Athlon OC HELP!

[Dantin1]

I have a Athlon 500 with Model # AMD-K7500MTR51B-C and Serial # 239949xxxxxx. So I know I have week 49 type of the CPU. How much overclocking can be done before unstable. I have in mind to purchase the Socket A / 370 Bonded Fin CPU Fan with Copper Base. This is suppost to be good up to a 1.2 gig proccessor. If anyone out there has a really fast Overclock and did it by soldering the resistors. How fast? Core Voltage? Cooling Method? Required Powersupply? I'm currently running this at 550 since I set the motherboard to 110 Mhz FSB and Bios to 110. Did I need to do both? What FSB setting should I put my motherboard? Oh yes I'm running this on a K7M rev. 1.04 Motherboard, has the VIA 686A Southbridge chipset and AMD-751 Northbridge. I also have Micron SDRAM 128 Megs of Ram PC-133. Current Power Suppy is 235 Watts. Sorry I'm a newbie at this and I know Athelon 500's have been out for a couple of years. But any info will be appretiated! Thanks,

Dantin

P.S. Is overclocking legal?

 

[Guest]

Before I begin...Overclocking is perfectly legal, but it does void your warranty. Your 500Mhz CPU is probably out-of-warranty by now anyway.

Overclocking this CPU can be interesting, because as a slot model you can attach a goldfinger device to adjust the multiplier of the CPU. I'd like to see, however, how you plan to attach a Socket A cooler to a Slot A processor. The Socket A processors were first released at 750Mhz...plus the "M" in your model number indicates a "card" type package (see http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q2/000605/t-bird-03.html). But that's really trivial. The best way to overclock Athlons is by the multiplier. The FSB on Athlon is reported to be very touchy. The T-bird FSB is a bit more forgiving. With sufficient cooling you can push your core voltage as high as your mobo settings will allow, as long as you keep temperatures within specs (just get a nice big fat cooler). That will allow you to push core frequency to probably somewhere in the 700-800Mhz range. To squeeze the last bit of performance out of your chip after running the multiplier up, you can add small increments of FSB to push the performance envelope a bit. Don't expect to run the FSB past 110 or 112Mhz though. As for your power supply...That's iffy. The Athlon draws a ton of power as it is, and it draws even more as you run the core voltage up. Add a big cooler and a couple hard drives and you're already pushing it. I blew out my 250W supply with a t-bird 800@880, 2 hard drives and 7 fans (it was probably the fans that did it...) Either way, I replaced it with a 300W model and havent had any problems since, and I'm now running my 800/100 at 933/133 without any problems.

Personally, I think its worth it for you to spend the $40 for a goldfinger device and breathe some new life into your processor. If you can get it stable at 800Mhz or so, it'll serve as a fine computer for another six months or so. Let me know how your overclocking experience turns out.


-Skaven
Webmaster, Lunar Power
http://www.lunarpower.org
AOLIM: SkavenK

 

[Dantin1]

Okay so what your telling me is not to Modify by soldering. I have the means. As for Week 49 comment on the Serial. I have an older Athlon 500 week 49 in another article I've read this refers to the chipset in the CPU its self something about 650 capable or something. The link to the CPU page you gave me was a Thunderbird which is a newer than the CPU I have. I need someone to reply to this message that has successfully overclocked the same type of CPU with the model mentioned above. How long it lasted at what MHz rating. As for the Power supply comment. Thanks. Is the Goldfinger really neccessary? If I modify all three areas on the CPU perminently to the max stable MHz? This is going to be a one time deal. As I said before I have the K7M Motherboard rev. 1.04. When I overclock I'm going to reset the FBS to 100 MHz. I will do as suggested. I've seen other posts about someone who had a stable 850 MHz from a Athlon 500. Are you suggesting that this Gold Finger which you just open the case of your CPU to install is much more stable than the Soldering technique? I need more input.. LoL! Various replies would be appretiated.

Thanks,
Dantin