Overclocking 8320 4.4ghz Unstable even @1.5V

theaterix

theaterix

theaterix

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So for quite a few weeks on and off ive been trying to overclock my 8320 and ive got it at 4.3 @1.38V slightly stable and runs for a while before workers die on prime95 but after about 20 minutes,@4.4 OCCT just goes quack quack, and its really bugging me, after about 15 minutes on 1.5V, im a newbie to the CPU overclocking side, i overclock my gpus for fun, and have done for a while... Just fancied pushing my 8320 before i go CF 290s in the near future...
So what im looking for is for someone to provide me on some different things to try, like programs, and different voltages and clocks etc...
I have only touched the multiplier, and not the bus as it looks complicated, and messes everything inc ram speeds etc.
I have seen the tutorials everyone seems to link, ive read everywhere, ive searched everything, i just need someone to talk me through it!

Here are my specs:
8320
Corsair H100 pulling air OUT through the top of the case
MSI 990FXA-GD65
8GB corsair vengeance 1600mhz
reference R9 290
Corsair CX750M

So if anyone can help me it would be massively appreciated, and also if you need any images can someone tell me where to upload them as it says i need to provide a link, and i dont know how!

Many thanks in advance
 
hi there, ive got an fx8350 but most things will be the same for you, you just might not achieve quite as high clocks. ive recently found out the most effective way to oc these from some very helpful forum members on here. it involves the fsb. you will get a higher clock speed and lower voltage required for that clock speed than changing just the multi.

i would start by downloading cpu-z it will tell you exactly what voltage is being delivered to the cpu and clock speed, fsb and multi as well as other parameters. its here you can see if its throttling back due to motherboard overheating. next id get hwmonitor which gives you lots of different voltage readouts, temps of the cpu, gpu, hdd etc and any fan speeds. cpu temp limits you need to watch the package temp doesnt go over 70 deg c or in amd overdrive it tells you how many deg c thermal margin you have. then id get amd overdrive which ill explain more about below.

bios settings: all power saving options disabled so c1e, c6, cool n quiet, cpu spread spectrum etc
set the load line calibration to very high this will maintain near enough the voltage you select and not droop too much.

firstly select the minimum cpu and ram multiplier. cpu on my board the min is x4. then make a note of the ht and nb speed at the stock 200 fsb. then raise the fsb start at 250 then go up in 5's. when the ht or nb speed goes above stock knock the multiplier for it down one notch. basically when it will no longer boot into windows you have your max fsb. using this method i can get a max 310 fsb. then its a case of getting the ht and nb speed as close to stock as you can with their respective multis, leave ram on minimum for now put the cpu multi up id start at 4ghz or as close as you can get. i would start out setting the voltage to 1.5v if youre comfortable with that and the first time it fails the amd overdrive stress test you have your max oc. if you google amd overdrive its a great tool for telling you what the thermal margin is, lots of info in real time about your system and has a built in stress test geared towards amd chips.

once you have the max oc set it at that frequency then knock the voltage back one notch at a time until it fails amd overdrive stability test then you know your minimum voltage required for that clock speed. last but not least move the ram multiplier up to where you want to set it. just to be safe anything over 1600mhz i set the dram voltage to 1.65v instead of 1.5v. when finding my max oc if amd overdrive stability test hasnt failed after 15m i move on. when youve found all your limits run it for one hour. if it passes excellent, if not bump the voltage up one notch and rerun until it does pass an hour.

using the above method my fx8350 went from doing 4.8ghz @1.512v and temps and required voltage couldnt make 4.9ghz even at 1.55v, it now sits at 4.96ghz @1.53v and has a thermal margin of around 30-33 degrees c. granted i am running a full custom loop in an air conditioned room so you might not get that good of a thermal margin. my max oc which is cinebench r15 stable for a multi thread cpu run but i never stress tested was 5.115ghz @1.6v which scored 794 on cinebench. 4.96ghz scored 779. the stock 4ghz scores around 650-660 from what i remember.

the other day i played f1 2014 on max settings in 1080p for 2 1/2 hours and max temp on cpu was 38 deg c and same on the gpu.

i have an exact list of bios settings somewhere if you need them although the republic of gamers fx oc guide is a good place to get that sort of info too. hopefully ive covered everything and if i have missed something im sure someone can add that info as well. theres some great amd users here full of knowledge and happy to help. good luck.
 
ah i remembered some more bios settings so ill just post my list for you:

disable cpu spread spectrum, epu power save, c1e, c6 state, cool 'n' quiet and vrm spread spectrum.

cpu llc - very high, nb llc - high, cpu current capability - 130%, cpu thermal control - 130, cpu power phase control - optimised, voltage freq (on power settings page not cpu voltage) - auto, cpu power duty - tprobe, dram current - 130%, dram voltage frequency - 300 and dram power phase - extreme and power response - ultra fast.

you can adjust cpu and nb llc to high or extreme depending on your needs and same with dram power phase. ive always worked to a 1.55v limit but 1.5v is a safe bet to stay under if you can. then it just comes down to temperature and stability.
 
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i wouldnt be surprised tbh but if you work out the difference in electricity usage over a year an overclocked fx8350 will cost about £12 more than a stock one. i wish hwmonitor gave power consumption figures. at stock i get the wattage underneath the package temp but as soon as you oc its gone. fx4350 was the same in my 2nd machine.
 
Inspired by this thread, I had a play with my FX8320 last night.

Got it up to 4.4 without too many issues. FSB of 245 completely borked by bios, requiring a CMOS reset, so I settled for a comfortable 220x20 @1.365. Temperatures below 50C under prime.

FX-8320
Gigabyte GA-FXA990-UD3
32GB AMD Gamer Series 2133
Corsair CS650M
Corsair H80 with 2 Akasa Piranhas
 
Bonjour said:
Inspired by this thread, I had a play with my FX8320 last night.

Got it up to 4.4 without too many issues. FSB of 245 completely borked by bios, requiring a CMOS reset, so I settled for a comfortable 220x20 @1.365. Temperatures below 50C under prime.

FX-8320
Gigabyte GA-FXA990-UD3
32GB AMD Gamer Series 2133
Corsair CS650M
Corsair H80 with 2 Akasa Piranhas
Click to expand...

This has inspired me to try mine again, I got 4.4 stable but hit 60+ degrees under load! Think I need AIO or a major air cooler now.
 
Bonjour said:
Inspired by this thread, I had a play with my FX8320 last night.

Got it up to 4.4 without too many issues. FSB of 245 completely borked by bios, requiring a CMOS reset, so I settled for a comfortable 220x20 @1.365. Temperatures below 50C under prime.

FX-8320
Gigabyte GA-FXA990-UD3
32GB AMD Gamer Series 2133
Corsair CS650M
Corsair H80 with 2 Akasa Piranhas
Click to expand...

That's a mountain of RAM :) Do you use it all?
 
System was built as an Esxi lab. That's why I went AMD, for the 8 cores, and 32GB RAM. You can easily get through the RAM with a few servers and a number of clients configured. The FX CPU with a 990 mobo supports PCI passthrough, so it's a pretty decent setup.

It also plays games reasonably well...
 
With fsb clocking need to make sure that you set ram to correct speed. If its set to 2133 before and then you start clocking, that speed rises and causes instability
 
Bonjour said:
Inspired by this thread, I had a play with my FX8320 last night.

Got it up to 4.4 without too many issues. FSB of 245 completely borked by bios, requiring a CMOS reset, so I settled for a comfortable 220x20 @1.365. Temperatures below 50C under prime.

FX-8320
Gigabyte GA-FXA990-UD3
32GB AMD Gamer Series 2133
Corsair CS650M
Corsair H80 with 2 Akasa Piranhas
Click to expand...

What is confusing me, is what do i put back down, because all of the NB clocks get raised automatically, so should start my ram on say 1333 and then do the fsb so it overclocks to around the stock 1600? or what? and should i use both multiplier and fsb to help decrease this problem?
 
My NB clocks appear to be locked. They don't deviate when I increase the FSB.

I reduced my memory multi to about 6, so increasing the FSB didn't take the memory out of spec. Then, after I'd found a comfortable FSB oc, I worked out what I should set the CPU and memory multis to in order to have an overall speed of 4.4Ghz. It's definitely more stable than doing the multi alone.

I could probably take it further, but 4.4 seems reasonable for an 8320.
 
Bonjour said:
My NB clocks appear to be locked. They don't deviate when I increase the FSB.

I reduced my memory multi to about 6, so increasing the FSB didn't take the memory out of spec. Then, after I'd found a comfortable FSB oc, I worked out what I should set the CPU and memory multis to in order to have an overall speed of 4.4Ghz. It's definitely more stable than doing the multi alone.

I could probably take it further, but 4.4 seems reasonable for an 8320.
Click to expand...

well i have got it too 4.3, stable just by using the multi, but ive had to feed it a bit more of everything as it didnt like not having enough voltage, and it worked for 1hr and 44 mins on OCCT before i shut it off as i deemed it stable, will probably do a prime95 blend test tomorrow when i have lots of time to spare
 
Damo667 said:
whats the max memory frequency on the crosshair? mine only supports upto 2133mhz any higher it says not supported
Click to expand...

It doesn't officially support it, but as you increase the fsb, the max supported ram increases too. Its basically saying what its maximum multiplier is.

I wouldn't use p95, just isn't that real life. Use asus realbench instead. If it passes that, it'll pass most real world applications
 
Not my first AMD chip, but my first attempt at clocking one.

I'm hitting the thermal limit on the 8320E at 4.6 with just multiplier and voltage tweak. IntelBurn Test stopped the test itself during 6 of 10. But it's not catastrophically crashing and rebooting. If I had a meatier cooler I could probably complete the test. But I've a Phanteks PH-TC12DX_BK in there and I can just about close the side panel. Anything larger and I'd have to cut a hole in the side.

Going to give Damos tips a try now as the only thing I think I've messed around with in the BIOS besides multi and voltage is disabling turbo boost. But honestly I'd rather leave the power saving stuff on so I'm not running at ludicrous warp speed 24/7.

Managed to nab this screenshot during 5 of 10 as I knew I was approaching the thermal limit.
 
Looking through the BIOS I couldn't find half the stuff Damo was talking about. Or it's called something else on my board.

4.4 Stable @ 1.32v. Much better temps. Much better thermal margin. Not even code compilation will tax my CPU that hard. So I'm just going to leave it at that. Still have all the power saving stuff turned on too. Just turbo boost disabled. So instead of turbo boosting up to 4GHz, it'll hit 4.4. Nice. I could probably get more out of it if I had more of a clue what I was doing :p

Obligatory screenshot.
 
OhEsEcks said:
Looking through the BIOS I couldn't find half the stuff Damo was talking about. Or it's called something else on my board.

4.4 Stable @ 1.32v. Much better temps. Much better thermal margin. Not even code compilation will tax my CPU that hard. So I'm just going to leave it at that. Still have all the power saving stuff turned on too. Just turbo boost disabled. So instead of turbo boosting up to 4GHz, it'll hit 4.4. Nice. I could probably get more out of it if I had more of a clue what I was doing :p

Obligatory screenshot.
Click to expand...

What board do you have, mate?
 
Bonjour said:
What board do you have, mate?
Click to expand...

Gigabyte 990XA-UD3. It's not perfect though. I'm having trouble getting 4x4GB of DDR3 1866 to run at 1866. Tried using the XMP profile and it crashes. Tried every combination of sticks individually or as a pair making 8GB and it has no problem running them at 1866. Doesn't matter if I use XMP or I set all the timings and freqs manually, it won't run 16GB at 1866. So after some googling I came across someone else giving off about the same problem. He bought an Asus board in the end and everything worked with just XMP.
 
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