One of my friends is thinking up upgrading his almost antiquated p3 700, so I was thinking of the possibility of overclocking his now aging computer. Now I'm fairly new in the heady world of overclocking, and I suspect that little can be done to improve his pc. But seeing as you guys seem to have gone through several cpus during your o/cing career, I thought I'd ask for a few pointers. If I'm right the p3 700 is a coppermine, and therefor on a fc-pga mobo, this means that most - if not all - socket A coolers can be used on it? His motherboard doen'st have mounting holes on it. This counts out all the nice new shiney coolers like the Zalman CPSU7000, and the Alpha PAL series. After searching a little I found a couple of candidates: VA4-C7040, and Aero 7+. My friend probably won't appreciate his computer sounding like a hair dryer, so suggestions on quieter coolers would be greatly appreciated. It's been a while since I opened the case, and I can't seem to remember what the model is, I know it's a intel chipset (on board gfx card ). I'll see if hes about later I'll have anouther look inside. Unfortunatly his computer was made by tiny so I dread to think how crappy the motherboard is. And finally... I was thinking that disabling the onboard gfx and slapping in a new gfx card, but I've read in a few places that x2 AGP (remember that? ) on some old intel motherboards only works with x2 cards. Not keen on trying to find a x2 card in this day and age. So is this more trouble than it's worth, or do you reacon it's worth a shot? And if it is all help/recommendations are very welcome . - Benja
Dude, Zalman Flower coolers are fine for socket 370, I am running one on a 1.2ghz celly. My BP6 had dual celly 500's. They too are socket 370, running thermo-engine sinks and delta fans on those as they are overclocked. Good airflow through the case is highly recommended when overclocking - you can have the worlds best fan on the cpu but it ain't no good if it's blowin' hot air at the cpu. Not sure if it's worth oc'ing a p3 700, maybe just for the challenge. You'd be lucky to get much more than 800 out of it - you're gonna run into stability issues with other hardware before you get any higher. To oc a p3 you need to push the front-side bus speed up, that also ups the PCI and AGP buses. Give it a go anyway, see what happens. Make sure you have some decent cooling on the northbridge too though. Good luck
Not so my friend - I have one sat next to me which uses normal socket 370 mounting clip. There are 2 or 3 types of zalman flower, make sure you are looking at the correct type. This is the type I have - trust me, you don't need mounting holes: http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.php?view=2655&PHPSESSID=3440dc111f7258f25b25c60d0425670e
They are pretty good if used with a fan. My celly 1.2ghz runs at 31 degrees C (not clocked) under full load. P.S. Look at the picture of the flower. See the gap in the fins that runs down the middle? That's where the clip goes in.
Hrm, not too sure mate, depends on the hardware like you say. Maybe have a look on eBay for a card? Gotta go get some sleep now (nightshift) - good luck with that
I just had a look arround for an agp x2 card, and I think he might be better off with the onboard given the choice Never thought I'd heard myself say "yeah use the onboard gfx card, it's the best you can get" I've still only seen a few postings about possible problems with pentium 3 motherboards and x2/x4 compatibility so maybe I'll see if I can get my hands on a x4 agp card to test it.
the Areo7 is speed-adjust. set it to lowest and its near silent although the obvious trade-off for this is the fact that you will get a minor heat increase when the fan is at a lower speed. then again a 7v case fan usually resolves this problem
My old PC ran PIII-800 with an AOpen AX3S mobo (Intel i815E chipset) and a 4x MSI gf4 ti4200. Overclocking wise, I could push the FSB up to 150MHz giving an overall clock speed of 900MHz (150x6). I used a Coolermaster HSF (can't remember the model number, but it was silver) with a bit of AS3 and one 80 exhaust fan running at 20%
