Want to try OCing for the first time

[Danieru]

Recently my P4 2.8, and my Asus P4P800 Deluxe MB went *poof*
So I have decided to go with Athlon for the first time, (I know I am slow).
Here is what is on the way from newegg:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939

and

EPoX EP-9NDA3+ Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard

I guess my n00b questions are these:

Is the performace gain from my previous set up so big that I should just leave well enough alone?

Or would attempting to OC be that much more of a benefit?

Basically I only play WoW and Guild Wars. Other than that my wife does her master's work on it. Any help would be great.

Thanks

 

[Rob Williams]

Hey man, welcome to the forums!

Well, the new PC is definitely much faster, and you should notice a nice difference with gaming.

As for overclocking, personally I don't actually do it to look for speed differences. Overclocking is fun, pushing your hardware to the limits. I would not bother overclocking unless you are doing it for the pure fun of it, which is why most people overclock I think.

WoW and GW would work just great on stock, it looks like it will be a great system. Of course, never hesitate to post questions here to help you along.

 

[Danieru]

Thank you for the welcome. Looks like this is a great place to get info.
I was pretty much leaning to keeping it stock. I won't lie, I am gun shy when it comes to frying 250+ dollars. Although I may think of switching the stock heatsink/fan with a coolermaster. But then again I will see if that is really needed after I run it stock for a bit.

Now time to save up for the SLI upgrade.....

 

[Rob Williams]

It's actually hard to fry a CPU nowadays in my opinion. With some older chips, it was way too easy, but now there are so many protections. You would have to try really hard to fry a CPU nowadays, or take off the cooler while it's running

Either way, stock speed will suit you just fine. Don't think SLi yet, you may be surprised at the performance of the ATI's new cards

 

[Danieru]

Hopefully ATI comes out okay. I am currently using an 700XT, which was a nice upgrade from my 9600 pro. I may just wait

 

[Rob Williams]

Going from an X700XT, you will *love* whatever new card you get

 

[Danieru]

Woot got my MB and CPU in last night. I was up till about 2am getting everything up and running again. Looks like I may need to invest in an nVidia card. My x700xt works fine, but the nVidia chipset on the MB does not like the Catalyst AI at all. So after uninstalling the Catalyst AI I stopped getting these crazy errors.

Now here is my question:

I decided not to put the arctic silver on the processor for some reason. Now at idle it is running at 35-37c, while under load it jumps up to 45c.
Would it be worth it to take the heat sink and cpu off clean them, and put a dab of Artic silver 5 on? or.... Should I buy and after market HS and fan, then use the Artic Silver on them?

LOL sorry for being such a n00b.

*edit*
So far I love the Epox MB, I left well enough alone, but the OC'ing utility provided is pretty sweet looking. Also being able to flash the bios from windows is a great feature.

 

[Bobbythecat]

Yes. lol
It's best to have both surfaces (CPU and bottom of heatsink) glued together tightly, and Arctic Silver 5 has amazing conductivity than most other thermal paste, so I would put in some time to take the HSF off, clean the surfaces, and replace the paste with Arctic Silver 5. But the sudden jump in temperature suggests to me that the HSF has 'saturated' with heat, and not cooling the damn thing. I don't know what you have, but my old XP-90 with a Panaflo fan cooled my CPU just as well as my watercooling kit, as the XP series is the monster of heatsinks. That heatsink never got too hot, so heat from the CPU was constantly conducting to the heatsink, keeping it at a healthy temperature.

 

[Danieru]

I am using the stock heatsink and fan that the 3700+ came with.
Oh and I don't mean that it just jumps to that temp, it creeps up to it,
then hovers there while ingame. Just not sure if this is to much heat or not.
I know that the safety feature turns the system off at 100c, but I don't ever want to get close to that number.

I love this board. Lots of great feedback

*edit*
should I clean it off with an alcohol pad? or is there another way to do it?

 

[Danieru]

Answered my own question. According to the arctic silver website I should have cleaned the heat sink and applied the AS 5 before I started up the computer. It is now impossible for me to get all the wax out of the grooves of the heatsink now that it has been melted in. So I will order a nice after market HS/Fan and use it then

 

[Rob Williams]

Haha. I always use Alcohol and a Q-Tip. I then use some paper towel and Alcohol to really clean the surfaces well.

Heatsinks don't usually take well to Budweiser though.

 

[Bobbythecat]

m..m..MELTED?! Wow...

With my watercooling and former XP-90, the temp climbed to 45 deg. C under load, and chilled there. 100 deg. C is a scary number...I don't think I'd even like the temp to read 60 deg. C, although the GPU seems to think that temp as no big deal

And yeah, do you cleaning...and don't forget to buy a can of air if you're ordering online...it's usually cheaper online. Keeping a chilled, clean PC is important for its longevity.

 

[Bobbythecat]

Haha...beer for cleaning eh? I thought I was being too generous using brandy