water cooling?

[Mad_dude]

well my PC is a year old and i feel it needs to be jacked up a tad about how much can i overclock my amd 2800+ to, if i use water cooling...iam completely new to overclocking and all that, i was wondering if anyone can explain to me some saftey tips and such and if i need to water cool my ram,motherboard chip,and RAM too or even if water cooling is worth it...iam also planing to throw in some lights and such for an extra couple of bucks just for coolness value.

i do know how to turn up the Mhz on my bios but i dont wanna fry anything so iam not gonna bother till i get some info. and is there anyother way to do it than that aswell?

thanks for your help

[StrongSad]

Overclocking is an art really. The cpu a what you overclock but how much of a performance increase you get strongly depends on what RAM and motherboard you have.

Try this site out:

www.overclockers.com/

The forums are the best part of it. There are tons of very skilled people just waiting to help you out.

I will try to help you tho....a really really basic tutorial.

ok 1st off:

The cpu you have is very nice so your results will probably be good with it if you have the other right parts

2nd:

If you want a good overclock you not only need a quality motherboard but quality ram. Usually the more expensive stuff is the best. For example.....PC3200 (DDR400) will be faster than PC2700(DDR333) and yeild better overclocking results. Well, you are probably asking why...and I will explain.

I am not sure if you know these thing so I will say them anyway. The way your cpu's frequency (or mhz/ghz) is calculated is by taking the computers front-side-bus (or FSB, and it is usually either 166/200 by default for an AMD) and multiplying it by a "multimplyer" (creative name eh?). Most good motherboards allow you to either adjust your multiplyer, FSB, or both from within the bios. The BIOS is a ulility that you can get into by usually hitting "delete" right as your computer begins to boot. Again most motherboards will tell you when and how to get into the BIOS.

So your porbably saying well I will just increase the multiplyer because more mgz means faster. Well, thats not really true. Your main goal is to get more FSB. FSB is your friend because it increases the speed at which different essential computer parts talk to each other. Faster talking = better.

The default multiplyer for a 3000+ AMD is 10.5, and the default FSB within the bios is 200. Therefore 10.5x200=2100mhz or 2.1ghz which is the speed rating of a cpu right out of the box. Now I know your thinking, "Wait a second!! It says 400 FSB on a 3000+ cpu!!". That is because the *cpu* FSB will be "dual-pumped".....therefore the 200(number in your BIOS) multiplyed by 2=400mhz cpu FSB, what the box says. Incase you were wondering a pentium 4 has a "quad-pumped" cpu FSB. If the default is 200 then a p4 will have a 800mhz cpu FSB....200x4=800mhz.

Still with me here? Good.

The first thing i recommend you do is increase the FSB through the bios slowly (5 mhz at a time if you have that option) and boot to windows every time. If the computer fails to boot then go back into the bios and lower your multiplyer by .5 incriments (I.E. from 10.5 down to 10) and keep your FSB the same. **As a side note some motherbords dont allow multiplyer adjustments. SO if the computer fails to boot at a certain FSB then you know your limit and nothing else more can really be done** Ok so now you have a lower multiplyer to 10 and say for example the FSB is at 205 where it had failed before. Since you lowered the multiplyer (which will lower you mhz) the computer will now most likely boot at the same FSB it had failed at before. After that, the basic concept is lower the multi(multiplyer) and raise the FSB.

Ok....so now say for example your multi is at 9 (multi's usually dont go much lower than that) and the fsb is at 220 and it failed to boot with that configuration. Simply lower the FSB one mhz at a time (I.E. 220 down to 219) and try to boot. If it boots at 219 (or whateevr the highest bootable FSB is) then your in pretty good shape. The only thing left to do is stress test the cpu to make sure it can handle the new speed. An awsome program I use is Prime95. Just look for it on google. Run the "torture test" on Prime and leave it for like 12 hours. Thats a long time but it runs a TON of test to make sure your stable. If the test fails before 12 hours on the torture test at 9multi x 219 fsb then your still overclocked a little too high. Once again lower the FSB by one mhz (219 down to 218) until prime will run for 12 hours straight. **the 9multi x 219 FSB is just an example, your results may be different.**

The final thing I will mention is changing the cpu voltage through your bios. This is where people come up with the horror stories of frying a cpu. If you take it slow though you should be fine. **before you decide to up the voltage you need to make sure the cooling to the cpu is good enough. The cooler AMD's come with arent going to do the job because more volts = more heat. To many volts and you could overheat or fry the cpu. However, if you invest in some after-market cooling (doesnt have to be expensive just more than stock) you should be safe with uping the voltage a little bit. By giving the cpu more volts you give it more potential to overclock. So if you were only able to get 9x218 stable on the overclock after running prime at 1.65 volts(the default voltage foe AMDs i believe).....going to 1.75 volts could yeild some more FSB speed....maybe to 222, but it will be different with every cpu. You may get no more FSB with 1.75, it is hard to say. **another caution....never go past 1.8 volts with air cooling (I.E. metal heatsink with a fan blowing on the top). For higher volts you would need water-cooling and such...the fun stuff

Alright. I think i got everything in there the best I could. Some more details about the parts in your system would help a lot. Have fun and remember to take things slow and you will be fine!

PS-I would not recommend you go overclock right away after reading this. Drift around the forums and ask a bunch of questions. Read some other articles. Dont jump into anything until you know what your doing. I have tried to give you some basic knowledge, and I hope it helps you get a jump start.

***@*sorry for any grammatical or spelling error, it was 2am when I wrote this***@*

-StrongSad JP

----****This was posted in another thread but I think its pretty good to start with*****-----

[StrongSad]

http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81782

thats a thread where I am trying to help a person get into overclocking. I would water-cool your CPU and video card.....nothing else really needs it.