The Victim....Again! Muwahahahh!!

Re-Introduction

   Hello again peeps! I told you part two was on the way. Sorry it took awhile, but overclocking is a time consuming sport sometimes :o) I really decided to do a " Part Two" after I received the results I did with this setup using strictly stock , or generic, parts. I knew that If I added some High performance goodies to the mix, I was bound to get more ......and I did! Now , if you guys don't read the articles usually, this one is a MUST READ! I went thru ALOT to narrow this info down for you guys and to try to make it easy for you to understand and follow...but you gotta read it!....lol

The New Look!

   For a quick referesher, in my P4 Northwood Overclocking Adventure - Part 1, I was able to overclock to 2555mhz extremely stable and "ok" temps. I was "ok" because , with full load temps nearing the 50C mark, I knew I could do alot better with a nice big copper based cpu hsf on there......and I did! :o) So with my new success with this setup of mine, I decided to show you guys what I did. First I'll go over the hardware used then how I did it. So if you've followed my P4 Northwood Overclocking Adventure - Part 1, and you're P4 is begging for more, then kick back, take a read, and prepare for the next leg of this journey ( Note: Pack a lunch and spare undies!)

What I Changed

To achieve a higher overclock than I already have using the stock/generic parts, I had to isolate the limiting, or soon to be, factors and improve on them. Here's what I determined to be the main factors (as they are in most overclocks).

• Motherboard + Cpu
• Good Power Supply!
• Cpu Heatsink ( cooling)
• Cpu Voltage
• Memory
• Front Side Bus
• Case Ventilation

Fans, Memory, Alpha & Panaflo

Alpha PAL8942 & Corsair Installed

   Here you'll see some of the stuff I used to overclock to the next level. That is "above the stock components" level. I replaced the stock P4 aluminum based cpu heatsink with a larger, copper based Alpha PAL8942. ( ALPHA OWNZ!!.). I also applied some Arctic Silver 3 under the Alpha. I decided to put an 80mm Panaflo H1A fan on the Alpha for two reasons, 1) it's faster than the L1A, and 2) It's still a panaflo and the noise is next to nothing!.

   I then replaced the generic 256mb stick of PC2100 DDR with (1) 512mb stick of Top of the line XMS PC2400 Corsair DDR ( rated for 150fsb @ cas 2-2-2) . A heatspreader was already included on this DDR straight from Corsair, so that was one less thing I had to put on it. I knew I'd be pushing this Overclock, so I spared no expense in the memory used, either should you. Everyone has pet peaves, and one of mine is the memory. I gotta have good memory and I gotta run it at it's fastest settings! It's just one of those things. I've always used Mushkin Pc-133 before this , running 2-2-2-5 at whatever speeds I ran. I wasn't about to run 2.5-3-3 now =) I honestly thought that when i bought this PC2400, that it would be MORE THAN ENOUGH for my system. Was it?.......read on......

Then What Happened....

   So , after adding the Alpha PAL8942, the Corsair XMS PC-2400, and the 4 80mm fans (actually had them, but make sure you've got some airflow in there), I booted this pig right up and accessed the bios. First thing I do when I change a cpu hsf is access the "hardware monitor" in the bios to make sure it's within reason and not like 65C and rising$@!$#......LOL. This will alert me real quick if there was a problem with the cpu hsf contact,etc.

   Well, to my delight, it was fine and read something like 28C.....w00t! Nothing scientific here, but I just remembered that was a helluva lot less than it was before, so I moved on to my real objective, the cpu settings and memory settings. Since I was currently running 142fsb before this , I wanted to make sure everything was normal, so I just left the it at 142 fsb, but I changed the memory timings to 2-2-2-5 in the bios ( a setting that previously didn't work ) ,booted up and looked for changes.

   The first thing I noticed was that the new Alpha setup with the Panaflo 80mm H1A was no louder than the stock setup, at least not that I could distinguish. That's a good thing. The next thing I noticed was that MBM5 was showing an idle temp of 29C....whoa! So I ran a few tests to check the stability of the new ram and everything was fast and fine. I then proceeded to give the cpu a full load and test it out. Here's the new results......

• 1.8a @ 2.55Ghz @ 1.65v
• Idle temps = 29C-30C
• Full load Temps = 37C 39C

   Nice! The new Alpha really dispersed the neat generated by the overclock ALOT better than the stock heatsink. The other good part of this is that the Cpu cooled down alot faster after the load was taken off it. That's one thing the stock setup had trouble doing. When I played RA3 for like 3 hours before and got outta the game, the stock setup would take quite awhile to get the temps back to normal. That showed a slow heat dispersion of the aluminum as compared to this Alpha that regains the idle temps very quickly after a load has been taken of the Cpu....GG ALPHA!