Yup. To get high OC while reducing the chance of your CPU overheating, it is better to have performance HSF.

There are a lot of good high performance HSF in the market. It depends on you which one you want. For price/performance HSF, I recommend the Xigmatek s1293!!! However, this is quite a new HSF and still awaiting further reviews on this HSF.

This post has been edited by kmarc: Aug 4 2007, 10:22 AM

Price is RM 17x in bulk. However, don't take my word for it. You should do some research and see what type of heatsink would be suitable for you and your rig.

No need a lot of casing fan. But the more the better!

Currently, it is a no no to play games in Vista. Not until DX10 comes out anyway.....

What I mean is GOOD DX10 games. The one game many people are waiting for is "crysis", only coming out in November.

Games in Vista won't be as smooth as in Windows XP as the graphic drivers are not mature yet. Still buggy too. With time, it will improve but as of now, it is not recommended to game in Vista unless you have a high-end GC that can crank out high fps, making any slow down not noticeable......

There's a lot of cheap computer fans. Go shopping at pc fair!

Why not orthos? I usually use orthos to test for stability. I usually use the small FFTs to stress the CPU. However, some forumers actually recommend the following settings in orthos for stressing the CPU:

Custom setting:
Min FFT - 8k
Max FFT - 512k
Time to run each FFT size : 1 minute
Check the "Run FFTs in-place"

In addition, some would use OCCT for stress test.....

As far as I know, blend test is to test for the stability of your whole rig.

For CPU stability - use the above example or small FFTs

For RAM stability - use memtest

So how much can you OC so far?

Here's a general guide on Vcore and max temp:


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Maybe you can ask the question in this thread : http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/456301/+2240

Don't really know whether it is reliable or not. Look quite convincing though....

My X2 4200+ already in my wife's rig.....

This post has been edited by kmarc: Aug 22 2007, 02:53 PM

Some basic overclocking for AMD CPUs - see here (Post #108): http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...&#entry11634502

The link is also in my sig....

Cool! I'm building a multimedia PC and acquired a cheap Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8Ghz Winchester.....

So, in order to reduce power usage, I decided to undervolt it..... incredibly, it is running at full speed at 1.8Ghz at 1.10v instead of the stock 1.35v!!! (or is it 1.45v.... can't remember)

CPUz is showing 1.088v...... now stressing it to see whether it is stable.....

At idle, I've set it to run at 1.0Ghz at 1.0v...... hmmm.... should I set it to 0.800v....

This post has been edited by kmarc: Feb 28 2008, 11:57 AM

It's running idle at 1.0Ghz @ 1.0v and 1.8Ghz (200x9) @ 1.1v.....

It's a shuttle PC, put in my living room, to play music and movies....

Too bad my TV is the normal one, one day.... will get a LCD TV....

Anyway, here's the stability test. The VID in core temp also changed!!!

This post has been edited by kmarc: Feb 28 2008, 01:10 PM


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Did you check for stability? Use orthos or prime95 and stress your OC to make sure it is stable.....

What do you mean by finding the best ram timing? The lower the timings, the better it is i.e. 4-4-4-12 is better than 5-5-5-15 which is better than 6-6-6-18.....

Even if you can boot into windows, it may still not be stable.... you still need to stress the rams to make sure that they are stable at that particular speed....

You can try to increase the vdimm..... stock should be 1.8v.... remember to put fans to blow on the rams if you go above 2.0v vdimm.... and remember that rams can get damaged the higher you set the vdimm (Overclock at your own risk!!! ) .... max limit would probably be 2.2v and below....

Why not check out my guide on DDR2 overclocking.... you can use this particular method to find the limits of your rams... of course, there are other ways to do it too....

This post has been edited by kmarc: Jul 5 2008, 11:14 PM

Owh.... I did try to make the guide as simple as possible... which part did you not understand?