How to Over Clock???

Kaos_vauxhall

Established Member
Joined
Apr 15, 2007
Messages
94
Reaction score
16
Points
25
I built this rig in march 2009 and was in full mind of over clocking it but gave up shortly as it just kept crashing due instabilities.

My Rig is as follows

Motherboard: nForce 790i Ultra SLI (The Black Pearl)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 3 GHz Processor
RAM: OCZ DDR3 PC3-16000 Flex EX Series (8GB)
Graphic card 1: Geforce GTX 295 1792 GDDR3 PCI 2.0 (Need to get it water cooled)
Graphic Card 2: Looking for the same card But cant find it :mad:

Hard drive(s): Barracuda Seagate 1TB SATA II 300 MB/s X 3
Barracuda Seagate 160GB SATA II 300 MB/s X 1
Power Supply: Thermaltake - 1200watt Toughpower
Cooling: Bigwater 780e
Case: Thermaltake - Armor series

Display 1: Dell24"
Display 2: Dell19"
Display 3: Dell19"


and before anyone says I should of got SSD's they were Just toooo expensive especially for the sheeer volume of data i have dating back from my first computer in 1998. I'll bide my time until the market is flooded.

Back to point :)

My apps are slowing down my PC now and i could run a System reset but that's just long as it takes ages to get all your nitty gritty settings back to the way you like after a format as you all will know and have experienced.

Does anyone have a similar rig setup or know how i would easily clock my CPU to higher speeds, or just Generally speed up PC.

I run Ubuntu 9.04, Windows XP64 and Windows 7 Ultimate (All on multiboot) if that helps in anyway?

Hope I can be able to clock higher and not stuck with this slow heap of noise(graphic card)

Many thanks for any advice given.

:)
 
What CPU specifically is that? The Q9650, currently at default clock speed I would guess?

What temps are you getting on cpu idle/load?
what gpu temps idle/load?
what vcore you running at the moment on your CPU?

Basically you should set everything to their default clocks/voltages/timings first and make sure it's rock solid, then go from there.

I'm not sure why you'd feel the PC was slow unless there's something wrong with it, that's still a very powerful system...
 
Hi mate,

The CPU is the Q9650 :)

CPU Idle temps are 41C and on load they are 45C, it doesn't go up much at all. this is displayed on my system monitor software that comes with Nvidia I don't know how accurate these are?

my GPU on Graphics card are

56C idle and around 90C when Heavy load when Modern Warfare 2 or Crysis are played on apps it never goes above 75C and that the 3DS Max software in full render mode :)

every thing is set to default except the C1E Enhanced Halt State as it was always running my CPU at around 2000Mhz 6X Multiplier with this disabled it runs the core clock at 3000Mhz 9X CPU multiplier. that's as far as i got to clocking it lol and that's not even clocking it lol.


I see that loads of people mess about with their voltages. Which voltages would you change and by how much, i don't want to blow or damage the chip (if that's possible)

The Liquid cooling is OK to keep it cool but the graphics boy does that make noise need to get that on the liquid ;)

the pc Is fast but load up is killing me slowly it just getting slow on load up it take about 2 - 3 mins to load up fully and thats a bit of wait on any system standards even laptops.

The system is rock solid in build and there isnt any bodge job in parts wise, but just seems not to pull its weight for what it is if you know what i mean.

My friend has a laptop and he wanted to race it with my computer on start up his LAPTOP had loaded and he was opening apps and using it before mine even finished loading tray icons. His laptop doesn't even have SSD :(

Do you think i need to byte the bullet and fork out on a single 128GB SSD? (just for the Operating system(s))

I've seen that they speed up any system their put in.

My drives aren't even partitioned its a single Physical drive for the OS's.

hope there is something that can be done :(

Many thanks for the reply given and more thanks in advance for further advice :)
:lease:
 
There is somthing wrong if a laptop hard drive (sloooooow - probably a 5400rpm) boots quicker than this spec of PC ...:eek:

Run 'msconfig' and go minimal boot and see how long that takes - if it's very quick, then it'll be all the extra stuff (AV, utilities etc) that are slowing up your system.

Always keep the OS (Windoze anyway) on a seperate partition with a reasonable amount of growth for all the patches (lol) but do not put any apps or data on this drive. Set your swap/page file to be manual and put this on another spindle/physical drive on a newly formatted disk (at the start - fastest seek times). Set your temp environment variable to another non-OS fast partition. And lastly make sure you have a SpeedBoost USB drive in the back of your PC to act as quick cache.

If all of that is done then you Win7 should boot very quickly - mine boots in 10 seconds or so after POST and they are not quick HDD's...

Remember a single HDD's is restricted by a physical seek of the data - any IO requests after that will be queued and be told to wait. Therefore, if you have two or more 'queues' you get twice the throughtput - so spread the IO's over the 'spindles' and you get a fast system.

Another practical example is to try this - copy a large GB file to the same disk (disk has to read, move the head, then write, then move the head to read, then move it to write...) - now do it from one disk to the other and you will see a huge difference (head's do not have to move, one reads, one writes - both at the same time ..)
 
Last edited:
Cheers mate :thumbsup:

I will try this ASAP and post back :)

My HDD is a single boot physical drive with 3 partitions on it for the three OS's so only one partition is booted on start up but this USB idea is great i will definitely look into this further :D

the other three 1TB drives are for Data storage

the USB and the Swap/Page file config sounds like it will work wonders, so here goes ...

thanks mate :)
 
first of all you need to check if your mother board and cpu allows overclocking. then normally done in Bios which provides such features.
but overclocking will bring more heating to the CPU, monitor the temp carefully.
 
Is you system fully stable now on windows 7, what apps are you running to cause your system to slow down?

Do you see the same problem in your other O/S that the system seems slow?

With 8GB of memory and Quad CPU at 3Ghz it should be flying a long.

What anti-virus software are you using.

Have you scan for any spyware or any other programs running in the back ground.

Why do you need Windows XP64, is it for your apps?

The 64bit version of XP had a lot of problems.

When you try to O/C in march 2009 what things did you change to cause instabilities.

What bios version are you running on the MB?

You will need to do a lot of reading up before you start play with voltages as you said you can damage your CPU or MB or memory.

EVGA website should have a forum that will deal with your MB, may have a guide.

http://www.evga.com/FORUMS/
 
Last edited:
Hey mate

My system is stable on all OS's that I run but it takes the mick when loading XP64,

The reason why i use the XP64 is because only the 64bit OS's support more than 4GB of ram as i have 8GB of it and it cost a bit I didn't want to not use I do prefer the 32bit OS it was faster but I also wanted to get my moneys worth if get what i mean :D
Even the Windows 7 Ultimate is 64bit and the Ubuntu 9.04 is the 64bit as well

I didn't play much, just with the voltages in March much, a couple of CPU ones but it just crashed the PC every time and became unstable and as it was NEW PC OMG :eek: :facepalm: , then I thought let me see if I can overclock anything and tried the graphics card it too just would freeze and then as you would know I would have to do a reboot :(

I didn't want to mess any of those 2 components up as they were the most expensive part of the build so I just left it from there

The anti Virus I use is AVG, I Also use PC Tools - Reg Mechanic and Spyware Doctor software.

The bios version is the same as when I got it I haven't updated it
It maybe a start if I did that first :facepalm:

I checked the forum out and their is a P10 Bios update I' running a P8 (have no idea what that is I am new to this overclocking and never really had to do a bios update) but i am sure that mine is much older as some of the other guys on there were saying it was recent release :) so I will give that go first and then PROCEED to the dangerous stuff !!!!VOLTAGES!!!! :D

Thanks for the replies and any more in advance.

Will keep you guys posted if any luck :)
 
Last edited:
No problem with using 64bit O/S to see all the memory, I am using them as well Vista and Windows 7.

When you use Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and the Ubuntu 9.04, you should see all the memory as well?

If you have and using AVG/Reg Mechanic and Spyware Doctor software would be free of any spyware.

But XP 64bit did not work very well from the start, best to stop using that O/S if you do not need it for your apps and just use Windows 7 Ultimate much better O/S to use.

And if this the only O/S that is showing poor /slow bootup and slow down that is another good reason to stop using it. Your problem could be just a bad drivers for your chipset etc, most companies stop supporting XP64.

Go careful with the bios update, read all the instructions well before going ahead. You can easily kill your board if it goes wrong.

Most important thing if you are new to over clocking when playing with voltages small steps only.

If you over clocking the CPU by increase FSB you are also over clocking the memory at the same time that can cause stability problems.

Only work at one part at a time of the system, best to lower the memory speed first and then push the CPU FSB up. This way you keep the memory in spec or under clocked and you can confirm how far you can push the CPU. Then you can play with the memory later.

Remember one adjustment at a time and then check the system out to ensure it is fully stable before the next adjustment.

Have a look at the Custom PC Mag issue 077 Febuary 2010, it had a overclocking masterclass step by step guide.

Good luck
 
Last edited:
Hey mate

I would Love to Use Windows 7 For permanent use but all my apps and settings Plus favorites and those nitty gritty things are all with XP64, that's why I still use it I guess I may just need to bite the bullet and start using the windows 7 and rebuild my history with that OS.

Is there any way of migrating all those settings and information if you've already installed Windows 7 on a another partition (I don't think you can but you guys will most probably know better) it gave me the option when I just put the CD in when using XP64 IF I was to was install over XP64 (but I read somewhere that it wont let you do it for the non Pro version of XP but your advice on this would be appreciated you seem to know ALLOT more then me on this :cool:)

and as far as the overclocking goes I will give it a go first with the FSB then the memory just like you said sounds all good to me as well, makes sense to adjust 1 thing at a time (that way I can learn as I go and see what voltages give what advantages)

The GOOOOOD News :clap:

To my great surprise my girlfriend saw me stressing with the PC and offered to buy me the SSD(s) for my system for my B-Day in May but she will do an early present in my case as I'm losing my Hair here with the slow PC lol plus I think she foresees me spending ages with the tinkering of the PC to overclock and is hoping that the SSD's will do the job as I always go on about how much improvement they can do to any system especially mine hehe :D (and I wasn't even hinting it to her when telling her, who says the other side never listen HAHA)


Gonna order that ASAP and also start the tinkering

(Any ideas on what ones are good got around £500 for a single or 2 SSD's would like to have Minimum 250GB was thinking of 1 X OCZ Colossus Series SATA II 3.5" SSD 250GB or the Samsung 160GB x 2 or the Intel ones X 2)

SO lets begin......

Cheers Simon Great advice :thumbsup:

Will reply soon Hopefuly ...

ps if I don't reply within a week that means I Mod Comment: Removed UP badly :facepalm:

and the system just... :suicide:

I let you paint the rest of the picture :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If you are going down the SSD route, I suggest that you buy a SSD that has TRIM support flashed onto the SSD for it to work.

You will have to jump into using windows 7 sooner than later as Windows 7 has the TRIM command built in (No raid support yet), other Older versions of windows or other O/S will need an application that can interact with the firmware to tell the memory controller when to delete the blocks.

TRIM command is important as SSD's lose significant performance over time due to poor command structuring to read and erase blocks on the memory chips


Lot more information explaining Solid State Drives (SSD's) can be found in the link below.

Solid State Drives (SSD's) explained - Overclockers UK Forums

I would go with a single 250GB drive.

I am using a Crucial M225 256Gb with the new version of firmware 1916 with windows 7.

If you do go with the a SSD drive you may find that you will need to flash the drive first with the lastest firmware before install windows 7.


I would leave the overclocking to later and bite the bullet and start using the windows 7 now:thumbsup:.

It is so much faster than the older versions of windows and SDD support built in with the standard microsoft drivers.

What settings and information would you like to migrating over?

Your favorites folder is easy to important just need to copy that folder or links onto a USB pen and dump them into the windows 7 favorites folder.
 
Hey mate,

I think that sounds easier as well lol I will do the Bios Flash ASAP and when I have some Handy time (as have some deadlines at work) I will try the overclocking BUT first before overclocking will get a SSD

I looked at your SSD and that looks great and cost is cheaper then OCZ and has more storage:thumbsup::clap::thumbsup:

Crucial M225 256Gb VS. OCZ Colossus 250GB
£538.40 Inc VAT VS. £676.88 Inc VAT
Read 250MB/s VS. Read 260MB/s
Write 200MB/s VS. Write 260MB/s
64MB Cache VS. 128MB Cache


My question(s) :) Does the Price justify the OCZ from the Crucial? plus your getting 6GB less :eek:

and

Are these SSD drives REAL 256GB or 250GB respectively?

as you know hard disc say for example their 250GB but you actually get 232GB on Windows NTFS partition after format

is that true Size they give with he SSD drives?


The files were basically my favorites which you explained and I will do what you said :smashin:
and some games I installed ( HEHE:D)

Cheers Simon you've been a great help,
Many thanks in advance again for your reply :D
 
As with most drives you get less once formated it the same with SSD with the Crucial M225 256Gb once it formated it drops to 238GB.

The reason why I brought the Crucial M225 SSD was the 5 year warranty and price.

Does the Price justify the OCZ from the Crucial, I would say No.

The values you quoted are the maximum that can be obtained, in real life these will be lower.

If you can hold out a new much faster SSD is on it way from Crucial (SATA 6Gbps.)

This may force down the price of the old drives.

Overclock3D :: News :: *Updated* Speedy Crucial SATA 6Gbps SSDs Coming February

you may have to buy a new SATA 6Gbps controller card for you computer but cost is approx £25

You will need to reinstall windows 7 onto your new SSD; you may not know that Windows 7 setup a hidden primary system partition.

The partition holds system files and bootable files that are essential to boot the Windows 7 properly in the event of the need to recover the OS in the event of corruption.

This was problem to me when I removed a hard drive; I lost the O/S boot section. I found that this system partition can be created on a different drive to your SSD if more than one drives present.

My solution was to disconnect the other hard drives and just install the single SSD and the reinstall windows 7, this keep the partitions on one drive.

I then reconnected the standard hard drives to the board and rebooted.

If you are using O/S you will need to add them to the boot section, as I was using vista this was not to hard.

all the best

Simon
 
Last edited:

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom