# First time Overclock



## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

Ill be putting together a new pc early next week and would like to overclock the e5200. Iv read the sticky and know about the stress test first. I just need to know if you guys think the parts are up to snuff for 3.0ghz. That should be nice safe number from what iv read.

Motherboard- Asus P5KPL-AM SE

Processor- E5200 2.5ghz Stock Cooling

Case- Rosewill FE-A020 ATX Mid Tower (All 120mm fan slots occupied) one intake, one exhaust and two side.

PSU- Rosewill RG630-S12 630W continuous @40C

Memory- G.Skill PC2 6400 with 4-4-4-4-12 timing 2gig

What do you guys think?


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

Stock cooling tends to run warm anyway, so it's typically recommended to use after market cooling, especially if you plan to OC.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Are you using a dedicated GPU or Onboard Graphics?
I would be very cautious trying to OC using a Rosewill PSU.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

I would also be very cautious about overclocking with a rosewill psu, they are one of the wost power supplies you can get.


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## grimx133 (Jan 15, 2008)

With the Asus P5KPL series boards the overclocking options are rather thin, but you can OC with it. I run an E2180 at 2.4Ghz. on a P5KPL-CM, it was unstable at 2.5 and I think it's the board, just not capable of anything more than a light overclock. You can't do a whole lot of fine tuning for voltages and such, just about all you can do is adjust the bus speed. So, don't expect anything massive eh.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> I would also be very cautious about overclocking with a rosewill psu, they are one of the wost power supplies you can get.


Really now? there green series seemed to all have above average reviews on newegg. Not to mention its 80plus with a very potent 12v rail. What proof do you have? Cant say i have had any problems yet with my 630 continuous.

Not saying anyone is wrong but id like a reason as too why these statements are made.....but then again more than one person telling me the same thing should be enough proof. :laugh:


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

Well first newegg isn't a proper site for reviewing hardware.

second I used to test power supplies for a living and rosewills claim of 80% is extremley innacurate try 60% and your somewhere near the mark.

Third since rosewills psu are really 60% efficient when pushed to their claimed wattage output they have a tendacy to fail and when they fail they take something with it like the graphics card, ram or motherboard.

If you have a look at the top 50 list of power supplies you will see that rosewill power are supplies are near the bottom. Rosewills are not as bad as huntkey but they are not far off.

this is a link for power supplies to avoid, it is in alphabetical order but as it says at the top any of those makes should be avoided especially if you run a powerful system or plan to overclock http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=974240

A psu that is not on the list which should also be avoided are winpower they only have 55% efficiency rating and are just only worse than rosewill.

Corsair, Seasonic, Thermaltake (toughpower units only), OCZ extreme, CWT, PC Power & cooling are good power supplies with Corsair & seasonic the best.

Antec used to make good ones until they started swapping component suppliers every so often to save money and they went with cheap suppliers. cheap = crap psu.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> Well first newegg isn't a proper site for reviewing hardware.
> 
> second I used to test power supplies for a living and rosewills claim of 80% is extremley innacurate try 60% and your somewhere near the mark.
> 
> ...


I find this statement a little hard to believe after finding this article from an unbiased source.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/881/1

After stress testing it 5 different times at different loads It looks like it does provide claimed wattage and power. Not to mention the parts did not look sub-par quality.

Any arguments against this PSU. Not Rosewill in general but just this specific PSU. I can understand companies having bad names for a reason but you can not just claim something is bad just because X company made it.

Thats a little bit ignorant in my opinion. 

Thats like claiming Dodge sucks because the 2.7 intrepid motors were a time bomb from the factory. We all know dodge isn't a bad brand because of a few crap cars. So why treat computer companies this way? :4-dontkno


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

grimx133 said:


> With the Asus P5KPL series boards the overclocking options are rather thin, but you can OC with it. I run an E2180 at 2.4Ghz. on a P5KPL-CM, it was unstable at 2.5 and I think it's the board, just not capable of anything more than a light overclock. You can't do a whole lot of fine tuning for voltages and such, just about all you can do is adjust the bus speed. So, don't expect anything massive eh.


How do i go about doing this?


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

I posted an article in another thread about power supplies last week where huntkey were actually trying to bribe the hardware site reviewing their PSUs with free advertsing because everyone knows even huntkey of how crap their PSUs are.

Could rosewill have done the same thing here? I leave it upto you to decide.

It's upto you at the end of the day but we don't tell lies on here, none of us are getting paid commission by saying what PSUs are good and the majority of us work in IT during the day either selling and building systems or doing IT support work.

People who work in IT especially in the hardware side of things tend to find out very fast what is a reliable make of something and what should be avoided and those ones to be avoided generally stay avoided. Personally if it were me I'd take a hammer to the rosewill and get a better one.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

to adjust the bus speed you go into the bios and find the FSB and up it, try upping it by 10 save then reboot and if you get into windows try it again.

if you cant fiddle with voltages you wont get far and I would recommend trying more than 5% untill you get a better psu.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

MonsterMiata said:


> Thats like claiming Dodge sucks because the 2.7 intrepid motors were a time bomb from the factory. We all know dodge isn't a bad brand because of a few crap cars. So why treat computer companies this way? :4-dontkno


Because IT people are passionate about their machines working right all the time, when they see high faliure rates from one piece of kit then that mud sticks to the name forever.

Its kind of like saying the Americans make some great cars but they still havent worked out how to make any of those cars go around corners properly.

A corvette is a really good car but driving one in the uk is bad idea because we have corners in uk

it's a risk would you take it, I wouldn't.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> Because IT people are passionate about their machines working right all the time, when they see high faliure rates from one piece of kit then that mud sticks to the name forever.
> 
> Its kind of like saying the Americans make some great cars but they still havent worked out how to make any of those cars go around corners properly.
> 
> ...


So in short overclock is a no no but using it as it is should work just fine? Is this assumption correct?

How can i tell what stress is being put on it?


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> I posted an article in another thread about power supplies last week where huntkey were actually trying to bribe the hardware site reviewing their PSUs with free advertsing because everyone knows even huntkey of how crap their PSUs are.
> 
> Could rosewill have done the same thing here? I leave it upto you to decide.
> 
> ...


I have read this thread. If im not mistaken it was the website i posted where huntkey attempted this. Is this source of information not to be trusted?


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

yes do not trust trust it. If you are only browsing the web or doing the odd letter then the rosewill will be fine, if your doing anything like watching videos, streaming playing games then it will eventually give up.

Personally I wouldn't trust it to keep the books falling of my shelves, I certainly wouldn't have it in any pc I used.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> yes do not trust trust it. If you are only browsing the web or doing the odd letter then the rosewill will be fine, if your doing anything like watching videos, streaming playing games then it will eventually give up.
> 
> Personally I wouldn't trust it to keep the books falling of my shelves, I certainly wouldn't have it in any pc I used.


Well that stinks. Oh well, when it goes hopefully nothing else goes with it. I don't have another 80-100 bucks to drop on a PSU again.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

save up, just don't overclock yet then when you can afford a good psu you will be able to.

remember the psu is the most important component you can get for a pc since it converts ac electricity from your wall socket to low voltage dc that the computer needs to work. Getting a crap one means this conversion can go wrong and it destroys the the pc get a good one and this will be very unlikely to happen.


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## grimx133 (Jan 15, 2008)

Go into your bios and go to the Advanced section, navigate down to "JumperFree Configuration", the first thing to do there is to set "AI Overclocking" to manual.
Your cpu has an 800Mhz. fsb, so the bus speed is 200. That is the number you increase to overclock. Cpu frequency is the bus times the multiplier. The multiplier for the E5200 is 12.5, which gives 200 x 12.5 = 2500Mhz., or 2.5Ghz., as some say. Let's say you increase the bus speed to 220, that would give 220x12.5=2750Mhz. However, your ram is also dependent on the bus speed. So, next you go to DRAM Frequency, which is set to [auto] by default. You do not want to leave it there, highlight the auto and hit enter, select the speed that is closest to your rated ram speed. You can go a bit over, but it isn't a good idea, try to stay at or near. There is a lot of variation between sticks, some can exceed the rated speed by much more than others, I prefer not to let the ram be overclocked. I've hosed a couple sets in the last year or so, really try to avoid that eh.


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## grimx133 (Jan 15, 2008)

I'd expect 220 to boot and run stable, but it may not be the case, due to the stock cooling. You will need to monitor it closely. Check your temperatures, both at idle and at load. The load is the important one, you don't want to exceed 63C. with your cpu when under 100% load for a long period of time. For a quick temp check, 20 minutes of load will pretty much get as high as it's going to get, though it isn't unheard of to get higher later on. When you do settle on a clock, you need to run Prime95 for at least eight hours, more is preferred. If it is without error, and temperatures aren't excessive, it can be called prime stable, and is capable of 24/7 operations. 

Prime95 - Originally a distributed computing effort, it's torture test has become one of the standards among overclockers.
http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html 

RealTemp - What I generally use for temps. I've found it reasonable accurate for Intel cpu's, it doesn't work for amd. The bios is considered to be the most accurate, I normally adjust realtemp to agree with the idle temps found in the bios.
Didn't want to go to the link, site problems on that end?
www.techpowerup.com/realtemp should work.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

grimx133 said:


> I'd expect 220 to boot and run stable, but it may not be the case, due to the stock cooling. You will need to monitor it closely. Check your temperatures, both at idle and at load. The load is the important one, you don't want to exceed 63C. with your cpu when under 100% load for a long period of time. For a quick temp check, 20 minutes of load will pretty much get as high as it's going to get, though it isn't unheard of to get higher later on. When you do settle on a clock, you need to run Prime95 for at least eight hours, more is preferred. If it is without error, and temperatures aren't excessive, it can be called prime stable, and is capable of 24/7 operations.
> 
> Prime95 - Originally a distributed computing effort, it's torture test has become one of the standards among overclockers.
> http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html
> ...


What cooler would you recommend and is it in your opinion to hold off till a better PSU is in order? Iv played Mass Effect 2 with maxed out settings for a good 4 hours straight with zero problem. Iv just noticed the CPU is working very hard. About 90-95% capacity. Ill download the temp program asap.


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## grimx133 (Jan 15, 2008)

When I used the P5KPL-CM it was a budget build, so I stuck an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro on the cpu. It's a solid cooler good for light overclocking. It would do fine for your purposes. 35 bucks right now, sometimes it can be had for 25. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134 

For something in the same price range, but much better performing, I'd suggest the Xigmatek HDT-S1283. Excellent cooling, a real bang for the buck unit. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

grimx133 said:


> When I used the P5KPL-CM it was a budget build, so I stuck an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro on the cpu. It's a solid cooler good for light overclocking. It would do fine for your purposes. 35 bucks right now, sometimes it can be had for 25. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134
> 
> For something in the same price range, but much better performing, I'd suggest the Xigmatek HDT-S1283. Excellent cooling, a real bang for the buck unit. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003


Well i installed the program and the temp still seem to be off. The cpu is now set to 2.65ghz and i also set the memory to 800mhz. I have set memory volts to 2.0 like its recommended when i bought my g.skill memory for 4-4-4-12 operation.

In the bios cpu temp remains the same but my MB temp dropped 4 degrees down to 24c. whats this about?

How do i set the New temp device? It has two numbers, one says 42c and the other 36c. Neither one of these is close to idle temp in the bios.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

Would this be a good solid replacement?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009

Its a corsair 850 unit. 140 shipped.

Should leave plenty of room for overclock and upgrade. If its recommended ill just use tax time to order it.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

most defibetly yes, that is one of the best power supplies you can get. You will have no issues.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

Well i now have the e5200 OC'ed to 2.9ghz. 27c at idle 42c is the highest iv seen under full load. These numbers still looking good? I think the FSB is somewhere around 900mhz which shouldn't become a problem, the board is rated for 1600mhz. I believe im going to leave it here for the reason of heat. Its still the stock cooler so i figure 42c under load isnt too bad but i dont want to push it any farther untill the corsair gets here and the new cpu heat sync.

Could someone describe the difference between the nVidia GT240 and the GTS250.

The GT is obviously cheaper but my question is will i notice a big gain using the GTS250 instead. I play at my monitors native resolution of 1440x900 so not exactly high.


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## grimx133 (Jan 15, 2008)

Take a look at this review of a GT240 at Guru3d, Interesting read, later on it gets into framerates, you'll see the difference between the cards there.
MSI GeForce GT 240 review 

If those temps are accurate, they are good. There's an offset in the settings that you can adjust to get the idle to match the bios. Can't remember exactly where it is, and not on a computer that I can check with.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

grimx133 said:


> Take a look at this review of a GT240 at Guru3d, Interesting read, later on it gets into framerates, you'll see the difference between the cards there.
> MSI GeForce GT 240 review
> 
> If those temps are accurate, they are good. There's an offset in the settings that you can adjust to get the idle to match the bios. Can't remember exactly where it is, and not on a computer that I can check with.


Iv already set that. Idle in the bios is actually 26.5, so i adjust reall temp to show both cores at 27. When i first installed it it tried to tell me i was idle at 42 when the bios said 24 lol.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

Well now i have a different problem. Cant go over 2.95ghz with the computer not wanting to boot. The multiplier is at 12.5 and the FSB is set to 235. Am i stuck here or is there a way around this? no point in a cooler because temps rarely go into the 40s.


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## grimx133 (Jan 15, 2008)

What's your vcore set at?
May need a touch more to the cpu, though not a real good idea to exceed the maximum, as specified by Intel.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

As grimx133 this will probably be the vcore although as noted you shouldn't go above what Intel state for the cpu.

Remember not all of the same type of CPU can be overclockewd to the same level as it depends on how good the mobo is and cooling etc etc.


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## MonsterMiata (Jan 5, 2010)

greenbrucelee said:


> As grimx133 this will probably be the vcore although as noted you shouldn't go above what Intel state for the cpu.
> 
> Remember not all of the same type of CPU can be overclockewd to the same level as it depends on how good the mobo is and cooling etc etc.


Yeah i just came to that realization. My mobo is a good starter board so it helped me learn this process without breaking anything. Just going to save up for an AM3 board and PhenomX2 sense prices are alot lower compared to their equivalents on the intel side. 

Thanks for all the help guys. When the time comes ill fill alot more confident in a new build but for now i can more than likely make this one last for a year or so.


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

good luck.


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