Hi all. I have bought a second hand motherboard off the internet to replace my old Asus p4s133. The new motherboard is an ECS 661fx-m. The problem is that on the old asus board, i was able to overclock the same cpu to 2.3Ghz with no problems at all. But with this motherboard, the moment i try and overclock it to even 2.1ghz the system will not start most of the time. (fans spin, lights come on, screen doesnt come on and windows doesnt load). But when i do get it working, the system boots into windows and runs perfectly fine. Even in games it is completely stable at 2.1ghz. Everytime i turn my computer off though, i have to turn it on and off at least 5 times to get it working again.

Why would this be happening? I dont think it has anything to do with voltage as when in windows it performs fine. Maybe a damaged cpu? I really have no idea. I find it really strange how this is happening.

My system specs are as follows:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 1.6Ghz (Overclocked)
RAM: Adata 1GB DDR-400
Mobo: ECS 661FX-M
Video Card: Sparkle Nvidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP

Any help would be much appreciated

Cheers, Nissanman

edit: The motherboard has no bulged or dodgy capacitors. So its not a capacitor issue.

Different motherboards have different tolerances for an overclock. That and ECS motherboards are barely even good quality, let alone OC-friendly.

Still, have you tried upping the VCore and trying to OC again?

Nope, My BIOS doesnt have the option to adjust vcore. Something my old asus board had. I only bought this board for 35 dollars. I bought it as it takes DDR-400 ram and the old Asus board only took PC133 ram and was slowing down my 6600GT ALOT.

Oh well, ill guess ill have to put up with having it overclocked to 2Ghz for now. At least until i get my 2.8Ghz anyway.

Oh and im not really sure, but if this motherboard supports P4's with the prescott core (which it does). Does that mean that a 2.8Ghz P4 Northwood will work with any bios revision? I asked ECS if this board would support that CPU with my current bios revision (1.0e). But they just linked me to a list of compatible cpu's under bios revision 1.0l which didnt help. But the year of my bios is 2004. Because northwood is older then that then the 2.8Ghz Northwood should work fine on this bios revision. Will it? Its just i really do not wish to update my bios as i damaged a motherboard doing that once.

Nissanman if you want to be sure that your board supports all of the processors listed in the link ECS sent you, you will have to update the BIOS to 1.0g. Normally clock the pentium 4 you have now, and follow the directions in the link to update the BIOS. There is some real concern when updating you computers BIOS. If something goes wrong you could forever break your motherboard. And like Rage said, people don't ususally overclock with ECS motherboards.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Do...Deluxe (V1.0)&CategoryID=1&MenuID=82&LanID=0

That bios is for the 661FX-M Deluxe, i dont have the deluxe version. Maybe they are both the same?

Anyway, I would think that a 2.8Ghz Northwood would work fine with the bios ive got now anyway. Coz seeing that Prescott is newer then Northwood. I think itd be pretty stupid for ECS to market this board as Prescott compatible if it needed a bios update first. Plus this board was released after the 2.8Ghz Northwood was anyway (i think)

Just put the 2.8GHz Northwood in and see if its recognized properly and your system is stable with the new CPU. If it isn't, you will probably need to update the BIOS but if it is stable, you don't need to worry at all.

You can download the latest BIOS for your motherboard from here.

all good now

I have a Pentium 4 Prescott 3Ghz running in this comp now with no problems, Nice performance boost to