[Guide] Pentium 4 (S478/LGA775) Overclocking

[se7en.hu]

Please Note: There are many dangers associated with overclocking of which I am not responsible, inexperience and lack of attention to detail could make your PC become permanently unstable. Please make sure you understand the risks of overclocking before you attempt anything mentioned in this guide.

Firstly I would like to mention that when overclocking I cannot stress the importance of using only quality hardware, if you are one who beleives that there is no difference between using Corsair/OCZ etc. RAM and Generic RAM then overclocking is not for you. The quaility of your hardware dramaticly determines the stability of your overclocked machine..

Lets first look into some Quality parts you should consider if you are looking to be overclocking:

Mobo:

Pentium 4 S478 (Northwood & Prescott) mobo's

When picking a mobo for a S478 Intel P4 proc main brands that you should be looking at is Asus and Abit, especially the Asus P4C800 series P4P800 series and for Abit the IC7-MAX3 mobo, these mobo's have proven highly popular amongst the overclocking community.

Pentium 4 LGA775 (Prescott) mobo's

Mobo's for the newer Intel LGA775 package that you should be looking into are the new DFI Lanparty boards (the world record overclock was done on one of these boards, I beleieve it was a Intel P4 3.8GHz J E0 core @ 7.2 GHz) and also Asus boards are also of exceptional quality and performence.

CPU:

S478

The ultimate best S478 processor would be a Northwood 30-capper, however these are really rare and when buying a CPU there is no telling if you are getting a 30-capper or not until you buy it, these can be told apart from the standard S478 Northwoods because if you look at the underside of one you will notice that it has 30-capacitors on the bottom instead of the usualy amount, these ones run quite a bit cooler and have alot better overclocking performence while remaining to stay stable. Generally what is understood regarding S478 processors is that the Northwoods run cooler then the newer prescotts, this is true and so if possible buy a new 800FSB Northwood as these will overclock alot better then the Prescott, however dont get me wrong Prescotts have also had a history in overclocking, a Prescott 3.2E was once taken to 4.3GHz.

LGA775

When purchasing a Intel P4 LGA775 CPU try to purchase the newer 'J' models, the only noted difference between these according to stores is that the 'J' offers XD (Execution Disable) meaning it will not execute software threads of a malicous nature (kind of like virus protection) however this is not the only difference, the difference is that the new 'J' models are based on the E0 stepping core and as they are Prescotts the older non E0 stepping procs would run quiet hot, not exactly suitable for overclocking, however the E0 cores run significatly cooler (as mentioned above the 3.8 @ 7.2 was a E0 stepping proc)

RAM

RAM is absoulutly a must that high quality, reliable RAM from only respectable brand names be bought as this is the main factor that limits peoples overclocks brands that would be acceptable in terms of reliability, performence etc. are OCZ, Corsair, Crucial these brands all prove extrememly popular among the overclocking community as these brands are created for overclocking they can take it and they offer fantastic RMA services, most of these brands will replace a bad module even if th bad was done at your fault. Also try to get the fastest available usually anything PC4000 or higher is sufficient, even if your motherboard is rated at PC3200 DDR400 get higher spec RAM. You will notice latencies when buying RAM generally the lower the latencies the faster the RAM and the better the overclock as if your RAM is able to support its rated freqeucy at lower latencies later on when you have passed the rated frequency and it begins to pose unstable you can loosen your timings or latencies and achieve a higher overclock, depending on what you prefer higher FSB or lower/tighter timings/latencies. All of these high quality RAM modules would have to be set at atleast a Vdimm of 2.8V (3.2V only available on some boards including Abit IC7-MAX3) I have been talking about DDR up until now if it is DDR2 that you require however the principles are pretty much the same make sure you get the highest speed, low timeing/latencies etc.

PSU

Many people often overlook the importance of having a good quality PSU, if you are looking at buying a PSU for a LGA775 system you would need the newer PSUs that support the ATXv2 compliant 24-pin ATX connector as opposed to the older 20-pin ATX connector needed for a S478 based system. Quality brands are Antec, OCZ etc. Antec Neopower480 proves to be one of the best PSUs available for the LGA775 systems while look into the OCZ power streams and other Antec PSUs for these systems. The importance of haveing a good PSU is significant in terms of overclocking because it determines the reliabilty of the volatges supplied to your components and while overclockind changed voltages this is a must in relibility.

Cooling

There are many different solutions available to cool your system, Air cooling being most common, water cooling getting to be more popular and phase change cooling which is expensive and considered only for absoulute enthusiasts. I will not get too much into cooling here but if you are looking into getting some high quality Air cooling the best would be to get a ThermalRight XP-90 or XP-120, XP-90c those are for performence and for performence/quiet solutions look into Zalman CNPS series. Before purchasing any of these however look into the compatibilty of these on your mobo as some of these HSFs (Heatsink/Fans) will not fit onto your mobo at all or require you to tilt some caps (capacitors) For Water cooling there are a number of different things you would need and this can become alot more complex basic rundown of parts required for water cooling is tubing, radiator, reservoir or filler line/valve with a T line, pump, and the waterblocks. Best brands for tubing are Tygon and Clearflex, best radiators are often ones that you mod yourself from Ford Festivas etc. or you can buy permodded ones look into such ones as Black Ice for these, dangerden make quality resevoirs or you can use a fill and bleed system (T line) if your more experienced, pumps are good from swifttech as they make 12v ones that you can connect to your PC most other ones would require you to connect to an extrnal power source there are many things to look at when considering buy a pump the GPH/LPH this is simply the Gallons/Litres per hour that the pump can cycle the higher the more water being pushed through your system and the better, head is the maximum height that the water can be pushed at 0 resistance in you PC there would be somewhat high resistence so a pump with a higher head would be better, hose clamps are always good for safefty and one should be fitted to each barb for safety purposes, there are also different sizes avaible they are 1/2 id 3/8 id 1/4 id (id means inner diameter) As I said watercooling can become somewhat complex and I will not get into it too much here. The other option is phase change and I wont get into that much because chances are if you want this you would already now what it is and much about it, basically however it is the changing of gasses into solids hence the name phase chnage, this is the highest performence cooling and will set you back a fair bit

Overclocking

Once all your parts are lined up its time to begin the fun.

Firstly I will mention the very basics in understanding how CPUs work and factors/characteristics about them. A CPUs clock speed is achieved by calculating its FSB and multiplying that by its multiplier. An example I will use is say you have a P4 3.2GHz perscott with a 800FSB, the FSB on this chip is quad-pumped 200x4=800FSB so the raw FSB is 200 x the multiplier in which this case it would be 16 200x16=3200 now what you would do is up the FSB so say do it in 3~5 Mhz increments so making it 205x16=3280 continue to do this (uping the fsb) until your system shows instability eg. BSOD's (Blue Screen Of Death) restarting or freezing etc. then what you would do it increase the vcore meaning the voltage of your CPU increase this to the next available increment then test again if it is now stable increase the FSB again continue doing this until you reach a stable operating frequency do not go too high on the volatge either usually anything over about 1.7Vcore on a northwood could instantly kill it and for a prescott anything over about 1.6Vcore could permanently damage or kill it. The vdimm or RAM voltage should be set to 2.8V or 3.2V only on some boards. The RAM in your system will run at the speed of your computers FSB so say at stock your RAM was running in DDR400 because your FSB was 200 and then times 2 because it is Dual Channel (if it is) when you overclock to say 205 the ram would run at 205x2=410 DDR410 some mobos will feature a mem divider or also know as the FSB:DRAM divider this can be set at different ratios to allow your RAM to run at a different speed to the FSB, this is used when your RAM can not take it anymore and you wish to keep pushing your CPU, there come in handy when you havent got the best RAM. Also your RAM timeings may be loosened to achieve better stability however you would then be sacrificing higer timeings/latencies for a higher FSB this really depends on what your prefer higher clock frequency or lower timeings. Most probably bench to see which one gives you better results.

Please note that this guide has been written in a short period of time and it is only scratching the surface of overclocking so I might have missed out some things, if anyone notices anything wrong please post.

[oddcrap]

Awesome guide :D

[-hurley18]

Wow thanks alot

[THE BAT]

Nice Thanks

[Tevage]

Yea nice guide,well done.

[SadJoker]

Nice guide, very informative. (Y)

[Brian M. Veteran]

wahay its 2006 and its still going strong - Well Done :D

[ryant]

new record here :)

asus

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showth...4&highlight=671

[PratimGhosh86]

Hey guys try this :

First make sure ur mobo allows u to set the ram frequency and the fsb individually ..... now ... if ur using ddr333/ddr400 mem. modules .. set it to its lower frequency .. i.e if its 333 the set it to 266 , if its 400 set it to 333 .... now reboot and make sure ur ramm is running in the forced lower frequency mode ... now back to bios ... goto the section where u can change ur fsb .. it'll still be 200 ... now increase ur fsb gradually ... u'll find that the mem. speeds will increase too ... keep on increasing the fsb till the mem. reaches 166/200 (i.e. ddr333/ddr400) ... now reboot .. u should have ur processor oc'ed by 600 MHz ..... check the oc using Everest or SiSoftware Sandra ... u should see a real 600 MHz oc ...

I tried this on a P4 630 3.0 GHz ... i'm running it a 3.60 GHz stable ... mem. was ddr400 .. forced to ddr333 first ..... temps increased by about 6c ..... also a friend of mine tried it on a 2.66 GHz processor .. he is running it at 3.23 GHz .. 100% stable ....

[Unholy Moley!]

Your guide is good and I'm sure those who you specifically target will learn a lot from it. You stated the warning right at the start, which was very appropriate and necessary. Your writing is clear for the most part, but there are errors in it and your sentences get muddled together or run-on. You should revise what you wrote and use paragraphs in your longer instruction sections.

[Cyph3r .-_-.]

This was kind of hard to understand, but never the less a good guide. Thank you very much.

[mmannai]

Thank you!

[ShaolinDreams]

i been overclocking my socket 478 Prescott 3.2ghz.. i got it stable at 3.6 without any increase in volts. at 3.7ghz it was almost stable but would freeze if running something intensive. Thanks for the warning on volts i was unsure what was safe limit to put it at. Now i increased the volts up a couple of levels and it seems to be stable at 3.7ghz.

Trying to get the most out this old pc as much as possible before i eventually upgrade to a new computer.

Thanks again. :cool: