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  1. Banned
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    Hey guys,

    I was just wondering what app you guys use to monitor the temp/voltage of your PC's various components? Currently, I have PC Probe II - the app that came with my Asus mobo. It has elements that go unexplained (e.g. magnet on/off above temps). Is there a more complete app for this?

    Also, what temp is RAM supposed to be at while just running windows? What does upping voltage do you your RAM performance?

    Any help on this stuff would be awesome as I heard you can make your PC faster when doing certain tasks (e.g. ad-scanning/virus scanning) by making some voltage changes.

    Thanks
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  2. Member steptoe's Avatar
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    Its not that simple, some motherboards or computers are locked so you can't do anything with them as the companies basically lock the BIOS so its damn near impossible to do anything short of replacing the motherboard (Dell systems are a prime culprit for this)

    Also you need a good motherboard/BIOS that has these overclocking features, a lot of ready built systems are not designed to be fiddled with in any way, thats why when you look at the BIOS settings there is really nothing that can be changed apart from very basic settings relating to your hard drives or CD/DVD drives and thats about it


    Software people use is :

    Prime95
    To stress test your system and see if its stable at the settings, it pushes the hardware running at full load for hours so if it will pass this then its stable enough to use everyday. Getting it stable for 1-2 hours is not enough, these guys run it for 12-24 hours to find if its getting to hot

    http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103


    HWMonitor/RealTemp/CoreTemp
    Monitors the temperatures of your CPU and GPU cores

    http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php
    http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/
    http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/


    EverestEdition
    This basically lists everything that your system is running and also includes a system stress tester and temp monitors for your CPU and GPU cores

    http://www.lavalys.com/


    CPU-Z
    Shows what motherboard and memeory you are using plus what type of BIOS and what speeds your FSB is running at along with memory frequencies. Very good at finding out what motherboard and memory you have fitted without taking your system apart to look

    http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php




    Also if you plan to overclock you need the hardware that can take overclocking, the lower end CPU's can't. Thats why they are cheaper, but some is very very good at overclocking. The Intel Q6600 is one of them and the newer Intel i7 is very good as well but also incredibly expensive at present and uses DDR-3 memory which is expensive as well

    Then you need to consider water cooling or air cooling as the stock supplied heatsinks and fans are not designed to cool an overclocked or overvolted CPU and just can't cope. There are plenty of 3rd party CPU coolers that are easily much better than stock coolers. Zalman or ThermalRight are two of the better brands but there isn't that much difference between them unless you intend to get serious about pushing your hardware right to the limits

    Water cooling is a subject all on its own as that can get very complex and very expensive depending on how much of your system you want to run water cooling with and just how far you want to push things

    Oh, and there is also refrigiration cooling, yes cool your CPU using the same hardware that cools your fridge. Thats seriously expensive but the results mean you can cool your CPU to less than freezing point and keep it there


    Try these links to get an idea of what could be involved, to do it properly and squeeze the best from your overclocked hardware it takes time and patience, as every system is slightly different. So settings from one system may be too much for yours


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking
    http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1804
    http://forums.pureoverclock.com/showthread.php?t=192
    http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t196767.html
    http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t302033.html
    http://www.spodesabode.com/archive/content/article/watercool
    http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t288964.html
    http://www.overclock.net/
    http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products


    Its a lot to read, but this will help you and others a lot in seeing just how to overclocking and whats involved. Some BIOS's are very good and quite complex at letting you overclock and giving you plenty of setting to get the best out of your hardware as the motherboard companies now realise its a big market so now sell the products not just shove out any old rubbish like they used to do
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  3. Banned
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    Thanks for the great post! I'll look over as much of that as I can when I have the chance.

    My system is about 1.5 years old:

    Asus P5N-E 650 SLI mobo
    C2D 6400 (2.13 Ghz)
    OCZ Platinum 2GB DDR2 800 RAM
    eVGA 8800 GTS 320mb video card
    Thermaltake Tsunami Case (2 120mm fans, 80mm side fan)
    OCZ 650W Gaming PSU


    I just thought that knowing my machine might give you and idea of its overclocking potential. I built it myself. It has been awesome for the past year and a half but now certain games push it beyond its capabilities. One more thing, would adding 2GB more of RAM help me at all or should I get a new video card before I do that?
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  4. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    For XP, 2GB of RAM should be enough. I doubt you would see much, if any, performance increase with more.

    If you can upgrade your CPU to a faster version, that would probably be the easiest way to increase performance.

    You may be able to overclock your present CPU, but, as you noticed, there's a lot to learn first.

    Generally you only need to increase the RAM voltage when you increase it's frequency, to make it more stable at that frequency. But it will also run hotter and that may shorten it's life. Most times, I set the RAM voltage to the manufacturers recommended voltage and just overclock the CPU by raising the FSB (Front Side Bus) frequency.

    A faster video card would help gaming, but not much else.
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  5. Member glockjs's Avatar
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    cooling required to oc as far as games fps a new vid card will help you alot more than just adding ram :/ and oh yeah i use coretemp
    PhenII 955@3.74 - GA-790XTA-UD4 AM3 - 2x4 Corsair Vengeance@1600 - Radeon 5770 - Corsair 550VX - OCZ Agility 3 90GB WD BLACK 1TB - LiteOn 24x - Win 8 Preview - Logi G110+G500
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  6. Hiya Hank. I've got an Asus P5-E Sli mobo as well but with an Intel Q6600 in it. The Asus mobos are usually pretty over-clocker friendly and this one is no exception - it actually has presets for overclocking your system by 5%, 10%, 15%, and I think 20% or, if you're a more experienced overclocker, then you can go in and tweak most the settings yourself. Try the 5% preset in the BIOS and keep an eye on the temps. If everything is OK for a few days then try the 10% preset. I'd be surprised if you had too many problems with either of those settings but don't expect a huge difference in performance.

    To get much more out of your system then you'd probably do better to upgrade the processor and as this mobo will take most of the socket 775 intel CPUs currently available, you should be able to upgrade the processor to either a faster C2D or a faster quad-core processor. If you don't already know that you need a quad-core for whatever you mainly use your computer for then I'd go for the fastest C2D you can find with the most cache and at a reasonable price.

    If you do go down the over-clocking route then always do it in little stages and run the PC for at least several hours under heavy load before upping the settings again, and make sure that you a) know how to reset the mobo's CMOS before you start doing anything (usually a jumper on the motherboard) and b) have made a note of the original BIOS settings and what changes you've made to them as you've been over-clocking.

    As you obviously already know, heat is usually the main enemy of overclockers so make sure you've got a tube of decent thermal paste to make sure that the CPU/mobo chipset coolers are working as efficiently as possible. I'm currently using the relatively new Arctic cooling MX-2 thermal compound which so far seems to be very good and on a par with the Arctic silver 5 that I was using on the cpu before, but with the added benefits of a) not being conductive so no chance of shorting anything out and b) not needing a bake-in period. You'll also need a solvent for removing the old thermal paste. I prefer lighter fluid as it works well and evaporates without leaving a residue. The citrus based cleaners also work but they're harder work and messier, but they do smell nice!

    Almost finally, you may find that the cpu cooler that you have is either not cooling the cpu down enough or is too noisy. As steptoe has already mentioned, there are a lot of 3rd party cpu coolers available many of which are more efficient and/or quieter than the stock coolers supplied with the cpu. There are also a lot of 3rd party coolers out there that are rubbish! There's really no easy way to find the ideal cooler for you other than reading the reviews and comparing specs of the coolers (e.g. thermal efficiency vs noise vs cost) Steptoe has listed some good cooler manufacturers, I'd like to add scythe to the list. NOTE: some of these cpu coolers are massive so it is worth checking that they'll fit your motherboard and into your case. Often the coolers' manufacturers have a mobo compatability list on their websites.

    Finaly, just to add to what glockjs wrote, the only time where having more than 2Gb of RAM will definitely improve fps in games is if you're playing ms flightsim or some of the massive on-line games like world of warcraft etc. where's there's a lot of scenery/textures/etc. that needs to be available to the game.
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  7. Member glockjs's Avatar
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    i never liked presets for oc'ing. tim gave you some good info...if you wanna oc do some research imo and probably a better forum to ask questions would be www.ocforums.com or www.overclock.net
    PhenII 955@3.74 - GA-790XTA-UD4 AM3 - 2x4 Corsair Vengeance@1600 - Radeon 5770 - Corsair 550VX - OCZ Agility 3 90GB WD BLACK 1TB - LiteOn 24x - Win 8 Preview - Logi G110+G500
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  8. Banned
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    To Tim A-C,

    Where can I get to these presets? I'd like to try them.

    Also, are you using PC Probe II?
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