Overclocking the CyberstormPPC and keeping it alive!

[redrumloa]

I very likely will have a CSPPC at my disposal shortly. First and foremost is keeping it alive!!! Is there a knowledge base out there for what commonly fails on these boards and what prevention measures can be taken? Is it simply a heat related issue or something more sinister?

Next is overclocking:-) Ok don't tell me overclocking will kill the board, it shouldn't if proper cooling measures are taken. OC'ing the 68K should be as easy as changing the crystal, right? Now how about the PPC? There used to be a couple websites on the matter, they still about? How much juice can a stock 200Mhz 604 crank out?

[PaSha]

Have a look at http://www.starnet.com.au/davem/overclock/csppc.html
You'll find useful info there.

-Paul

[DaNi]

Hi, the overcloking is dangerous if you dont know the max. mhz accept your cpu, for example, for a 68060RC50 the max. is 66,666mhz but with this, some blizzards have problems, (but if you add one with a 66,000mhz work fine) witout any disipator and ventilator. With a 68060RC66 you can put max. 82mhz, (82,222mhz) work fine at 80mhz (i have this 80,000mhz) and on my system work without ventilator/disipator too and have 2 years running at 80mhz. With 603 240mhz  only know replace the oscilator for one with 66mhz (66.000mhz) for the ppc, in this case, the ppc is overcloked to 260mhz (66x4) and work fine (i have friends with this ppc speed), but i dont know any friend with cyberstorm, but i think is equal (depending the original speed of you cpu)  

[redrumloa]

Good stuff, thanks:-)

[x56h34]

Here are some general rules.

#1 Change the fan from the heatsink (placed over the 604e chip) as it is el-cheapo brand and it's only 5VDC. Look for a 40x40x10mm fan which is 12VDC and connect it to one of your free 4-pin PSU connectors.

#2 Be very careful when installing the card into the motherboard fast-slot. Absolutely do not touch the PPC heatsink when pushing down to fix the card securely. This will almost surely damage the sensitive PPC chip underneath. I repeat, do not touch/press down on the PPC heatsink while installing the card!

#3 Will it be an 040 or an 060 on the 68k end? I suspect 060 as you mention overclocking. I suggest getting a heatsink if necessary. You will know by touching the 060 chip after let's say half an hour of usage. If it is as hot as an 040 would be (or close), get a heatsink and maybe a fan too. If you can still leave your finget on the chip without a need to remove it due to burning heat, then you're fine.

#4 Get 4x32MB of 60ns FPM or EDO ram of a quality brand, otherwise if your SIMMs won't be matched in all 4 slots then you must have 2 matching pairs and place them like this:

Slot 1 & 3 matching
Slot 2 & 4 matching

Your A4000 mobo clock jumpers must be set to EXT position. You must have some ram on the card (at least 8mb) in order for the CSPPC to boot, so trying it out without any ram won't produce a boot.

That's all I could think of for now. ;-)

As for the 200Mhz 604e performance, when you are switched to PPC side then things get quite fast. This is especially noticeable with games, however within the OS itself you get some delays in terms of mode switching between the 060 and 604e. Basically, a good example is loading a JPEG image through a WarpJPEG datatype. You double-click on the JPEG file, MultiView tries to open it, detects that WarpJPEG (PPC task) is required, switches to PPC mode, loads the image, switches back to 68k mode. This produces a noticeable delay and doesn't really do justice to the 604e side of things at all, however when something like a game (as I've previously mentioned) is running which is fully PPC oriented, then things become really impressive.

[Cass]

I'm not risking to destroy "my precious" CSPPC with overclocking operations. I'm not willing to shorten the life of such a unique, hardly to find and costly hardware for a slight 20% gain. I prefer to have a stable, fast and long living hardware to enjoy.

For crunching numbers I have a cheapo Athlon, and for CPU intensive progs and heavy GFX load games I'm planning to get a G4 AmigaOne.

As for the proper cooling, have a look here. ;-)
________
Ecigarette

[Argo]

What? No liquid Nitrogen!

[patrik]

@redlumloa:

Just take it easy as #### with those cards. Dont bend, press, shift, it more than necessary. It is _NOT_ manufactured to withstand much abuse at all... rather poor construction must I say.

Regarding the overclocking I must say that I agree with Cass. This is a rare piece of equipment and keeping it alive as long as possible should be prio no.1, atleast that is my opinion .

Good luck!


/Patrik

[Brian]

I got a CSPPC aswell and although it's just the 180Mhz version I would never overclock it due to the fact that the cooling is poor on the board. Even with normal use today the fan definitly needs changing and preferably the coolingplate too. I don't use the PPC atm so I've just upgraded the 060 cooling so far with coolingplate and fan... the placement of 2 hot CPU's so close to eachoterh ain't exactly brilliant... the way the coolingplate fixes to the card is also poor.

With OS4 with it's 100% PPC usage just around the corner you will find that you need much better cooling. I know an OS4 beta tester that has a huge 8*6cm or so coolingplate with fan for the PPC to keep it happy... that without overclocking.