New computer system. Whats all this overclocking stuff?

phoneisbusy

Just ordered a new system. Work related so it's not exactly
cutting edge. I think I gives me adequate performance with
the possibility of playing around with htpc and digital vcr
functions in the future.

AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ 512K 333FSB SOCKET A BARTON RETAIL BOX 3YR MFR WARRANTY
ASUS A7N8X DELUXE SOCKETA NFORCE2 AGP8X FIREWIRE USB2 SERIAL ATA AUDIO LAN
SEAGATE 120GB 7200RPM IDE 8.5MS 8MB ATA100 OEM HD 1YR
INFINEON 512MB PC3200 DDR400 184PIN OEM x 2
1 x SOLTEK NVIDIA FX5200 AGP8X/128BIT/128MB DDR /DVI & TV-OUT
1 x ANTEC SONATA QUIET CHASSIS ATX 3X5.25 6X3.5 PIANO BLACK 380W TRUEPOWER
1 x LITEON 48X24X48 BLACK CDRW& 16X DVD COMBO INT EIDE ATAPI OEM W/ CDRW SW

Setup should be ready Weds.

Dave

nadams

wow, that's gonna be a pretty nice setup. The last thing I overclocked was my K6-III... I feel like my Athlon is fast enough as it is :-)

My system:
Athlon 2100+ 266fsb retail
Leadtek NCR18D (I think...)
Seagate ATA-100 5400RPM 40gb drive
512mb pc 2100 DDR (running dual-channel on my nforce2)
GeForce 2 Pro (64mb DDR)
Onboard sound
3com 10/100 NIC

faster100

are you building this system? if not and your not used to or comfortable with internal parts i would not overclock as your first venture and certainly not on your main system, with that said.. i have overclocked almost every PC i have built in the last 5 years.. Its fun, i have fried 2 cpu's, one was a amd k-6 350.. with to much voltage.. not good overclockers at all.. second was a Duron 1200 i cracked the core.. ugh!!

The Nforce boards are great overclockers, use plenty of cooling and never use the heat sink pad that comes with the heatsink, use a silcone based or silver based heat sink paste.. available at radio shack or online is better stuff..

I have the Msi N-force2 board and i have a 1400 (xp1600+) overclocked to 1650 if i remember right..

But the new AMD barton core and T-bred cores are very easy to overclock and that is the next on my list to get.. you fill in the gap and join the bridge on the last bridge on the L3 bridges and wammo its no longer multiplyer locked..

go to www.overclockers.com or www.tomshardware.com or ww.sharkeyextreme.com to read and read and read some more, use a good heatsink/fan combo and add case fans.. front, rear, blow hole on top if you can, 80 mm or 120 mm fans work great!! well that should get ya going anyways...

phoneisbusy

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look at the sites. Not really planning on overclocking but I would like to understand it a bit better. It seems every review of a motherboard devotes a fair section to overclocking, unlocking this and that.

I'm not building the system this time. The store offers assembly and burn-in for $25. For the amount to time and effort, I'll fork over the money. Tried to spec it mainly for silence. Got my fingers crossed and hope it's better then the droning box sitting next to me right now.

I might look into the a quieter CPU heat sink if the stock fan is too loud.

Thanks!

Dave

dorokusai

Looks like a good base for your new system. I am an Asus fan as well as Liteon user. They both offer alot of value for the money. Nice purchases.

Faster mentioned the caution, overclocking is not a loosely undertaken venture. You can and will smoke all your hard work with a simple setting if you are not careful. Get the computer up and running, play awhile, THEN think about OC'n it.

www.frozencpu.com has some links in addition to those mentioned by Faster.