Overclock Voltage and Sata Questions!!

Hey all,

Love the forum, this seems to be the place to go. Other forums are okay, but this place has some really dedicated people, and for that I have a couple of questions. You can check my system specs to the left there.

First question of the day:

I have my P4 630 3.0 at 3.825...and that's all good and great, but it won't pass Prime95 unless I set the voltage in bios/OC Guru at 1.51v, and Systool/Everest Pro read out as 1.48v. I have heard that you should be able to sufficiently OC a 630 at stock voltage (1.4)...I think I can maybe pull 3.4 out of it. I did a V-mod to the MB, and that stabalized the voltage so that I didn't need to go above 1.51...but still I feel that is a little high and maybe I'm wrong for 800mhz of OC. Maybe it's my mb..dunno, it's hard to get much from others on this M/B...I know it's old, but it's gonna last till DX10 and my next update hehe. Any opinions? Any pro help would be greatly appreciated here!

Also, I can hit 4.0ghz, but it runs very hot, and I gotta turn the voltage up to 1.53 or 1.56 to pass Prime! I've heard of hitting stable on a 630 w/lower voltages and air cooling. I will not go water, wanna keep it all air and in the case, so please do not suggest water. If I can get lower voltages @ 3.8 I'd be happy as a clam!

AGP/NB V is set at: 1.65, reads 1.68
DDR V is set at: 2.65, reads same

Second question of the day:

I just bought a 500gb Seagate Barracuda 16mb SATA drive from newegg for $130, I was pretty stoked. I am just wondering if that will hinder my current OC levels down. I have heard a little bit about this, but nothing on this board, which has me somewhat confident, and somewhat worried. It does have PCI/AGP lock frequency settings in bios, I have the most recent bios for this board. If anyone has the answer to this, it would be greatly appreciated!!!


I would have posted these in the correct areas I found both at, but nobody has posted in months at these locations and let alone have read them, so I figured I would like to get a sooner reply and possibly some good info!


My CPU runs about 36-38C idle, and gets up to 63-65C at 3.8ghz w/1.51v (1.48v readout), and at stock speeds my zalman keeps this sucker way chilled (52C at max load w/fan on low speed!!)! The reason I bought this setup was to have a decent OC rig to get me by until I can afford a better core 2 system w/dx10 card to do the same to! I love tweaking this thing, and have it stable, I would just like to have my Sata drive work with current OC and find a way to drop voltage down some so the cpu will run a little cooler.

Thanks for your time if you read this whole thing! I look forward to getting the great help and support you guys provide!!

Ace, JC thanks for your responses!! It is much appreciated. I do know that Precotts have a tencency to run hot which is why I got the Zalman, it does an excellent job compared to the stock cooler.

Ace, I recently reseated my CPU cooler after cleaning both it and proc and applying fresh layer of AS5, it is still setting, so I suppose I may see another degree or two drop.

I have plenty of airflow, and will be getting more, I have 1x80mm front intake (soon to be 2 better 80mm intake fans), 1X120mm rear exhaust (cut hole so that air flow is less restricted for exhaust), 1X80mm top exhaust, 1x80mm side intake w/port that feeds fresh air to CPU cooler. Also I have an Arctic cooler rv5 on my X850xt pe, it also vents air out the back of the case, and 2 80mm fans in my antec PS for more top exhaust. About all I could do is cut a hole in the front for a 120mm fan, but I just ordered these two performance 80mm fans, I'll see what they do first.

At stock speeds my idle is like 30-32C w/the cooler, and that is with the heat turned up too damn high in the house (damn woman!). So for a prescott I feel that is decent.

I can't believe the speeds you hit using only stock voltage!! That would be amazing if I could even hit 3.6 w/o changing voltage!!!

I can choose between 1:1, 2:3 AND 4:5 dividers, anything above 240 and I have to use 4:5 otherwise it will crash in windows shortly after loading.

But it will hit 240FSB at 1:1 w/2.5-3-3-8 (normally 2.5-3-3-7) and stock 2.6v, not too bad for cheap PC3200 DDR, came w/ramsinks, dunno if those even help, never heard any serious results.

Also on FSB settings, it is usually at Auto CPU Detect, I set it to PSB800 (other options are PSB667, PSB533). Should I possibly leave this in auto?

Aside from this I cannot think of anything else...keep the questions coming! Thanks for your help thus far.

Oh btw, my PS has two 12v rails, one at 17A the other at 19A...I have heard that 16A is ok for OC Prescott, but the more juice the better...could this be my problem? The voltage still fluctutes a little bit, usually .03v or so (not counting EIST/C1E).

Thanks again!!!

I am gonna start a fresh slate and see how far I can get w/stock voltage for cpu!!

Hehe good cause that PS cost enought at the time I bought it (at least for the first PS that I didn't get under 40 bucks, those kept burning up lol). Yeah, you may be right. I just got done doing some testing w/systool doing a stress test while overclocking at 1.27mhz intervals or something close to that effect, it seems that I can get up to 246FSB (mem 4:5) at 1.38v. It'll boot into windows fine, seems okay, will do some more testing to see if it is as stable as it seems to be.


But as soon as I past this barrier, (I like the 250, cause then my mem runs at its rated 200mhz DDR400 speed, I guess 198 is pretty close =P), well things get a little sad. I cannot get into windows, it will go past load screen and show mouse icon, then it freezes and screen goes blank. It shows code FF on my Guru LCD on my MB during this, so I will research that. I even upped the vcore to 1.41 (reads 1.400 pretty damn stable actually), but no change, in fact when at that voltage it wouldn't even get as far into the windows loading process.

So hey, new record for my PC, 246FSB on 1.38V, I am sorta happy, but I know there is more...or should be more...and I want to see if I can get it. Anyone understand why the PC would be okay during Post/boot-up, but as soon as XP starts it freezes? is this just that the processor can't handle the load and locks up?

But it seems to be running quite a bit cooler, and I am sure it won't be stable in Prime, but I will keep my fingers crossed!

Thanks again!!

No I haven't...I do not have a floppy disk available for memtest...I might have the ISO version around somewhere. I'd be bummed if it was my Ram, cause DDR hasn't really gotten cheaper in the past few months as I'd hoped by now...and I'd really like to not put more money into this, at least over 100 bucks...but if that'd solve my issue I'd be happy.

Doesn't make sense though, because I have been running at 250fsb @ 1.48v and it was stable, and all I did was bump the DDR to 2.65 from 2.6, but it was running it rates speeds. I will try memtest anyways. Thanks again!

Also, I ran the Systool CPU Stress Test since it puts 100%, and it didn't last 5 minutes without my PC freezing up. I was bummed.

Just got done running a few tests over and over and...well over again using Memetest. Both ramsticks passed, I only ran it with both installed in dual channel mode. So far so good on that front...for now hehe.

Frogger that is an interesting approach, and quite a jump up in voltage. I will try that and leave PSB 800. I never thought I'd have to raise the DDR V to lower the VCore hehe, that is definately different, but I'll give it a shot and check the results. I'll post in a few after some tests/tweaking/oc'ing..

Thanks everyone!!

Do I want to run 1:1 or 4:5???

I tried both at 1.8v (after 2.65 it goes back to 2.70, 2.80 etc...)

I upped my vcore from 1.38 to 1.41 and can do okay at 247FSB at 5:4, 2.8 on DDRV
so...3.7 seems okay...I will do some more stability tests, and try upping the timing

For speed I have: PSB800 (200/800), PSB667 (166/667), PSB533 (133/533), and then I have the ratio dividers so that when I use 5:4 ratio (most mb's show it as 4:5, same ratio though), I have a 200mhz memory speed when my cpu bus and fsb are at 250 mhz. That is how I got my proc up to it's current speeds as anything over 240 just doesn't work for the ram I have.

I wonder if I set the PSB (sets the memory controller host/hub/fsb speed) to 667, raised voltage to 1.8 and loosened timings all the way 3-4-4-8 how far I could go.

I'll post back in a few. Thanks for all your help!

Sorry I meant for DDR.

I meant raise DDRV to 2.8...set it's timings loose and try PSB667 (166), well, no dice, it booted in 1:1 mode, but read at 250mhz, and didn't last, and at 4:5 mode it wouldn't boot into windows. I'm back in PSB800, kept the raised 2.8V, 4:5 ratio, memory running at DDR400 speed..FSB is 250. I will do some stress testing...I gotta hit the sack, so any more suggestions please list em, I'll try tomorrow after work! Thanks again for all your help!!!