G400DH Vanilla - Overclocking Methods?

[Maggi]

Look at the pics I posted above ...

The big one is larger than the heatsink blowin quite some air all across the board and the small one on the backplate of the PCB points directly to the center of of the G400 chip and also cools the RAM to some extend.

[RD]

Hey MAGGI, how did U connect the MEGA fan on your heatsink? The fan on the back is mounted with help of the already present holes in de pcb?

GREETZ RD

[Maggi]

Hi RD,

I used superglue for both and for the small one I put a little piece of metal inbetween the fan and the PCB.

Go ahead !
Maggi

[CannyOne]

I'm desperately seeking some kind of cooling upgrade for my G400-MAX. I have an Epox 7KXA board so there's an AMR slot just below the AGP (if "has to be" there that seems like a good place!), and I don't intend to ever use PCI slot 1. So I was actually considering mounting a Celeron heatsink and fan (43mm height - 60mm square). Secure mounting is the only issue at this point!?! I also picked up some small heatsinks that are intended to be attached to L2 Cache chips. I thought they might be useful for cooling the memory chips on the MAX. Am I just sick and twisted? Or does anyone here have any better suggestions? Thanks!

[TTCharon]

CannyOne

I think it could be a good idea to place heatsinks on your ramchips, whether you gain anything, I don't know. But it can't hurt!

I did it myself on the L2 cache of a stripped P2-333@416, I didn't gain anything to further overclocking. but then again.. it was fun! And.. the L2 become cooler, I'm sure:-)

TTCharon

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Abit BH6, P3-600E@800(6x133), 128mb MCT 8ns CAS3, G400MAX(OC'ed 110%), SBLIVE, AHA 2940AU, WDC 4.3, WDC 6.4, IBM GXP34 20.5, Mitsumi FX48, Yamaha 4416S, Zyxel Prestige 100IH, 3Com 905B-TX On W98SE, DX 7.0a, PD 5.52

[Maggi]

LOL

Just go ahead, CannyOne !

When you mount heatsinks onto the RAM chips, you will be able to clock 'em higher.

Do some comparisons in advance, before you increase you're cooling. I suggest to use 3D Mark 99 MAX and its 8 & 32MB texture rendering tests. The 8MB version will show you the onboard gfx RAM limit by producing false pixels, i.e. usually white dots starting to spread over your screen or there appear some corrupted pixels in the textures that are mapped onto those grids. It starts with occasional 'drop outs' and the close you get to the RAM's limit, the more pixels are disturbing your view until it locks up.



The 32MB test basically does the same, but gives you info about how your AGP transfer are affected by your OCing.

You should check both to find your highest error-free clock settings.

...

Now to the core:

Bigger heatsink > better cooling
Bigger fan > better cooling
Better cooling > high clockrates

That easy ...

You could use the two gaming and the CPU tests from 3D Mark 99 MAX.
The only problem is that you G400 will instantly lock up when the core is clocked too high. Thus I suggest to increase your core in 5% steps find your first 'too high' setting ...

<FONT SIZE=1>hit your reset button and pray that your registry is still alive ... <FONT SIZE=2>

Then you could find your 'sweet point' of highest core clock in smaller steps from your last working setting.

...

As I said, do that procedure before and after your cool(ing) ideas and enjoy the boost.



Cheers,
Maggi