Overclocking my PC.

DWorrall

DWorrall

DWorrall

Permabanned
Joined
15 Dec 2010
Posts
327
Location
Manchester
Heres my specs:

AMD Phenom II x4 965
2 x 2Gb Corsair dominator 1600mhz
ROG Crosshair III Motherboard
Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler
Kingston 64GB SSD + some normal HDD for storage
NVIDIA GeForce 9400GT Graphics (Rubbish i know)
NZXT Gamma Case
And a crap load of case fans :P

I see 33 - 34 Degrees idle atm @ stock. i was wondering if anyone could help me overclock this PC?
 
do what i've done. Google your motherboard/chipset and see what people have been able to get. Worked a treat for me. Good luck
 
Tried, cant find anyone with a similar setup to mine. Well i found one and it didnt work, i tried changing a few things, but nothing.
 
cant find anyone with a similar setup to mine.
Click to expand...

Boo!

Same mobo and cpu so I can help there- is your cpu the 125 watt or the 140 watt though?

Going to assume its the same as mine which is the 125 watt.

First turn load line callibration off; if it is on I found my volts going totally crazy and above the limits for the chip. With it off your volts will drop under load a bit but that is better than with it on.

Second cool and quiet only works up to 3.7 for me, if you only adjust the processor multiplier; adjusting the fsb for me makes things unstable but tbh i havent really tried here, I prefer things neat and simple, given my oc isnt too bad I think best leave it alone. I was edging 3.9 using frequency multi and 211 fsb but something had become unstable.

3.8 is what people say is the sweet spot so I am happy leaving it at 3.7. 1.375 should see you rock solid. If you do not care about power saving then 4ghz is the upper limit, but tbh consensus is that this is not worth it; temps, stability and general happiness of the chip start to drop off really sharply there.

Temp wise 48 max is considered optimal, I have about 50 at times, 60 is your upper limit but you shouldnt be getting there.

Performance wise first thing to do is set the NB to 1.2 and 2400. Mine does 2600 at this but you may need 1.225-1.25 for that. This will directly affect any ram overclock- too few volts may make your system crash when ocing the ram- I blamed my ram for a long time till i realised I was undervolting my nb.

HT link will show no significant benefits and may affect stability. Some say it helps loading gpu textures but nothing is proven so best leave it imo.

Turn your ram speed to 1600, then lower the timings, mine is meant to run at 2000htz, I dont know if this means I have some extra headroom but 7-7-7-20 (1t) is rock solid through 48hrs+ of the most demanding games.

Storage wise obviously use the ssd for your os. I have partitioned my f3 for 120gb for the steam folder if you game- if this is the first partition on the drive it will be 'short stroked' meaning that the data will be read of the outside and fastest part of the drive. Rest of my steam folder (lots more than 120gb) and all my storage is put on the outer parts of the f3, I replace steam games as and when I play them by just restoring the backups.

These chips are not great clockers on the core but the nb really does offer a lot of benefit, couple that with ram with tight timings and there is where you will see performance benefits.
 
Last edited:
el Kuarlos said:
Boo!

Same mobo and cpu so I can help there- is your cpu the 125 watt or the 140 watt though?

Going to assume its the same as mine which is the 125 watt.

First turn load line callibration off; if it is on I found my volts going totally crazy and above the limits for the chip. With it off your volts will drop under load a bit but that is better than with it on.

Second cool and quiet only works up to 3.7 for me, if you only adjust the processor multiplier adjusting the fsb for me makes things unstable, given my oc isnt too bad I think best leave it alone.

3.8 is what people say is the sweet spot so I am happy leaving it at 3.7. 1.375 should see you rock solid. If you do not care about power saving then 4ghz is the upper limit, but tbh consensus is that this is not worth it.

Temp wise 48 max is considered optimal, I have about 50 at times, 60 is your upper limit but you shouldnt be getting there.

Performance wise first thing to do is set the NB to 1.2 and 2400. Mine does 2600 at this but you may need 1.225-1.25 for that. This will directly affect any ram overclock- too few volts may make your system crash when ocing the ram- I blamed my ram for a long time till i realised I was undervolting my nb.

HT link will show no significant benefits and may affect stability. Some say it helps loading gpu textures but nothing is proven so best leave it imo.

Turn your ram speed to 1600, then lower the timings, mine is meant to run at 2000htz, I dont know if this means I have some extra headroom but 7-7-7-20 is rock solid through 48hrs+ of the most demanding games.
Click to expand...

I'll go try some of this, thankyou. oh you live in manchester, so do i. feel free to add my skype which is 'daimenw'.

EDIT: Sorry to be a pain but with those settings, it wouldnt even POST. :/
 
Last edited:
Ok start by going for the nb...2400 at 1.2v, everest should be your info tool if you have it or can get hold of it. Turn loadline off though. If it is the 125 watt c1e is also unnecessary so you can turn that off in the processor settings.

All else at stock mate- the above is what worked for me- should have said might not do for you!

EDIT; here is what I have changed in bios; bear in mind we have completley different ram- the ram screen does not apply to you- you need to work that out yourself. (there should be 3 pics but last 2 are being awkward bear with me- the settings there are goals but NOT what you will get for sure- we are running different parts there)

19122010079.th.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

19122010080.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

19122010081.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

The really tiny unimportant looking pic is actually the really important one. I make no apologies ;)

Like I said take it easy, took me a year to figure that worked. You are only really in danger either directly messing with hardware or adding far too many volts. Careful as you enter them in. And one bit at a time. This is not an off/on process; should take you at least a week, get one setting right on and go from there.
 
Last edited:
Uninstalled it because i didnt use or like it, i m on steam, are you? (el Kuarlos -TLG-)

Its asking me to do some long registration just to download it; making it one of those programmes I just hate.
 
Last edited:
Ok well first off you want to make sure that is rock solid. If you dont know what steam is I assume you dont game- prime 95 and everest would be good ways to stress the cpu. 1.3v if that is what it is exactly will very likley not be stable-

I am good at 1.375 volts for 3.7. However if you have load line callibration on it will actually up your voltage considerably when you are under load- it isnt actually meant to do this it is meant to keep it stable meaning that 1.3v might well be turning into 1.4v under load. Turning loadline off will mean you will likely have to set it higher- 1.4125v probably.

You can check this using everest stess test where you can see what volts are going through things when it is under load.

EACH OF THESE STAGES NEEDS TO BE CHECKED TO MAKE SURE IT IS STABLE- if you do them all at once and something is wrong it is impossible to know what it is so change each thing separately.

4ghz is doable very likley but that can take anywhere up to 1.5v to be fully stable and I wouldnt reccomend it for the performance gains you might get.

Once you have the core stable the next thing is to overclock the memory and northbridge. The northbridge is NOT the one on your mobo this is the cpu northbridge that is on the chip itself.

The northbridge is the connection between your ram and the cpu core- overclocking it will mean your cpu will get fed with info from the memory faster.

1.2v at 2400 is standard. This is pretty much a do it and forget setting. See pics for my settings though; I am on 2600 at 1.2v however have not exhaustvily tested this; its stable in the most demanding games though.

Then it is ram overclock time. First set the ram speed to 1600, it is at 1333 right now for you. (it reads 1338 because the crosshair 3 cheats a bit and adds a notch to all your settings.)

Then start tightening the timings on the ram- first try 8-8-8-24, and check it is stable, then if you are feeling brave try 7-7-7-20, I set the voltage on mine manually to what it is supposed to run at. The timings are how fast the ram performs certain actions- lower=faster.

Clocking ram and nb will increase things significantly more than adding 0.4 to the core.

Question from me- does cool and quiet work at your settings?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom