage on a high value when you are starting to overclock. It’s wiser to try to reach a higher overclock on an as low as possible voltage value.
To start our overclock, we will set the voltage of the memory on 2.2V and the voltage of the CPU on 1,25V. We leave the rest of the voltage settings on AUTO for now.

Now we will start increasing the front side bus. As we are just starting, we will set the FSB to 270MHz. As you are increasing the FSB, you will notice that the memory frequency has also increased to 540MHz (270MHz x 2 = 540MHz). Save the settings and start Windows.

1.8 Testing

After Windows boots up, it’s time to test the overclock on stability. Open the program Cpu-Z, which allows you to see the speed of the CPU. If Cpu-Z shows you a speed of 270MHz x 9 = 2430MHz, it means that you successfully saved the bios settings. Now we will open CoreTemp and Orthos and start stressing the CPU. Run this stress test for a while to see whether the overclock is stable or not. Keep an eye on the temperature during the test. To ensure the overclock is stable, run the test for at least 8 hours. With our relatively low overclock, a shorter runtime is enough to ensure the stability.

Once you have successfully completed the stress test, you can increase the FSB again. Follow the steps mentioned before to increase the FSB. Increase the FSB each time with 5MHz until you hit the wall and Orthos is giving errors. Once Orthos gives errors, go to the BIOS and increase the CPU voltage (VCore) with one step. We will not increase the FSB anymore. Repeat this step until the overclock is stable. With an increase of the voltage, the temperature of the CPU will increase rapidly. So it’s very important that you keep an eye on the temperature.

With high overclocks, it’s wise to run Orthos for at least 12 to 24 hours. This ensures a 100% stable CPU and you can say that your overclock has been successful.

1.9 Disclaimer

All handlings are done under own risk and the author of this article and/or AsianFanatics/AFMag is/are cannot be held responsible for any damage done to the hardware or equipments as a result of this article.

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