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**Praetor** · 07-04-2005, 10:25 AM

Which Mobos are OC Friendly? Which will benifit from OCing?
There are four things to look for when selecting a motherboard for the purposes of OCing:

Brand repuation both overall and for the series of processors you're looking to buy (the reasoning is that some brands are much better choices for one particular platform and not for others)
The chipset the given motherboard features
The flexibility of the BIOS (i.e., some motherboards allow you to tweak multipliers by 0.5x while others allow for a precision of only 1.0x)
Any features the board happens to have

A Quick Summary of Suggested Motherboards
It's important to note that ive picked out the flagship model of the given series which means they will tend to be the expensive ones. do note that there are motherboards of the same family as the noted boards which are often much more affordable. It's also important to note that this listing is in no particular order whatsoever.

What Kinda Cooling Considerations Are There?
There will eventually be a cooling 101 written up to deal with this topic in depth but suffice it to say, cooling is a critical consideration when overclocking: the more serious the overclock, the more serious the cooling unit must be.to handle the outputted. Whether you decide to go with air cooling, watercooling or other exotic methods, it's pretty fair to say that the stock cooler is not sufficient.

Your motherboard and/or CPU should have some form of thermal protection (especially so for the more recent models) and you may see evidence of this kicking in as the machine shutting down, throttling itself or rebooting. Failure to address this issue may (and likely will) result in component failure.

RAM Considerations for OCing?
In many cases, when you scale the speed of your system you'll need to scale the speed of the RAM as well (or at least you'll want to) ... having RAM that is able to keep up with your system will eliminate the RAM being a bottleneck on your OC success. Have a look at the RAM 101 for a guide on what to look for and some suggestions.

07-04-2005, 10:25 AM	#4 (permalink)
Praetor Administrator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canada Age: 25 Posts: 19,954	Section 2 - Part 02 Which Mobos are OC Friendly? Which will benifit from OCing? There are four things to look for when selecting a motherboard for the purposes of OCing: Brand repuation both overall and for the series of processors you're looking to buy (the reasoning is that some brands are much better choices for one particular platform and not for others) The chipset the given motherboard features The flexibility of the BIOS (i.e., some motherboards allow you to tweak multipliers by 0.5x while others allow for a precision of only 1.0x) Any features the board happens to have *A Quick Summary of Suggested Motherboards* It's important to note that ive picked out the flagship model of the given series which means they will tend to be the expensive ones. do note that there are motherboards of the same family as the noted boards which are often much more affordable. It's also important to note that this listing is in no particular order whatsoever. AthlonXP/Sempron(462) ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe [nForce2Ultra 400] . Abit NF7-S2G [nForce2Ultra400] Athlon64(754)/Sempron(754) MSI K8N Neo Platinum [nForce3-250Gb] DFI Lanparty UT NF3 250GB [nForce3-250Gb] Athlon64(939) MSI Neo2 Platinum [nForce3Ultra] DFI Lanparty UT NF3 Ultra [nForce3Ultra] MSI K8N Diamond [nForce4 SLI] MSI K8N SLI Platinum [nForce4SLI] MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum [nForce4Ultra] DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert [nForce4SLI] DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR [nForce4SLI] DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D [nForce4Ultra] DFI Lanparty UT RDX200 CF-DR [RX200] Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 [RX200] Sapphire PURE Crossfire Advantage PC-A9RD480Adv [RX200+CF] ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe [nForce4SLI X16] Intel Pentium4/Celeron(478) ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe [i875P] ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe [i865PE] ABit IC7-G [i875P] ABit AI7 [i865PE] Intel Pentium4/Celeron(775) ASUS P5WD2 Premium [i955X] ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe [i945P] ASUS P5AD2-E Premium [i925XE] ASUS P5AD2 Premium [i925X] ASUS P5GD2 Premium [i915P] ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe [nForce4SLI X16 Intel] ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe [nForce4SLI Intel] ABit AW8-MAX 3rd Eye II [i955x] ABit AL8 3rd Eye II [i945P] ABit Fatal1ty AA8XE [i925XE] ABit AA8 3rd Eye [i925X] ABit GP8 Pro [i915P] ABit NI8-SLI GR [nForce4SLI Intel] What Kinda Cooling Considerations Are There? There will eventually be a cooling 101 written up to deal with this topic in depth but suffice it to say, cooling is a critical consideration when overclocking: the more serious the overclock, the more serious the cooling unit must be.to handle the outputted. Whether you decide to go with air cooling, watercooling or other exotic methods, it's pretty fair to say that the stock cooler is not sufficient. Your motherboard and/or CPU should have some form of thermal protection (especially so for the more recent models) and you may see evidence of this kicking in as the machine shutting down, throttling itself or rebooting. Failure to address this issue may (and likely will) result in component failure. RAM Considerations for OCing? In many cases, when you scale the speed of your system you'll need to scale the speed of the RAM as well (or at least you'll want to) ... having RAM that is able to keep up with your system will eliminate the RAM being a bottleneck on your OC success. Have a look at the RAM 101 for a guide on what to look for and some suggestions. __________________ ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP, Q6600@3.7 / ASUS P5ND, E6400@3.8 4GB OCz Platinum XTC 8500 / 4GB CorsairXMS2 6400 5x500GB Seagate 7200.10 / 2x500 Seagate 7200.10 OCz 8800GTX 768MB @ 630/800 / 2x Galaxy 8800GT SLI Last edited by Praetor; 11-19-2005 at 01:32 AM.