Mav wrote:
So this means without proper cooling you can basically melt your chip. Does this mean that you NEED water cooling for overclocking or are just fans good enough?
Mav there are quite a few factors on what you need to overclock.
-You have to first of all buy a motherboard that allows overclocking.
-You have to have RAM capable of running the speeds you need once you overclock
-You have to provide sufficient cooling
As a general rule, Intel cpu's can run hot, they have a safety device that when the chip his 72 (I think) degrees C they more or less turn off (they pause until the temp is ok, then continue over and over), so you cant really bake one or anything, it just crawls, here is an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgOmMAasqto
This video is really old, so don't think it is any way accurate for current AMD's, and this video shows what happens in the tiny chance that your heatsink falls off, but its a cool video.
Ok, so back on topic, you want to keep your chip cold, but when you overclock you also raise the temp a little, in fact the temp hardly goes up 5 degrees when you overclock, but when you OVER VOLT it rises FAST.
As a typical rule, take the stock voltage of your chip, multiply it by 1.20 (20% overvolt) and this is the max "safe" over voltage on air, but normally is too much for air (the temps get too high)
-My AMDx2 = 1.35*1.20= 1.62 I ran mine at 1.55 (temps were getting high)
-Current Core2 65nm = 1.325*1.2 = 1.59 (I have never ran one over 1.5)
-New Core2 45nm = 1.15*1.2= 1.38, there has been numerous reports that sustaned voltage ABOVE 1.40 (EVEN 1.41) has caused chip derogation, this is where the chip need more and more voltage to run high speeds, and normally is on the way to being trash. Alot of these people have pushed it to 1.5v for testing reasons, which is stupid, keep it at or below 1.38 and you will have 0 problems.
Also there is a rate of diminishing returns with voltage because the actual chip has a limit of what it can do (unless the chip undergoes extreme cooling, like nitrogen and such).
On my old AMD the chip was a 2.4, known MAX overclock of this chip was about 2.8-3.0, I was running air.
On stock 1.35 voltage I could get about 2.55 @ 32 degrees
on 1.45 I could get about 2.65 @35 degrees
on 1.55 I could get 2.75 @ 40 degrees <--- this is where I put it for 2 years
on 1.65 I could only get 2.8 @ 60 degrees <--- you see this did not give me much, but gave me HUGE temps
So you just have to keep going up and up, until you hit the temp you are comfortable with (and if it jumps up a huge amount for a tiny gain, I would rather lose a little bit of speed for a cooler running PC).
This is where water cooling comes in, it keeps the temps down, so you CAN make it to the limit of the chips, but intels newer 45nm chips run COLD, like really fucking cold, like 3.4ghz in the 20s or low 30s. So water is not really needed, you will find the limit of the chip BEFORE you hit a temperature wall, EXCEPT when you run a quad (which is just 2 dual cores put together inside one chip, do double heat).
So if you want to overclock, and you want a quad, get water cooling, if you want to overclock, but not run water, get a dual core.
My quad, vs chris's and peng's dual should both run around the exact same ghz, except I am running 4 chips, they are running 2, depends on the chip I get (if I am lucky or not) because you can buy the same chip twice and get a good or a bad one.
We will have some interesting results for you guys in about a month, with some good benchmarks of quad vs dual on similar setups.
Edit, I forgot about ram, ram is easy to figure out, pick a number you want to overclock to, we all chose 4ghz or higher (but no higher than 4.3, its just not happening), we got this number by the overclock of people who bought the extreme quad chip (cost a grand) but is the same chip as the ones that come out this month, just has a few noobie-overclocking-friendly features, like unlocked multiplier. Our chips have a locked multi, so we have to overclock the FSB, which is the best way of doing it anyway, unless you hit a FSB wall.
My chip has a 8x multi
Chris/peng has a 9x multi
Front side bus = 333 for these chips (marketed as 1333 but its a lie, its 4 pipes of 333, so they say 333x4=1333, but whatever its 333)
333x8=2660mhz or 2.66ghz
333x9=3000mhz or 3.0ghz
So out the door their dual is a 3.0, mine is a 2.66, but just remember its the same f-in chip, they should do the same thing and have the same internal limits(except double heat for the quad)
So to pick my ram I want something that will do a max of around 4.2ghz, but 4.0 is the sweetpoint I am looking for.
DDR just means double data rate, again, marketing thing where they lie about the speed, they say its 800mhz, but its actually 400mhz times 2 pipelines.
DDR800 = 400mhz
This would mean my 333bus speed would be able to run up to 400, after 400 I am overclocking my ram, which can be bad, ram tends to actually degrate over time when overclocking very far (like ddr850 is ok on 800, but 900 or higher is asking for dead ram, it really varries stick-by-stick)
So, bus is now at 400 max because ram limits it to 400, so 400*8(multiplier) = 3200 (3.2ghz), which is nowhere my 4.0 limit I want.
My next choice is
DDR1066 = 533
533bus*8(multi)=4.264, woot there is what I am looking for, so with this ram I can now run up o 4.264ghz on my setup.
There is also DDR1200 but why do I care, its really fucking expensive and 1066 does what I need it to do, so there would be NO advantage of getting this ram.
So I bought a chip, motherboard, ram, all able to run close to 4.2ghz, and had to buy water cooling to cool that whole setup at that speed.
But say you want a quad, but want to run it on air, and do a MILD overclock.
buy ddr800, an air cooler, and run the whole thing at 3.2ghz, it will run cool and will be a good computer (but I spent about 400 bucks more to run 4.0-4.2, woot).
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as i am a VERY competitive person!!!!!!!
