Asus P4C800

[coolerking]

Is Asus P4C800 a good mobo for overclocking? On the website it says you can overclock up to 30% but i was hoping maybe you can get more out of it. If not, is there an even better mobo for a 3.00Ghz CPU w/HT? (I mean that you can overclock with)

[matthewhiatt]

It's a good motherboard, currently got a P4 northwood 3.0Ghz @ 3.4Ghz on air with a 227Mhz FSB. I needed to replace the passive northbridge cooler with a hsf combo to keep the system stable tho. Make sure that you use a dedent psu and you'll be fine.

[The Pimp]

A 30% overclock with aircooling is good going!! To get the 30% though you will need high quality RAM and be prepared to play with the memory timings until it is stable (dropping the latency is recommended). A high quality HSF will also be needed to keep the running temps down along with good chassis airflow.
A 30% overclock on a 3GHz CPU is going to be pushing 4GHz, and I would be very surprised if you could get it stable without Vapour change or other non-aircooling system.

[coolerking]

Yeah, I'll be running it with water cooling. I've got PC3200 Kingston RAM though (1GB) CAS 3. Think thats stable enough or do i need better? I've also got a 480W Antec True Blue PSU.

[The Pimp]

I use Kingston RAM rated at CL2 @ DDR400 (rare as rocking horse manure hence why I bought 4 x 1024MB sticks of it when I had the chance to!) . To reach 3.6GHz stable with aircooling I had to set the latency to 3.

[coolerking]

So am i ok in the way of RAM or do i need a different kind? (I'm new to overclocking as you might notice) I was looking at new mobo's because Intel put the wrong ****ing BIOS update for my mobo on their website and now its screwed over. The only way i can get it fixed is to send it in on warranty. Even the recovery disk wont work. Anyways, theres my story, but im looking to over clock my CPU and need a good mobo for it. I've pretty much decided on the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, but if anybody has some advice I'd be happy to take it. My system is currently at:
3Ghz P4 w/HT
RADEON All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro
1GB Kingston PC3200 CAS3 RAM
120GB Seagate 7,200 RPM SATA HD
Used to have Intel 875PBZ mobo, but it doesnt work anymore thanks to Intel :mad:

Any advice would be great.

[QMtech]

These boards have an automated overclocking facility which is not very good, it will almost always slow down the memory bus speed. Better to do it manaully. With PC3200 memory and standard cooling 15% is a realistic target, this mean changing the system bus from 200 to about 230. By changing the sytem bus speed you also increase the memory bus speed by the same percentage when you do NOT change the memory bus speed setting. The reason for this is that memory bus speed setting is NOT a speed setting, it sets the memory bus speed at a RATIO of the system bus speed. This means that (probably without knowing it) the memory is also being overclocked, which is worth being aware of. The standard memory for this board is PC3200 which runs at DDR400 when not overclocked. I suggest you buy dual channel memory that is designed to run faster (PC3500-PC4000), this way you can overclock without reducing the memory speed to cope - as I often see overclockers do. In my opinion there is no point speeding up one part of your system only to slow down an other in the process.

Look at the following links, they are slightly out of date but contain useful info
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p4p800_6.html (http://)
http://www.devhardware.com/c/Hardware/How-to/Overclocking_Your_P4_800FSB/ (http://)
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?forumid=89&threadid=59502 (http://)
The following link is also worth a lookhttp://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/cpu/intel/p4/3.0/page3.htm (http://)
P.S. If the above links do not work directly, copy and paste each one to your internet browser.