Flash-based overclocking tutorial website and the things you'd like to see in it!

[Snod Blatter]

Righto, I'm looking at creating (and hopefully actually getting hosted) a flash-based site to do with overclocking. My basic idea is to create a menu that looks like a BIOS setup screen (could be Award, AMIBIOS or maybe both) which the user can go through, and when they click on an option a description of what that option does pops up. There will also hopefully be a way of "practising" overclocking by setting FSB/HTT speeds and voltages for certain setups.

The basic aim is to help new people understand overclocking and what they're doing before they screw over their own machines, so if you've had a go at it and got stuck along the way or didn't understand something your story would be hugely helpful to me

Anything else anyone would like to see? Anything asked for in this forum would be very useful as it's not a dedicated hardware PC site, so the people here may not have as much immediate knowledge as on other forums. My site will be mostly aimed towards this kind of person who would like to know more and overclock, but couldn't figure out how!

 

[A7X]

Sounds like an excellent idea! I want to start oc'ing and think that something like this would be very helpful if set out correctly. Unfortunately i don't have many stories although my ram is annoying (known problem with gigabyte p35c and 1066).

I would be more than willing to have a look at initial designs and give you feedback if you thought it would be helpful?

Good luck 👍

 

[Snod Blatter]

Brilliant, you're exactly the kind of person I need to talk to

There is no initial design just yet, though I hope to have one by the end of the week if all goes well. At the moment I'm just looking to see if people would actually use it and if they'd find it easier to learn from an interactive setup like this than from a wordy article somewhere.

I have been toying with the idea of having something like ASUS (beginner) and DFI (expert) modes, would you find that easier to use? The ASUS mode would have everything you need to have a good overclock, and then if you really want to start tweaking that extra 2-3% out of it you move on to the DFI mode.

Maybe I should also have an extra-simple overclocking section that isn't set out like a BIOS screen, where you can change FSB/multiplier/voltages and it'll give you a rough idea of whether it should work or not. Would that be helpful as well?

 

[GT3mich]

Don't forget to add the obligatory "Do this at your own risk!" quote. How much do you know about overclocking? There are a lot of boards out there. Some overclock real well, P35, some not so much, 680i. A lot of its change bios settings, boot, test. Pass or fail. How is the CPU and ram working together?
Some things you just have to dig up on the internet.

I like your idea for the beginner and I think that's where you should stop. A veteran OC'er won't need it. He, she will already know what to start changing and how much to start off at too.

Good luck! I'll be reading your results.

 

[Snod Blatter]

Don't forget to add the obligatory "Do this at your own risk!" quote

I wouldn't dare

How much do you know about overclocking?

A lot.. It's mostly why I'm doing this site on it. It's for a final year project for uni, see, and this is like a feeler thread for interest and what people would like to see from such a site.

I like your idea for the beginner and I think that's where you should stop. A veteran OC'er won't need it. He, she will already know what to start changing and how much to start off at too.

Good luck! I'll be reading your results.

I've also got some ideas for the veterans like a volt mod database, and maybe a tutorial on how to modify BIOS's (I have a fair bit of personal experience with both). There's also the chance of adding what tweaks do what to certain benchmarks, and how to get the best out of them, and all that relatively useless stuff that only a very small number of people would ever want to know.

I stressed the "beginner" side of the site more here because I figured there would be more people here looking to learn the relatively simple things, what with it not specifically being an overclocking site

 

[the Interceptor]

I think this is an excellent idea, but unfortunately, I don't think it's doable. In all my years of overclocking, I have learned that every system reacts very differently, and that overclocking can fail for the strangest reasons. There are so many components that are involved that even with a standard setup, it's close to impossible to tell what's going to fail first, and when. At the same time, there's an infinite amount of options of what users have in their PCs, which means that you'd have to cover the majority to offer proper help.

Now don't get me wrong, I'd find it great if you can actually do this. I'm just warning that it might be much more work than you think, and that you might end up with tons of e-mails from users asking why their particular system only goes up to 2,x GHz, when your website told them it should do 3,x. Still, if I can help you with anything, I will.

 

[Robin]

Its a great idea especially for people like me who would love to have a dummy run before doing it on the real thing One of my mates blew his brand new mobo and chip up doing it wrong, literally out of the box!

Robin

 

[Snod Blatter]

I think this is an excellent idea, but unfortunately, I don't think it's doable. In all my years of overclocking, I have learned that every system reacts very differently, and that overclocking can fail for the strangest reasons. There are so many components that are involved that even with a standard setup, it's close to impossible to tell what's going to fail first, and when. At the same time, there's an infinite amount of options of what users have in their PCs, which means that you'd have to cover the majority to offer proper help.

Hmmm, true. Maybe it should ask what chipset and CPU the person has before they can really start? Chipsets would help show the limit for bus speeds and memory dividers and all that, taking care of anomalies like the P35 Intel chipset that has no memory divider lower than 1:1. It is also a fact that overclocks are limited by heat, cheap power supplies, cheap boards and downright unlucky chips though.. Maybe tell them this really is just a trial run of how to do it, not what to actually expect to work?

It is true that I'd have to cover a lot of the options, though. And working out which ones to really cover and which ones to skim over may be more trial and error than anything...

Cheers guys, so far these are exactly the kind of responses I was looking for

 

[A7X]

when you get a prototype up and running give me a PM and i'l see how easy i find it to understand, as i want to start getting my moneys worth for buying the more expensive components.

 

[MustangSVT]

Its a great idea especially for people like me who would love to have a dummy run before doing it on the real thing One of my mates blew his brand new mobo and chip up doing it wrong, literally out of the box!

Robin

How exactly did he blow it up? That sounds ridiculous. I've never blowed up anything, even with very high overclocks (which didn't boot). Did he feed an unreasonable amount of voltage (and by unreasonable I mean like 1.8V to something that should be 1.3 stock)? Even then I wouldn't expect anything to blow up. I've never heard of an overclock blowing up unless you're talking about like a graphics card or CPU or mobo or RAM eventually dying after a prolonged excessive overclock (like over 6 months).

 

[Azuremen]

How exactly did he blow it up? That sounds ridiculous. I've never blowed up anything, even with very high overclocks (which didn't boot). Did he feed an unreasonable amount of voltage (and by unreasonable I mean like 1.8V to something that should be 1.3 stock)? Even then I wouldn't expect anything to blow up. I've never heard of an overclock blowing up unless you're talking about like a graphics card or CPU or mobo or RAM eventually dying after a prolonged excessive overclock (like over 6 months).

Eh, back in the day it was easier with jumpers, since you could accidentally over do the voltage and cook stuff.

I killed an old Cyrix processor that way.

 

[Robin]

How exactly did he blow it up? That sounds ridiculous. I've never blowed up anything, even with very high overclocks (which didn't boot). Did he feed an unreasonable amount of voltage (and by unreasonable I mean like 1.8V to something that should be 1.3 stock)? Even then I wouldn't expect anything to blow up. I've never heard of an overclock blowing up unless you're talking about like a graphics card or CPU or mobo or RAM eventually dying after a prolonged excessive overclock (like over 6 months).

I don't know exactly what happened because I wasn't there at the time but I saw the aftermath, I think he said that he went up in huge voltage increases thinking it would be ok without booting in between each 0.1 increase or something.

He did overload it horrendously because the chips pins soldered to the socket and just everything looked nasty I don't know what on earth he did but I guess he had never tried anything like it before. He literally had bought all the stuff unwrapped it, installed it and proceeded to over clock out of the box. Should have just bought a faster processor eh!

He did manage to obviously save the graphics's card and I think the ram was a close call. But he said it seriously smoked, I could smell it in his room...

Maybe he had a cheap PSU which malfunctioned under heavy load and sent a spike down the line to the chip. I really dunno, I build PC's but im not an overclocker! Im happy with my AMD 64 3200!

Robin

 

[Snod Blatter]

So, errr, end of the week means the end of next week in software

http://www.slurkin.co.uk/

Notes:

1) Yes the index page is a bit basic. It'll be more slick later on..

2) Only the Frequency/Voltage menu currently leads to another screen. Also, I will do my best to give a loading screen to the "Not much overclocking here" overlay, as it takes much longer to appear than I thought it would.

3) To get the calculator to work, put in some numbers for the FSB/multi and then press the big white block under "Result!". I can't make the "Result!" text a button yet. Not entirely sure why..

4) The CPU speed will auto update after you've pressed the white button

5) The CPU speed changes colour depending on the FSB. Green is OK, yellow is pushing it and red is "woah nelly!" or too slow to of any use. This is just proof that things can change colour depending on input. It's currently set up for 875P, but could be set for anything, possibly asking the user what they have.

6) I hope to overlay explanations of the options much in the same way as the "no OC here" thing on the main page, but haven't written any yet. But that's easy..

7) When you click on the DRAM config button, the picture is of Phil Harrison of Playstation 3 fame. And he explodes. Obviously.

So... Anything really wrong so far? Any options people would really like explaining/to be interactive/whatever?

Oh yeah, and I know there are no back buttons, they'll hopefully not be needed and instead I can use the browser's buttons, but we shall see!

Bear in mind this is mostly proof of concept stuff so far, nothing's permanent yet

 

[Snod Blatter]

Alright, prototype 5 is up and a lot of the core functionality is up and working! So basically, it's more of a proof of concept right now, but I will do my best to add to it and keep it up to date and improve it whenever I can.

You can find it at http://www.slurkin.co.uk/chipsetchoice.swf so please go take a look and then answer these questions, if you would be so kind

1) I was thinking about making the user choose their socket type first, which could then lead to chipset and CPU choice. CPU choice could probably just be fab process (90nm, 65nm etc.) so that voltage safety zones could be shown. Do you think that would be alright? Any other ideas?

2) Would explanations for vcore and FSB speeds be necessary for some people? If so, what level of detail is really necessary? Just the basics or a bit more depth?

3) Is it particularly important for the "buttons" in the interface to highlight red all around them, or is just turning white enough? Is it really important to faithfully follow the Award design?

4) Any specific requests for new things, or just anything and everything I could add and explain about?

5) Is support for DDR3 urgently needed? Because, to be honest, there really isn't the information on it yet, it'd be a whole lot of research for maybe 0.001% of the people looking at it.. For a while, at least.

6) Would you like to see support for older machines, using SDRAM? Or is everyone past that now?

7) Anything that doesn't work properly? If you're using it in anything other than Firefox 2, let me know, even if everything works


I know it's pretty ugly at the moment, and there isn't much in the way of actual options and information, but now that the actual mechanics of it work it's pretty easy to build it up from this stage. I just need to know what you guys would like in it and what you would like to see changed

Oh, and I also know it seems a bit Intel-oriented at the moment. It's nothing against AMD, it's just the stuff I knew off the top of my head! Don't hold it against me..

Oh yeah, and the colour of the CPU speed is an indication of how safe the FSB speed is, not how safe the CPU speed is. I'll do my best to change that to something more obvious