Hey my mate has a 2.4ghz Socket 478 pentium 4. It is well and truly out of warranty and lacking a bit in some stuff and we are wanting to overclock it. What sory of ghz do u think we could get it too with the stock cooler and a new layer of thermal past. The case is well ventilated and is about 37 degrees when idle. I am new to overclocking and was wondering if there are any tips that anyone could give me so i do not melt the chip. What cpu tester should i use after i have overclocked it? thanks
If you have a half decent motherboard it will help stop you melting it! Whats 37 degrees though? I take it thats celcius? Id try adding your new paste and if it stays this high you might need some extra cooling. You will have to give more info on your chip. Is it a P4a or P4b? Or is it a prescott? To keep it short I know the P4a is tends to be very predictable. The B0 revision overclock approx half the amount the C1 revision. I think the P4b is practiacly the same chip. Get CPU-z and find the info there.
A pentium 4 CPU cant melt lol, the shutdown temp is about 95degrees on them, and they do somthing called throttling i belive, cant remember then exact name. Anyway, P4's seem to be good overclockers, my prescott 3.0ghz cpu could get to 3.8ghz but always shut down due to a very faulty motherboard, Prescott pentium 4's run at higher temps that the northwoods, just put a new thin layer of thermal paste on, prefrebly AS5, then start overclocking, go up in 5mhz increments, as soon as it becomes unstable, raise the voltage a little and see if it becomes stable, then keep going in 5mhz increments, keep checking on the temperature tho, what voltage can you go up to in the bios? and what voltage is your cpu running at? All cpu's of the same speed and revision are not gauranteed to overclock as good as each other, for example one 2.4ghz cpu could go to say 2.6ghz, then the other may only reach 2.5ghz. You can also find lots of guides on the internet that help with overclocking too. You may also like to check out Big B's Overclocking and cooling sticky, there are some usefull links on this thread .
I forgot to plug in the cpu fan once after applying some new paste. I put the whole thing back together turned it on, overclocked and used the thing for a good hour or so before I noticed it was running at silly temperatures. I cant remember how high it got but I remember it was in the 80's. A good 3 years on and im still using the same chip overclocked from 2-2.5ghz. Ive never really been too concerned about my temps ever since! I was looking up on the XP2000 not long ago cos mine runs at around 55'c. AMD quotes a similar max temp for this as well. I cant find the amd .pdf I read that from.
The stock coolers for the P4's weren't bad. The 2.4GHz (specifically the Northwood core) usually did 3GHz+ pretty easily. I know my 2.4B hit 3.1GHz, and it wasn't that uncommon to see people hitting 3.2GHz. The important thing is to stay below 1.7V when adjusting the CPU voltage. The P4's are known to suddenly die, regardless of cooling used (air, water, LN2, etc) when the voltage has been 1.7V or greater. As far as overclocking, go slowly. You'll only be able to adjust the FSB, so remember that for every 1MHz adjustment there, you'll adjust the CPU's speed by whatever the multiplier is (yours' is either 24.0x or 18.0x). Adjust the FSB by a few MHz at a time and stress test it. [google]Prime95[/google] is commonly used to beat the CPU senseless. The thing you want to do is let it run for a full 24 hours non-stop. Having it run 24 hours without error is accepted as being a stable OC.
