[jsmiddleton4]

I am playing with a wrt54g version 1.1. I obtain it for free. I decided to try some serious overclocking. With the help of this forum and the pictures I installed a fan and used the power connectors internally. I used a hard drive cooler fan as it is easy to install, looks good, and it moves enough air to blow lots of hot air out of the router. I am impressed with the volume of air. Could be a tad quieter but it is not noisy by any means. It is located far enough away that the noise of the fan, mostly air noise, is not a problem.

Ok, so its time to play with OC. 216, 228 are fine. 300mhz is fine. Which is very nice. But the 252 causes problems. It doesn't lock up. It reboots over and over and over. What is it that the 250/252 would do this? I'm not complaining as 300mhz is very nice. Does a lot of stuff snappier, renews IP's, pages load, etc., all snappier. While 216 didn't seem like such a much, even 228 wasn't that big of a deal. 300 is very noticable and much faster.

So what's with the 250/252?

[jsmiddleton4]

Doing well this morning at 300. Banged on it with two laptops last night, let it run through the night. Feels cool. Fan a little noisier this morning. Will have to rethink the fan I think.

Still curious as to why 300 but not 250. Is there a memory speed ratio like on PC Cpu's? So at 300 the ratio drops the memory speed but at 250 it tries, and fails, to run the memory too fast? I wouldn't think this little broadcom CPU's are that complicated.....

[swinn]

While overclocked to 300, what does /proc/cpuinfo say the frequency is? I never was brave enough to go that high.

[jsmiddleton4]

I checked it since the experience with the Buffalo. It says 299.xx on this Linksys 54g.

I may not mess with the GS. Its fun and all but I don't think I want to cut the case, etc., fan mount, on the GS.


~ # cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type : Broadcom BCM4712 chip rev 1
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM3302 V0.7
BogoMIPS : 299.00
wait instruction : no
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : no
hardware watchpoint : no
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
~ #

[wo-fo]

Sweeeeeeet!!! I had never tried that either, but I am not gun-shy.. I set a buffalo HP to 300MHz immediately and am now letting it run to see if it craps out or overheats or anything.. I think it will be fine..

That did make an awesome, very noticable improvement in the speed of the router functions...

Very cool... jsmiddleton4 is the dd-wrt O.C. pioneer... LOL!!

wo-fo

[jsmiddleton4]

Thanks but I'm hardly the pioneer.

With your Buffalo HP were you really able to overclock it as confirmed in cpuinfo? Some of us have units that appear to be locked. The Status window in ddwrt says we've overclocked them but infact we have not.

I had to boot the router just a bit ago, that is another thing that is faster. Way faster.

[wo-fo]

I used ssh to input the following standard commands into the command prompt..

nvram set clkfreq=300

Then I made sure the router wasn't locked up before I did an:

nvram commit


As far as verifying this speed anywhere else, I have not... Yes it is a buffalo WHR-HP-G54 router...

You cannot do this from the web interface.. It must be the command line.. Of course that actually depends on which variation of firmware you are running..

I would be curious as the whether it is really a "placebo effect" and the router in fact is still running at 200MHz... That is always possible... But I have a warm, fuzzy feeling because I "think" it is running quicker and snappier.... LOL....

I guess we'll find out... Low priority for me, but an interesting discussion, no doubt...

bye for now,
wo-fo

[BrainSlayer]

be very very carefull with such tweaks. not every unit will resist at it

[jsmiddleton4]

Several of us thougth we OC our Buffalos by using the command line method. Even showed the OC in the Status window. But when we checked CPUINFO, we infact had not OC anything.

The newer Buffalos seem to be locked.

[jsmiddleton4]

Went with a different hard drive cooler. It has 2 smaller 40mm fans. Much quieter. Flipped the fans over so air was being pulled out through the top of the unit. Continued to be stable at 300mhz. I've gone back to the Buffalo as my primary router for now.

I ordered the cooper ram sinks and 2 small 40mm fans from anectine17 favorite place, performance-pc. What I learned from the 54g project convinced me to go ahead and OC the gs. A few other pictures from other folk's fans who attached the smaller fans on the inside of the case will help it look stock. Probably be quieter as well. So a couple of 40mm fans on the inside, the copper heat sinks, use the power plug leads for fan power, etc.

Still don't know why I can do 300 but not 250/252.

[wo-fo]

This overclocking issue is also bringing up heat dissapation issues, obviously... The unit I have been running for 24 hours now is still running fine...

Now that it is summer, however, I am beginning to see failures in the field that are most likely heat related.. They get hot when placed in the attic of a house or when they are place in a plastic box right on the antenna mount..

I wasn't thinking as dirastic as adding fans to every unit, but I am seriously thinking about taking them all out of their cases..

I guess my question is whether anyone else has issues with buffalo routers overheating and what clever tricks you use to keep them cool...

Take care,
wo-fo

[jsmiddleton4]

Here's the final application. No noise. Moves plenty of air. Ran at 300mhz for a couple of days with no problems. I used plastic screws/nuts that were easy to clip off to minimize protrusion into the router. I used the pictures here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15985 for where to solder the leads. Two fans in parallel not series. I did not put any copper heatsinks on any chips internally. Everything stayed cool. I mean no heat at all.

[anectine17]

You asked about cooling a Buffalo. Here's my WHR-HP-G54. It stays plenty cool. I have a hard drive cooler similar to middleton's on my GS v.2....I'll post that in a day or two when I'm done with the paint. I have boxes full of dead WRT's and a couple Buff's, so I'm not too afraid to carve a case up. I have replacement parts!

How'd that old 70s song go??....to much time on my hands!!........

[jsmiddleton4]

Nice job. How did you hold the cooler onto the chip? Is this the one you can't get to overclock?

While mine isn't as pretty it sure was easy to do. The harddrive cooler was 8 bucks at Fry's. The screws 99 cents. The hard drive cooler fits nicely on top of the case with being flush at the back and then extending into the little niche made by the front case piece. Everything clips back together easily too.

Looking at my Buffalo it has a space inbetween that snap in half panel and the body of the case. Air could flow through there easily. Did you try this without the fan cutout in that half snap in panel?

[anectine17]