Main > Main Forum

Overclock crash - recoverable?

(1/6) > >>

More Cowbell:
Stupid me! I was trying to squeeze some more power out of my 1.1Ghz Athlon processor and started messing with the BIOS. I had been reading about overclocking and thought I understood it. I found the area that controls clock speed and noticed it said "100 min - 132 max". It was set on 100 so I upped it to 110 and noticed that the system was now up to 1.21Ghz. I upped it again to 120 (still well below the max) and it crashed on startup. Now I get only a blue screen when I try to boot and no beep or anything. It powers up just fine, but it just never starts to boot the system.
1) Is this recoverable? If so, how?
2) Is the CPU fried? If so, will replacing the CPU fix my problem (I was considering simply buying a faster CPU anyway)?
3) If the system is DOA, can I still move my hard drive to another system or is it toast as well?
4) Are Athlon and Sempron CPU's interchangeable?
I appreciate any feedback. Feel free to bash me for being so stupid as to try this in the first place! I just want my arcade machine back!

Crazy Cooter:
No problem.  That's exactly how you find the "limit" to how much you can overclock.  Right now you just have the multiplier too high for the system to boot.  Look through the manual for your motherboard and find out how to reset the bios.  Then it will boot fine.  The mobo manufacturer should have it online if you can't find it.  Otherwise post the model # here & one of us probably has the same mobo.

FWIW:  When you up the multiplier, I always go in steps of 1.  That way it (almost) always boots.  It will hang when trying to load windows when you get close to the maximum.  You jumped from 1.1Ghz to 1.2Ghz to 1.320Ghz.  I would guess you'll end up around 1.25Ghz without upping the core voltage.

I also try to maximize the memory and system bus speeds.  You should be monitoring your cpu temperature whenever you overclock.

Minwah:
I take it not but can you even get into the BIOS?  If not and you don't see a POST screen then you might have fried it...doesn't take much with those Athlons.

I fried one once but didn't get a blue screen...just nothing on the screen.  You should be able to replace just the chip...but make sure you clock it back down!!

Edit: take more notice of Cooter...he seems to know more about it!

Lilwolf:
How you test overclocking is started low and moving up slowly.

if you processor was designed for 100mhz... jumping to 120 is a VERY large jump...  The max you read was the max the motherboard can handle, NOT the processor.

But I hate to sound rude here, but by asking about the harddrive (which is fine btw) it probably means that you don't know enought about PC hardware to overclock safely.  Its not really for beginners.  (and then its not really for expert users either... because they usually have killed a processor or come close on their road to becoming an expert :)

Anyway, reset your bios (sometimes you have to remove a jumper from the motherboard, turn power of for a sec and replace the jumper...  Some new motherboards don't require the power... never heard of one having troube with power though... your motherboard manual may tell you)

If that doesn't work... replace the processor... max out what it can handle if you can find one cheap... But its usually a good time to replace the motherboard, processor and memory all at one time...  Your harddrive will still be ok, but you may have some troubles upgrading the motherboard drivers... Sometimes upgrading from one major bios to another, you don't have access to a CD for a while to update the drivers... so you have to go searching around on the drive and hope that the default drivers are still around (usually in windows or windows/system or windows/system32  but can be other areas also.

good luck

More Cowbell:
I guess I should expand on the blue screen. That is simply my tv not receiving any signal I believe so it's not truly the "blue screen of death". I can not get into the BIOS at all, it simply hangs right from the getgo. Is there something I can do to get to the BIOS still? I'll find out what my motherboard is as well.
Thanks

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

Go to full version