Motherboard Recomendation

Glenn Chan · May 29th, 2005, 07:25 PM

I don't think the board overclocks better than other boards? I think I read the review over at hardocp.com and there doesn't seem to be anything really special about that board that makes overclocking easy. I think you definitely risk instability.

I believe the videoguy's DIY2 rig was overclocked 10% and was unstable?

2- If you really want to overclock:
Get a motherboard that is decent for overclocking... Abit and Asus are typically good, and Intel motherboards can't be overclocked. You can check hardocp.com for reviews. You are looking for boards without issues and allow tweaking of front side bus, voltages, etc.

(recommended) Get a better heatsink, which'll let you overclock more or have the CPU run cooler. i.e. Zalman 7000/7700 alcu, or Thermalright XP-120 + fan.

Use thermal paste like Artic Silver 5 or the stuff that comes with your heatsink instead of the thermal pad/wax on your CPU. This is a cheap way to cool your CPU. Read the instructions! Less is better.

Get a good power supply. A lot of the cheap power supplies do not actually deliver their rated wattage, which will lead to instability. OCed systems draw extra power, which means a good power supply is needed. Sparkle, Fortron, Antec are good brands. If you already have one, you can use a motherboard monitoring utility to check if your power supply can handle things.

STRESS TEST YOUR SYSTEM. Use Prime95's torture test and a motherboard monitoring utility from your mobo's manufacturer or Motherboard Monitor or a similar program. You need to do this to ensure stability. Pentium hyperthreading systems: You can also run CPUBurn at the same time because it loads your system more. If your machine can do the torture test for 24 hours, it should be quite stable.

Pentium systems: You overclock your system by raising the front side bus (FSB) speed. This will make the CPU and RAM and FSB run faster. Typically, RAM craps out first, then CPU, then your FSB. CPU speed makes a difference in performance, while the others contribute marginally to performance. So, you want to have your CPU run faster (at the expense of RAM and FSB speed if necessary). RAM will typically be unstable first, so you can change the memory divider so it runs slower.

Brandon Greenlee · May 29th, 2005, 08:18 PM

http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/...12430&PageId=6

They use the Asus utility to get 3.5Ghz out of a 3.0Ghz chip. Thats probably a little more than I would be comfortable with, but none the less....

Chad Solo · May 29th, 2005, 09:31 PM

Thank's all for the info. I will probley go with this board because I have read so many reviews and every review gave it great marks Plus it comes with the WiFi adapter and that will save me 40.00 on a card to make this system wireless. Have a question with the sata Drive I'm getting. This is my first time getting a sata so i'm a little new at this. The 160 gig I'm getting I was going to particion it with a 20 gig Particion and another one at 140 gig and that is the one I will use for video. I have a few IDE drives I will also hook up to it but these will just hold misc files. Do you think it's a good setup or should I go another way? Thank's again for all the info.

Chad

Chad Solo · May 31st, 2005, 02:18 PM

Well I got everything ordered the only thing that was out of stock was the 160 gig Sata drive so I went and bought the 80 Gig and I'm figuring I will use this one for the bootup disk. I was at best buy today and I was asking a guy there about Sata drives and making particions on them and he told me it's not that good to particion a sata drive because if you lose one drive you will lose the whole hard drive. Is this true? and if so I guess it would be ok just to leave it at 80 gig's right? Thank's again all for the help.

Christopher Lefchik · May 31st, 2005, 03:42 PM

Quote:

I was at best buy today and I was asking a guy there about Sata drives and making particions on them and he told me it's not that good to particion a sata drive because if you lose one drive you will lose the whole hard drive. Is this true?

If a hard drive fails you lose the data on it regardless of whether or not it is partitioned. Partitioning a hard drive doesn't make it more or less likely to fail.

Then again, maybe he was talking about the partition table getting corrupted, in which case there are tools to restore it, like Partition Recovery.

Personally, I like to partition my system drives. I have one partition for Windows, one for applications, and one for data. It helps to keep things organized, and if I need to reinstall Windows my data is kept safely in it's own partition, untouched during the process.

Regardless of whether or not you decide to partition, make sure to back up your data frequently. I can't emphasize this enough. It's not a question of if you will experience a hard drive failure, but when. The easiest way to back up is to get an external USB 2.0 drive. We all know the easier something is to do, the more likely we will do it.

Run out and buy (or order online) an external drive now. You'll be so thankful you did on that day a hard drive goes south, taking all your precious data with it. Then you'll just pull out your backup drive, plug it in, and be on your way. (Oh, and be sure to test your backup before you need it, just to make sure it works when you need it!)

Chad Solo · May 31st, 2005, 06:00 PM

Thank's Chris for the help. I wasn't sure about Sata drives because I never used one but I'm glad I'm able to partition it. I also like to keeps things organized. I think this drive being a small one I will partition it with a 10 gig for Window's and the rest for applications and data. Thank's again for the help.

Chad

Christopher Lefchik · May 31st, 2005, 07:03 PM

Yes, there's nothing special about SATA hard drives that makes them unsuitable for partitioning. I've got two desktops running partitioned SATA drives, both purring away happily.

Have fun putting your new computer together!

Daniel Runyon · June 6th, 2005, 02:45 AM

Wrong Thread!!!

Chad Solo · June 6th, 2005, 02:54 PM

Well I got the system up and running. Did have a little trouble with it heating up but I took the heatsink off and put some ArticSilver 5 and reset it and the temps are allot better. It idle's around 39 and when I'm doing something intensive it goes up to 64/C. When I first got it going it idled around 50 and went up to 75/C and the computer was slowing down when it was that hot. I've Rendered a 56 min video this weekend and it took 1 hour and 25 min to Render using mainconcept plugin set to VBR with XP 64 bit . I also tested my old PC with the same files and it took that machine 2 hours and 5 minutes to do the same movie. It took me awhile to figure out installing my drive's I have the 80 Gig sata as my Windows drive and my two IDE Drives as my backups everything is showing up but I'm not sure if there installed right. In the Bios it show's Primary IDE Master Not detected and the second show's my Burner and the 3rd it show's my sata drive. I know it probley need's some adjustments in the Bio's but had the flu for a few days and haven't read the manual much. Thank's again all for the help I really appreciate it.

Chad

Chad Solo · June 7th, 2005, 07:40 AM

Help!!!!!!! Ok my first problem I went to burn something last night and it went very slow for a new NEC 3520 DL burner so I checked to see if the DMA mode was on and sure enough it wasn't. I've tried everything to get it to switch to DMA and not PIO mood but no go. I went to NEC website and read and couldn't find anything there that help's. Do you all think the drive is bad or do you think it's XP 64 bit causing it? Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.

Thank's
Chad

I just installed my other drive and the same thing so at least I know it's not the drive itself. It must be the 64bit problem or something in the Bio's but I can't figure it out.

Glenn Chan · June 7th, 2005, 11:12 AM

Cabling or drive errors or scratched disks will cause Windows to automatically drop the speed down on your burner. That might be it?
The way to fix that would be to uninstall the drive in device manager. If it keeps happening, their is a registry tweak you can do to prevent Windows from dropping the speed down (this would be the right thing to do if the drive is getting errors from scratched CDs).

Your BIOS can also limit your drive to PIO, although I haven't heard of that ever happening to anyone.

I have zero experience with 64bit windows XP, so I wouldn't know if it's causing the problem.

Christopher Lefchik · June 7th, 2005, 02:50 PM

Chad,

Glad to see you got your system up and running!

About your Nec DVD burner problem, another person had a similiar problem with the same model DVD drive (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=136511) even with DMA turned on. He solved it by setting his Nec burner as the Master drive on the secondary IDE channel.

Chad Solo · June 7th, 2005, 08:05 PM

Thank's Guy's for the help. It was the 64 bit version that was causing the problem so I loaded up XP Pro again and everything is working good. I want to do some test's with this version and really see if there is and advantage now going with 64 bit or should I wait a bit. I'm going to do the same render test again and see how long it will take this time I post what I find out. Thank's again all.

chad

Chad Solo · June 8th, 2005, 08:13 PM

OK now I'm very confused. I just edited a 56 minute video and rendered it in 59 Minutes with the same settings I used for the other test on the 64 bit system. So I guess I'm not going back to 64 bit anytime soon. The only thing different is I have AI Booster running instead of doing the 10% overclock in the bio's.

Chad

Daniel Runyon · June 8th, 2005, 08:38 PM

Greets, Chad,

The AiBooster settings are the same as the BIOS...if you make a change to Ai, it simply reboots with the BIOS changes made for you.

If you need any help with your new board, feel free to shoot me an email. Not saying that I have it all figured out or anything, but if it's worth a shot let me know.

May 29th, 2005, 08:18 PM	#62
Brandon Greenlee Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: North Alabama Posts: 242	http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/...12430&PageId=6 They use the Asus utility to get 3.5Ghz out of a 3.0Ghz chip. Thats probably a little more than I would be comfortable with, but none the less.... __________________ Brandon Greenlee

June 7th, 2005, 07:40 AM	#70
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	Help!!!!!!! Ok my first problem I went to burn something last night and it went very slow for a new NEC 3520 DL burner so I checked to see if the DMA mode was on and sure enough it wasn't. I've tried everything to get it to switch to DMA and not PIO mood but no go. I went to NEC website and read and couldn't find anything there that help's. Do you all think the drive is bad or do you think it's XP 64 bit causing it? Any suggestions will be very much appreciated. Thank's Chad I just installed my other drive and the same thing so at least I know it's not the drive itself. It must be the 64bit problem or something in the Bio's but I can't figure it out. Last edited by Chad Solo; June 7th, 2005 at 08:29 AM.

May 29th, 2005, 07:25 PM	#61
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	I don't think the board overclocks better than other boards? I think I read the review over at hardocp.com and there doesn't seem to be anything really special about that board that makes overclocking easy. I think you definitely risk instability. I believe the videoguy's DIY2 rig was overclocked 10% and was unstable? 2- If you really want to overclock: Get a motherboard that is decent for overclocking... Abit and Asus are typically good, and Intel motherboards can't be overclocked. You can check hardocp.com for reviews. You are looking for boards without issues and allow tweaking of front side bus, voltages, etc. (recommended) Get a better heatsink, which'll let you overclock more or have the CPU run cooler. i.e. Zalman 7000/7700 alcu, or Thermalright XP-120 + fan. Use thermal paste like Artic Silver 5 or the stuff that comes with your heatsink instead of the thermal pad/wax on your CPU. This is a cheap way to cool your CPU. Read the instructions! Less is better. Get a good power supply. A lot of the cheap power supplies do not actually deliver their rated wattage, which will lead to instability. OCed systems draw extra power, which means a good power supply is needed. Sparkle, Fortron, Antec are good brands. If you already have one, you can use a motherboard monitoring utility to check if your power supply can handle things. STRESS TEST YOUR SYSTEM. Use Prime95's torture test and a motherboard monitoring utility from your mobo's manufacturer or Motherboard Monitor or a similar program. You need to do this to ensure stability. Pentium hyperthreading systems: You can also run CPUBurn at the same time because it loads your system more. If your machine can do the torture test for 24 hours, it should be quite stable. Pentium systems: You overclock your system by raising the front side bus (FSB) speed. This will make the CPU and RAM and FSB run faster. Typically, RAM craps out first, then CPU, then your FSB. CPU speed makes a difference in performance, while the others contribute marginally to performance. So, you want to have your CPU run faster (at the expense of RAM and FSB speed if necessary). RAM will typically be unstable first, so you can change the memory divider so it runs slower.

May 29th, 2005, 09:31 PM	#63
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	Thank's all for the info. I will probley go with this board because I have read so many reviews and every review gave it great marks Plus it comes with the WiFi adapter and that will save me 40.00 on a card to make this system wireless. Have a question with the sata Drive I'm getting. This is my first time getting a sata so i'm a little new at this. The 160 gig I'm getting I was going to particion it with a 20 gig Particion and another one at 140 gig and that is the one I will use for video. I have a few IDE drives I will also hook up to it but these will just hold misc files. Do you think it's a good setup or should I go another way? Thank's again for all the info. Chad

May 31st, 2005, 02:18 PM	#64
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	Well I got everything ordered the only thing that was out of stock was the 160 gig Sata drive so I went and bought the 80 Gig and I'm figuring I will use this one for the bootup disk. I was at best buy today and I was asking a guy there about Sata drives and making particions on them and he told me it's not that good to particion a sata drive because if you lose one drive you will lose the whole hard drive. Is this true? and if so I guess it would be ok just to leave it at 80 gig's right? Thank's again all for the help.

May 31st, 2005, 06:00 PM	#66
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	Thank's Chris for the help. I wasn't sure about Sata drives because I never used one but I'm glad I'm able to partition it. I also like to keeps things organized. I think this drive being a small one I will partition it with a 10 gig for Window's and the rest for applications and data. Thank's again for the help. Chad

May 31st, 2005, 07:03 PM	#67
Christopher Lefchik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: US Posts: 1,152	Yes, there's nothing special about SATA hard drives that makes them unsuitable for partitioning. I've got two desktops running partitioned SATA drives, both purring away happily. Have fun putting your new computer together!

June 6th, 2005, 02:45 AM	#68
Daniel Runyon Major Player Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: The Deep South Posts: 168	Wrong Thread!!!

June 6th, 2005, 02:54 PM	#69
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	Well I got the system up and running. Did have a little trouble with it heating up but I took the heatsink off and put some ArticSilver 5 and reset it and the temps are allot better. It idle's around 39 and when I'm doing something intensive it goes up to 64/C. When I first got it going it idled around 50 and went up to 75/C and the computer was slowing down when it was that hot. I've Rendered a 56 min video this weekend and it took 1 hour and 25 min to Render using mainconcept plugin set to VBR with XP 64 bit . I also tested my old PC with the same files and it took that machine 2 hours and 5 minutes to do the same movie. It took me awhile to figure out installing my drive's I have the 80 Gig sata as my Windows drive and my two IDE Drives as my backups everything is showing up but I'm not sure if there installed right. In the Bios it show's Primary IDE Master Not detected and the second show's my Burner and the 3rd it show's my sata drive. I know it probley need's some adjustments in the Bio's but had the flu for a few days and haven't read the manual much. Thank's again all for the help I really appreciate it. Chad

June 7th, 2005, 11:12 AM	#71
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Cabling or drive errors or scratched disks will cause Windows to automatically drop the speed down on your burner. That might be it? The way to fix that would be to uninstall the drive in device manager. If it keeps happening, their is a registry tweak you can do to prevent Windows from dropping the speed down (this would be the right thing to do if the drive is getting errors from scratched CDs). Your BIOS can also limit your drive to PIO, although I haven't heard of that ever happening to anyone. I have zero experience with 64bit windows XP, so I wouldn't know if it's causing the problem.

June 7th, 2005, 02:50 PM	#72
Christopher Lefchik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: US Posts: 1,152	Chad, Glad to see you got your system up and running! About your Nec DVD burner problem, another person had a similiar problem with the same model DVD drive (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=136511) even with DMA turned on. He solved it by setting his Nec burner as the Master drive on the secondary IDE channel.

June 7th, 2005, 08:05 PM	#73
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	Thank's Guy's for the help. It was the 64 bit version that was causing the problem so I loaded up XP Pro again and everything is working good. I want to do some test's with this version and really see if there is and advantage now going with 64 bit or should I wait a bit. I'm going to do the same render test again and see how long it will take this time I post what I find out. Thank's again all. chad

June 8th, 2005, 08:13 PM	#74
Chad Solo Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: St.Petersburg,Fla Posts: 162	OK now I'm very confused. I just edited a 56 minute video and rendered it in 59 Minutes with the same settings I used for the other test on the 64 bit system. So I guess I'm not going back to 64 bit anytime soon. The only thing different is I have AI Booster running instead of doing the 10% overclock in the bio's. Chad

June 8th, 2005, 08:38 PM	#75
Daniel Runyon Major Player Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: The Deep South Posts: 168	Greets, Chad, The AiBooster settings are the same as the BIOS...if you make a change to Ai, it simply reboots with the BIOS changes made for you. If you need any help with your new board, feel free to shoot me an email. Not saying that I have it all figured out or anything, but if it's worth a shot let me know.