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400a to 500 a any suggestions

Hi, i just o/c my celery to 500 mhz, it is at 2.30 volts and it doesnt run very well, it locks up on and off and is not stable. I have the regular heatsink and fan on it and added another case fan, oh thermal greased it too. Would burning it in help, like some nights i go to bed and leave it in windows 98 at 500 and its fine in the morning, but when i go to use 3d mark for instance it locks up at the cpu geometry test. I have waterfall pro running thats it. Would burining it in help ?

Go to www.overclockers.com or www.plycon.com and order the appropriate (S370 or Slot-1) Alpha heatsink/fan. Install it with thermal paste. If by "the regular heatsink/fan" you mean the retail sink/fan, you should get a bigger one. The retail fan is excellent for overclocking with 2.0 or 2.1V, but if you are running 2.3V through it, that will generate lots of heat.

You may also wish to consider sanding down the CPU slug so that it is flatter if it is currently concave or convex. You can easily tell if it is slightly concave or convex by applying a THIN layer of thermal grease to the CPU slug, mounting the heatsink, and then taking it off. If there is an "empty space" in the middle of the thermal compound that came off on the heatsink, you have a concave CPU slug. Sand it. If there is a circular spot of thermal paste but two or more of the corners of the CPU slug are not well-defined in the imprint of thermal compound left on the sink, you have convex CPU slug. Sand that too. Use 1000 grit sandpaper from your local auto parts store. When you are almost done, use 2000 to achieve a mirror-like finish. You should remember to ground yourself, and to put the sandpaper on a flat surface, like glass. It is ok to sand down to the copper, but do NOT break through the CPU slug (that would not be good ). Sanding should improve your thermal junction, thereby reducing the operating temperature of the CPU. At lower temperatures, CPUs often requre less voltage to be stable.

You may be able to stabilize that chip at 2.3 or 2.2V with an Alpha heatsink and sanding. After you stabilize it at a given voltage, you can "burn it in" by setting it to run a benchmark for 12-24 hours at the highest speed/lowest voltage it is truly stable at. After doing this, it is somtimes (but not always) possible to lower the voltage another notch (perhaps from 2.3V to 2.2V).