How much OC stock p4?

[djrafh]

Ok jus curious as to how far i can push my p4. Now, as it is its oc to 3.02 from 2.8. Because of this my ram is now at 433 from 400. Its mushkin and it has copper heat spreds. Also, my case has 8 fans right now plus the p4 stock fan. So, my question is how far could i push it without heat becoming a problem? It only raised (cpu temp) from 25 to 26/27 idle to the same during hard gaming at around 39-41. Anyone?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

When I was overclocking my Northwood P4s with their stock heatsinks & fans, other components were always the limiting factor. PCI cards couldn't handle the speed, memory was too slow, IDE bus had read errors etc. Maybe I was just lucky with my CPUs, I don't know. Willamettes (old P4s with 256kB cache) were another story though, I could only get about 15% overclocking from stock speeds.

Heat hasn't been a problem to me either, sometimes CPU is about 60C at full load, I don't think that's too much.

Now I have a P3-S CPU, and the motherboard limits overclocking, because it has FSB speeds from 133 to 166 only (and PCI speed multiplier locked). The CPU could handle more.

 

[Didou]

You say you went from 2.8 to 3.02. I would probably push it a little bit more on stock cooling but nothing above 15 or 20% though.

No matter how much or how little you OC, always keep an eye on your temps ( CPU, SYSTEM, etc ) & make sure you're not running anything out of specs ( PCI, AGP, etc ).

P4s with HT ( HyperThreading ) run a little hotter since all the different components of the CPU is ( almost ) always busy doing something.

P4s are rated to go all the way to 75°C up to 2.8GHZ & 70°C up to 3.2GHZ. Make sure to put good thresholds on your monitoring programs.

 

[djrafh]

...

well the temp monitor is a little thermal sensor actually on my cpu (between the cpu/heatsink) and its never gone above 41C. So i suppose i could try 3.2 possibly...

BUT then what about my ram? if i oc my fsb, the ram goes up as well with the multiplyer. So, i cant really keep my ram @ 400 but up my fsb. So would it be dangerous to push my ram to like 500 if i want to oc to like 3.2? its at 433 now.

 

[jdman687]

won't burn up

The P4 has overheat protection anyways. If the processor begins to run too hot, then the processor will step down its speed so that it won't melt down. I would go with some better cooling options than the stock fan though. As long as you can keep the thing cool enough to keep the overheat protection from coming active then i think you can easily get 20% overclock out of it.

 

[NoisySilence]

You can either apply "looser" timings on your RAM to get it to run faster or certain motherboards allowed you to run the RAM out of Sync with the FSB. Some motherboards can let you run the RAM at 3/4 of the FSB speed. You're gonna to look into your BIOS & see what's available.

 

[somekid007]

i have seen 2.4c's go up to 3.4ghz on air cooling. msi bumped the fsb of the 2.4c to 300mhz on the 848p mobo to giv 3.6ghz. take a look at www.overclockers.com and see what other people have got

 

[Type [?]]

I've got my P4 2.8c running at 3.5GHz with stock cooling. Seems to be stable so far. FSB @ 250mhz, with ratio @ 5:4 and ram at 1.8V. Any pointers in squeezing more speed outta this beast?

 

[PreservedSwine]

Your load temps will tell you when you've gone high enough if cooling is indeed your limiting factor...Try and keep it under 50C at full load....

Might want to set your memory divider to 5/4, and ramp up that FSB a bit more, and if you can, lock your PCI/AGP bus at 66Mhz...

 

[Type [?]]

I just experienced my first crash at that speed, so I turned it down to 243MHz, so it's at about 3.4GHz. Do you think I could fix this buy upping the voltage to the CPU? I'm using SpeedFan to measure my CPU temp and it's at 42C @3.4GHz while i've got a few programs open and listening to music. When I play NFS: Underground, it goes up into the high 50s. Is this too high?

 

[somekid007]

when u up the vcore, it generates more heat for the proc, so id get a really good cooling system, esp. since u hit 50 plus

 

[CheezHead]

what P4's offer unlocked multiplyers??

 

[NoisySilence]

Originally posted by CheezHead
what P4's offer unlocked multiplyers??

I believe the P4EE ( Extreme Edition or Expensive Edition, your choice ) is the only one to offer that. There are engineering prototypes that some sites like tomshardware get & they sometimes have unlocked multipliers. But there are close to none in the retail/oem market.

 

[Type [?]]

Right now I have it running at 3.5GHz, and the temp at idle and at full load seems to be only a few degrees higher than when it is at 2.8GHz. Think my sensor on my MB is wrong? I have an IC7-G.

Thanks guys