Suggestions on cooling products and overclocking
 

Hi

I just want to know which cooling systems you are suggesting to be best for each.

(I am speaking of products that can be found in South Africa, I don't know which are only locally produced).

CPU (Pentium 4) : Sunbeam Overclockers Kit, Cooler Master Jet 4 CPU Cooler, Thermaltake a1545 spark 7 CPU Fan Socket 478, Thermaltake a1586 spark 5 CPU Fan for Socket 478, Thermaltake a1715 spark 7+ Xaser Edition CPU Fan for socket 478, Thermaltake a4005d tr2-m5 CPU Fan for Socket 478, Vantec Aeroflow VP4-C7040 CPU Cooler.

Memory : Thermaltake a1414 memory cooler, Iceberg ?Something

VGA Coolers : Vantec Iceberg 4 Pro ccb-a4p VGA Cooler, Thermaltake a1919 Giant III Extreme VGA Card Cooler

Hard Drive Cooler : Cooler Master CoolDrive 4 - HDD Cooler, any other Thermaltake, etc. products?

These products above I have found to be in the same price range, not too expensive.
The problem is to decide which would be best value for money.


This is my system:

(All stock products, no extras)
Gigabyte GA-8S648FX Motherboard
Pentium 4 2400 Mhz 800fsb CPU
Inno3D Nvidia GeForce FX-5600
512 MB RAM DDR 333
7200RPM 80GB Harddrive

I want to overclock the system, without damaging anything.
I tried overclocking a few months ago. In the BIOS of this motherboard, I changed the CPU to about 220Mhz × 12 = 2640Mhz and then the PC freezed, the RAM frequency was at about 355 or so. (It auto change all settings according to CPU frequency). Lower settings for the CPU (about 210Mhz × 12 = 2520Mhz) the PC will boot up. I think it is the RAM that is the problem, going over 355 (that's about the value as I can think of now - maybe it was a little higher), it freezed the PC.

After this I used Gigabyte EasyTune 4 in Windows to overclock. From here I could reach 2620 Mhz and the RAM was higher as in the BIOS where the PC did not load. What does this mean? Restarting the PC and then loading the saved settings in Easytune does not freeze the PC either. Are the values that is overclocked of the BIOS and Easytune not the same?

NOTE : I had to replace my Geforce FX-5600 a few weeks ago. Can this possibly be damaged because of the overclocking. What settings would still be safe for the card?

This is the reason I want to get the abovementioned products. I am not changing anything again before I get these.

I would like suggestions on this please.

You should be stable overclocking it to that setting, just up the v-core voltage, the reason it froze is because it didn't have enough power.

I have the spark 7+... it sucks... it's nice to adjust the fan and stuff but it's too loud for my liking under load.. (I have to turn it up that loud to keep it under 55C

Well no wonder, you and your 1Ghz overclock...

pfft.. I demand 1ghz OC with silence!!!

Well, watercooling will fix that up :D

something like that will probably be going in my next comp.. whenever that is.. (when good pci express stuff comes out if it's somewhat affordable)

I understand that the performance and stability will be very good with water cooling systems, but the price of these (from $99.00 USD I hear) (about R 980.00) does not make it a consideration for me at this time. Maybe later...

But for the meantime I want to get decent cooling on my system to try to overclock..

I have read what you are saying about building your own water cooling system. However, the affordability puts it out of my range. So, at this stage, watercooling is not on my buying list (but definitely on my wanted list).

Well, I searched for other brands mentioned for the cooling devices available here in South Africa. All that I could find are those mentioned at the top (Thermaltake, Vantec, Sunbeam, Coolermaster). So, can someone just suggest from the list at the top (#1), which are best from those specified (as I want to buy locally).

Then another thing : PC3200 RAM. I hear that I have to at least have PC 3200 RAM to decently overclock. The Corsair XMS and Kingston HyperX are double the price of just regular PC3200 RAM. Overclocking these regular RAM, would it bring such a big problem to overclocking?

Thinking of going to ± 3000Mhz when I have all these cooling, so will the regular PC3200 RAM stand in my way again?

you have to get to 250mhz fsb instead of 200 which 3200 comes at.. pc4000 is rated for 250mhz fsb.. When I had corsair 3200 ram, I only got to 245 fsb.. (because I didn't want to loosen the timings) but now with my geil pc4000, I am at 283 fsb (3.4 ghz) with timings: 2.5-3-4-5