Overclocking Athlon II x4 620 Questions

[Computer_Commando]

It was probably lightning that got the ethernet.  I added a PCI NIC card.
I tried 2 different new 500 & 600W power supplies, both have plenty of 12VDC power.  Boot loop is not consistent; sometimes it will loop 5-6 times before POST & sometimes not at all, but it always does POST.  If it takes 2 or more loops, OC will revert to 200MHz bus speed.  It also sometimes takes a very long time to come out of Sleep, longer than a normal boot.  Don't want to spend $100 on a 3rd psu, just to try it.  I suspect the real problem is a mobo voltage regulator, maybe also damaged by lightning.

[DaveLembke]

I suppose as long as once it boots its stable no sense spending any money!

I had a 386sx 40Mhz mini motherboard a long time ago that I stuffed into an old 286 Dell case and the PSU required me to flip it on and wait at black screen and then flip it off and back on quick on the right side red power switch to get it to boot. Once booted the system ran fine. The original motherboard was a 286 8Mhz in a large motherboard that was the size of todays server boards. And it ran fine when it was the original hardware, but I wanted to run Windows 3.11 and have sound card, and 14.4 modem etc, and Trident 1MB Video Card, to have AOL 2.5 Internet, and the old PSU couldnt take the extra load at initial boot, but once the power supply was on and flipped off and back on quickly, the motherboard would reinitialize from the quick dip and the power supply had the charged capacitor cushion to then boot the 386 with adequate watts. Parts were proprietary and fortunately I only had to use this setup for like 6 months until scoring a 486 motherboard and a minitower with PSU for $40 in 1995.

[DaveLembke]

Installed new heatsink   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064   and set it back to 215Mhz FSB with 13x multiplier for 2798.7Mhz  from normally a 2600mhz CPU and its running healthy and slightly faster. Ran program to set all 4 cores to 100% and watched the temps.

From idle at 30c, it rose quickly to 41c and then levelled off at 45c with 65F room temp.  Left it running for 45 minutes at 100% to see if it would creep higher over time, but it held steady at 45c.

I think I am going to run it at 2798.7Mhz  for a while, since its running strong, is slightly faster, and staying cool.

Going to print out a PDF of this so that later when I decide that 2798.7Mhz  is not fast enough i can apply the knowledge shared here to push it further.

I also have a newer Biostar AM3 motherboard with 760G chipset running on 4GB of DDR3 1333 and may retire this AM2+ motherboard at some point and migrate the Athlon II x4 620 over to this board. Bought this motherboard $55 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138199   with a cheap $35 Sempron 140 CPU about 2 years ago to build up a cheap computer for my wife, but have since given her the Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz that I got for free that was struck by lightning and I fixed, which performs better than the Sempron 2.7Ghz single-core for gaming and multitasking. Prior to the Sempron 2.7Ghz single-core she was running a Pentium 4 2.53Ghz, in which the Sempron was much faster than the P4. But she was very happy to get the Core 2 Duo which performs even better. A Quiet User is a Happy User!!!  ...LOL     No more complaints of lag when multitasking 

[Calum]

45C is better, there's some headroom there for increasing the voltages and clocking further in the future.
The Biostar board you linked to has higher rated power circuitry (125W vs 95W) but I still wouldn't trust it for much overclocking as they're still only 4-phase (actually just checked and it's 3+1) with no heatsinks.  Some manufacturers (MSI for one) are notorious for overrating their boards, causing them to set on fire even with a stock CPU that they state the board supports.

A useful thread about the importance of VRMs and MOSFETs:
http://www.overclock.net/t/943109/about-vrms-mosfets-motherboard-safety-with-125w-tdp-processors
A useful thread with a database of AMD boards and their power circuitry:
http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for the links to check out as well as I wasnt aware of:

Some manufacturers (MSI for one) are notorious for overrating their boards, causing them to set on fire even with a stock CPU that they state the board supports.

I can definately agree with the statement of: Some manufacturers (MSI for one) are notorious for overrating their boards 


I haven't bought an MSI motherboard since an Intel Socket 478 MSI board that I had about 6 years ago that was nothing but trouble with a 3.00 Ghz 1Meg cache Hyperthreaded (HT) Pentium 4.  MSI PM8M-V Socket 478/P4M800 same as shown here: http://www.pcplanetsystems.com/abc/product_details.php?category_id=124&item_id=2654 did not run very healthy with that 3Ghz CPU same as shown here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-4-3GHz-1M-cache-800-Socket-478-Prescott-HT-CPU-SL8JZ-/271017126157 even though it was rated for up to 3.4Ghz support. The CPU I knew was good because it came out of another working computer that was lacking AGP slot and I wanted it for gaming. So I bought this motherboard back then and transferred the CPU and RAM to this motherboard and it was not very stable which pointed at a motherboard issue. It wasn't until I tried another CPU I had which was a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz single-core non-hyperthreaded and 512k cache that I got this board to stabilize, as CPU as shown here http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=P42800C478    . I swapped out PSU, RAM, Video Card, and everything was pointing to the motherboard. I ended up having to settle with the slower non-hyperthreading single-core 2.8Ghz P4 with 1/2 the cache of the 3.0Ghz HT CPU     This has ever since then kept me from buying MSI brand.

When it came to gaming that 3Ghz with 1 Meg cache and Hyperthreading to act like 2 cores to Windows XP Pro would have been way better than the single core 2.8Ghz with 512k cache. I ended up selling this system with this 2.8Ghz CPU because I wasnt satisfied with its performance such as trying to play Need for Speed Carbon that really needed the 3Ghz HT (1 core + 1 virtual core ) CPU to play ok as my friend also had a 3Ghz HT with 8xAGP slot and a GeForce 8800GT and it played well on that system. Placing this 3Ghz back into the original motherboard I ended up selling it and moving on to socket 775 from 478 which had no upgrade path, to have an upgrade path buying an ASUS socket 775 board used for $30 that supported the Core 2 Duo CPU and going that route and doing away with AGP and going for PCIe performance instead. I ended up maxing out the ASUS motherboard on a Pentium E5400 after a flash, and then retiring that build off to the side when I got this quadcore Athlon II.

As far as motherboard brands go, I have had good luck with INTEL ( 3 boards ), ASUS ( 2 boards ), BIOSTAR ( 6 boards ), and ZOTAC ( 1 ITX board ). 

The only ones I have been troubled by with problems which were either a build for myself or someone else that I assisted was: an MSI ( 1 board ) did not work with HT CPU, FOXCONN ( 1 board ) integrated audio crapped out after 4 months, ASROCK ( 1 board ) bricked itself with blackscreen after 6 months normal running ( found solder balls all over board, removed MB and tapped board on its side on table and about 8 solder balls around the size of a pin head fell off board. Tapped board until no more fell off to table top and repowered board and still black screen DOA ), and ECS Elitegroup ( 1 board ) board randomly freezes windows up tight and all other hardware troubleshot in which the motherboard was the cause.

And my one friend in Canada just recently built a computer for his father using a MSI motherboard and the documentation specifying the pin out for the power switch, power LED, hdd LED, etc was missing with the motherboard and is no where on the silkscreen of the board. Same board as shown here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130659