OC AMD Athlon XP ?

[amdmeplz]

Help.... i just ran FreshDiagnose and it says my CPU's Max speed is 3000Mhz err... 3 Ghz but it is only currently 1.8 Ghz ? can i Safely OC this CPU? i Got this processor about two weeks ago from a buddy of mine after mine fried. so i dont what is other than Athlon XP i belive its out of his gateway although im not sure? i would love a new CPU but money wont allow this right now so if there is a way i can OC this CPU plz Help me out thank you sooo much.


- Nik

[amdmeplz]

ok wait it says its an Athlon xp 2500+ if that makes a difference

[archmaille]

yes, it is very overclockable! But if you don't know much about overclocking I'd take some time to learn a little before hand. First off do you have good ram? I mean like Corsair, or OCZ with a heat sink from the factory, good latency's, 200mhz etc. Secondly, do you have a good motherboard? Best for your situation would be the Asus A7N8X-e Deluxe unfortuneately you can't find this board anywhere anymore the overclockers of the world bought it up when it was going out of stock. Third, what kind of cooling does your computer have? atleast got some good airflow through the case (i.e. atleast one intake fan and an exhaust fan other than your PSU). You'll also want minimum a copper heat sink fan for your processor, and it's highly recomended to get an aftermarket chipset cooler with a good fan as well.

If you don't have the money for a new processor, and you don't have much of anything that I listed I wouldn't suggest overclocking. If you've atleast got good airflow through your case you should be able to get a safe 200mhz boost out of your processor. With everything listed you should be able to boost your speed by ~400mhz and with water cooling and the know how you could get as much as an 800mhz bump from that processor... but as you're new to this don't expect much more than 300mhz to be safe.

[amdmeplz]

thank you for the qwuik reply ..... well i have 1.5 gigs of ram unfortunaltly its 1 samsung and 2 Value ram so no its cheap i have an asus nf7 mobo.... and stock heatsink fan... im saving to buy a new system but untill then i plan on getting parts that can transistion such as liquid cool ( ive had my eye on it for about two years now) and ramsinks i do have an exhaust fan and a blowhole unfortunalty my sister broke my window so i have a huge hole in the side of my case any links that van point me towards Ocing? thank you again.

[amdmeplz]

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g146/amdmeplz/4fe33594.jpg


oh yea im missing the fan on my motherboard i think thats bad .... but hey still plays CZ im in need of a new machine bad i have about $1200 now so in the next week or two ill build one AMD of course.................... Cable Management? :D

[archmaille]

do NOT overclock with that setup!!!!! When overclocking the biggest risk is your motherboard, I've overclocked video cards, memory, buses of all kinds (FSB, AGP bus, PCI bus, PCIe bus, etcetera), and processors, the only thing I have ever fried is a motherboard. Without that northbridge chipset cooler you won't get far overclocking before you take your motherboard to the trash :-P

Another thing, if you're going to move to water cooling, wait. You can get the parts and everything together but several things such as CPU waterblock and video card water block are not interchangeable and they're not cheap! A good CPU water block will cost ya somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 or you could get a copper one for $50-$80.

About the RAM it would be BEST to have Dual channel RAM which means two sticks of the same brand and size (preferably pre-packaged and tested as Dual Channel such as Corsair, OCZ, and some other companies do). Corsair's PRO series of DDR RAM like I've got is rated to 2.9v before the lifetime warranty is void! which is very convinient when you've spent $150 on your RAM to have the knowledge that it will be covered no matter what overclocking you're doing is nice.

[archmaille]

sorry... I forgot to include some links:

http://pcpitstop.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=31456 <-- mostly utilities which the "pro's" don't use utilities, but for someone new to overclocking it's a good idea, I also suggest using a utility for your video card such as ATITool (ati) or CoolBits (nVidia)

http://math.gogar.com/athlon64.cgi <-- not much use to ya now, but it may be later.

[amdmeplz]

thank you for the links i plan on geting parts soon any suggestions are welcome
:D