hi, i have overclocked my pentium 4 1.6a on and off for the past few years. My temperatures never exceeded 45 degrees celcius and i really havent overclocked my cpu that much. a week ago i decided to overclock it to 2133 mhz. i had it like that for a week until my system crashed. when i rebooted it kept crashing so i returned all settings back to normal. But even now after a few hours of use my system will hang or stall randomly when im not even running an application. i will immiediatly reboot and it will crash again after a few min and sometimes in the bios it will say that my system is unstable at the current cpu speeds and to double check them. And sometimes if i try to reboot right after it crashes, windwos fails to load and my system hangs. i have already cleared the cmos. Is this an overclocking problem or is this something else? is my cpu damaged. Now after it has been off during the night i can run it for half a day until it crashes. then i will ahve to wait a few mintues before i can turn it on. im use to it being on 24/7. any suggestions? time to upgrade?

Open it up and give it a good spring cleaning. Also while in there, check and see if the cpu fan and all other fans are clean and running. Check the vent holes as well to make sure they are clean. Especially the front fan vent. This all could be just a coincidental occurence.

YO

It might be caused by data corruption either related or not related to the overclock. First thing I'd do would be a system restore prior to the date of the problem or prior to the overclock.

I sincerely doubt you did any damage to the processor.

Skip

Skip,

Have you ever wondered if we were just talking to ourselves? lol! I have.

YO

well, i acutally just installed a new harddrive. A few days later is when i overclocked it so maybe some data got currupted. ill reformat again and see if that helps. At least its not my cpu. i only have a 300 watt ernamax psu and i had just installed a new hd. could that have been the problem also? Thanks for all the replies!!!!!!!!!!!!! This forum is great!

Here's the deal. I'm not a Pentium guy, so some Pentium dude will probably show up and try to answer all of your questions better than I can.

So for starters, a 300 watt PS don't leave you with very much extra juice to go around if you need it. I wouldn't buy less than a 400-500 watt PS for todays machines. It all depends on how many extras you want to add to your machine as to how much juice you need.

Now as far as your OC experience has been, I would like to think that you already know about locking your AGP and PCI bus down to respectable limits. 66 and 33mhz respectively will do just fine IMO. Especially the PCI bus since it controls all of your PCI slots and your hard drives and controller as well. Jam, who is a friend of mine says to never let your PCI bus ever go over 38 mhz, or you are asking for trouble. And I fully agree with that train of thought. But keep this in mind, 38 mhz is at the upper limits and some hard drives might not fair as well as others. And BTW this is the 5 volt rail we are talking about as well.

Some bios don't allow for you to lock in on anything except your FSB. And if you raise it, you are also raising the bus speeds of you AGP and your PCI bus too.

So wait for a Pentium guy to come and tell you for sure, as to how the game is played, when it comes down to overclocking a P4.

YO

crap, its not my harddrive. i put a differnt harddrive in and i get the same problem whre in windows after a while, it hangs. when it crashes and i immediatly reboot it sometimes doesnt load windows. when i reboot it again, it will enter the bios and have the message, during your last boot up your system hung due to improper frequency combination. does that mean its definitely a cpu problem? this is still after i return speeds back to normal and cleared my cmos. im thinking my psu is not the problem becasue ive had the same setup for awhile and never had a problem. let me know what you guys think. thanks a mil!

Did you pull the battery out (to clear the bios) for a minute, then reinstall it and try boot up again?

YO

yeah, i took out the battery and shorted the jumper to clear the cmos. what i might try is to put the motherboad back from jumperfree mode which allowed me to change settings in the bios anyway or to change the bios to a previous version. thanks for all the replies!

Hello,

I had a similar problem a few months ago but with a AMD processor. It just wouldn't work. even after reformating and clearing the CMOS and flashing the bios, it still wouldn't work. So, I decided just for the hell of it to disassemble and reassemble my computer. CPU and heatsink and cables and all. I was pretty sure nothing would happen but I was desperate. I did all that, reflashed the BIOS and crossed my fingers. It worked. I could even overclock it (though my skills as an overclocker pathetic). Now I don't pretend to understand how this worked but it did. As far as I can tell, it just needed some fresh air.

I agree with you that it is not the PSU. You're processor is relatively old and unless you have some other power hungry devices in that machine, you shouldn't worry too much. However, for the future, you might want to consider upgrading that. If you were to get a new pentium4 or athlon for that matter, it would need more juice.

Hope this helps.

AMD AthlonXP 3000+
EPoX EP-8RDA+ Motherboard
2256MB Corsair 3500C2
200GB WD ATA HD

They are still saling power supplies that low too. I have even seen a 250 watt one on newegg for sale. Now of days 400W is the lowest you should go for an overclocking system. 450w to 500w is the main stream overclockers power supply. I think as of right now 550w or 600w power supply is a bit overkill at this point in time. Now 5 or 10 years from now that maybe another story.

hey guys, thanks for all the great replies. im pretty sure i narrowed down the problem. to my video card. An ati 9800 pro. I dont know if its conincidence but its overheating, maybe due to the overclocking causing my system to hang. i put an old video card in and my system seems stable now. Thanks everyone. Gonna go rma the ati which i hear have had heat issues. THANKS AGAIN!!

I hope that you didn't make the same mistake that I made. I to have an ATI. My best advice is to not use the driver that windows automatically installs. Use the driver that came with your card. Mine crashed too.

YO