OC a FX-8350 on a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 REV 4.0

zac222 · 6 Dec 2014 at 22:27

Hi, I'm new to the forum and came here as was told would get the best advice from here. So here goes. About a week ago I finished this, my first build. I like most want their most for their money and was considering overclocking. I watched a few videos and presto, I knew everything there was to know. Wrong. I input the "correct" settings and went to work overclocking the Northbridge. I almost broke the PC as it started and stopped 5 or so times in the space of a minute. I eventually got it up but there was a boot failure. Reset the mobo and went for a second attempt, this time simply just uping the multiplier and compensating with the voltage when need be. I got it stable at 4.5Ghz with a voltage of 1.45 and max temps reaching just 45 degrees. That was two nights ago. Only today I was playing a game and it automatically closed. It worried me so I reverted back to stock speeds until I could learn more about overclocking. The problem is every bios is different and every guide uses terms I just, at this point, don't understand. Could anyone help me with some simple to use guides? Or some basic knowledge on the subject?

Specs:
CPU: AMD FX-8350
CPU Cooler: Hyper 212 EVO
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB @ 1600Mhz
GPU: Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X 4GB
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 REV 4.0 (F2 Bios)
Storage: 256GB Crucial MX100 SSD
2TB Seagate HDD
OS: Windows 7 Home Professional

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thebennyboy · 6 Dec 2014 at 23:16

Did any notifications come up when the game closed? I have an FX-8320 running 4.5Ghz with 1.38v stable. I doubt it's an unstable overclock. What AMD GPU drivers are you currently on? 14.11.2 being the current latest beta and 14.9 being the latest stable. Also, what game were you playing? Were the GPU temps ok? What does your CPU-Z show?

This is mine: http://valid.x86.fr/vq4bzy

OhEsEcks · 6 Dec 2014 at 23:27

Disable turbo boost. Leave other power saving features enabled. Your CPU will function as usual (with power saving), but instead of turbo boosting to it's advertised clock speed, it will run at what you've clocked it at when taxed.

Look for "load line calibration" and set it to extreme. If there's no extreme option set it to high. This prevents vdroop, which can cause instability in overclocks.

zac222 · 7 Dec 2014 at 00:01

thebennyboy said:
Did any notifications come up when the game closed? I have an FX-8320 running 4.5Ghz with 1.38v stable. I doubt it's an unstable overclock. What AMD GPU drivers are you currently on? 14.11.2 being the current latest beta and 14.9 being the latest stable. Also, what game were you playing? Were the GPU temps ok? What does your CPU-Z show?

This is mine: http://valid.x86.fr/vq4bzy

I'm running 14.11.2 and I'm sure the temps were fine as I monitored the all temps for a few days under gameplay and never had an issue. I was playing Payday 2 at the time it happened and have had no issues since.
Here is a snap of my CPU-Z. I'm not sure how reliable that info is as it downclocks itself when idle.

zac222 · 7 Dec 2014 at 00:02

OhEsEcks said:
Disable turbo boost. Leave other power saving features enabled. Your CPU will function as usual (with power saving), but instead of turbo boosting to it's advertised clock speed, it will run at what you've clocked it at when taxed.

Look for "load line calibration" and set it to extreme. If there's no extreme option set it to high. This prevents vdroop, which can cause instability in overclocks.

I'll have a look next time I boot, but do you have any info on whether or not I should try the more advanced Northbridge method. I read that will increase the single core speed way more.

thebennyboy · 7 Dec 2014 at 18:08

zac222 said:
I'm running 14.11.2 and I'm sure the temps were fine as I monitored the all temps for a few days under gameplay and never had an issue. I was playing Payday 2 at the time it happened and have had no issues since.
Here is a snap of my CPU-Z. I'm not sure how reliable that info is as it downclocks itself when idle.

You haven't turned off cool n' quiet. You need to turn that off as it will throttle the CPU under low workloads and will interfere with your overclock.

Davedree · 7 Dec 2014 at 23:39

thebennyboy said:
You haven't turned off cool n' quiet. You need to turn that off as it will throttle the CPU under low workloads and will interfere with your overclock.

No you can leave cool and quiet on, it will not interfere with the maximum potential over clock, there's no need to run modern cpus at 100% clock rate with full voltages, it's not 2005 anymore.

Use offset core voltage and LLC with power savings on you'll have less strain on the motherboards power phase side. Throttling is caused by not disabling apm mode in the gigabyte bios, whilst cool and quiet will enable the CPU to load a variety of p-states suitable to the intended workload. Saving energy bills and excessive heat when idling and general use

Damo667 · 10 Dec 2014 at 15:57

From my experience with fx8350 unless you are serious about saving £2.50 a year on electricity turn ALL the power saving features off like cool n quiet, c6 and c1e. Disable apm and make sure turbo mode is set to always disabled not disabled by cpu.

Load line calibration I found very high setting the vcore sits just above what you set in the bios. Extreme is a lot higher than what you set in the bios. In this cpu section on the forum there's a post called 'amd fx8350 overclocking' or something similar. There's pages and pages of info with different peoples bios settings, mine included. I've since moved to Intel but I had no complaints about my fx8350.

Overclocking using the fsb will net you maybe 200mhz higher overclock with less voltage required but is much more tricky to do. I can explain if you want me to it just might be an essay haha. It's not as hard as it sounds. Cpu cooler is a big thing with these they get out of hand temps and voltage wise at 4.7ghz plus.

24/7 bearing in mind I was on full watercooling I ran 4.96ghz at 1.55v I think using fsb method whereas multi alone I could only manage 4.8ghz at 1.512v. I had the m5a99fx pro r2.0 motherboard and I had to run a 120mm fan directly above the motherboard heatsink or it got too hot and throttled the cpu regardless of the cpu nowhere near its thermal limit.