AMD® Phenom™ II Overclocking Thread

[GregK2]

According to the Asus website the ASUS M4A78LT-M-LE only supports 95W CPU's, it does support some quads and hex cores but only the 95W variants.

X2 555BE is 80W at stock and probably closer to 125W unlocked, so it might be your motherboard?

Very good point, had completely overlooked that. still not sure why it wouldn't boot with me manually selecting a single core in bios with unleashed mode active though? I have the latest bios ver. too

 

[ran_out]

1.55v does seem a bit excessive. Mind you I've found on my 965BE C2 that you can do 3.6ghz at 1.425v, 3.7ghz at 1.456v, but 3.8ghz needs 1.50v and above. Couldn't get 3.9ghz stable even at 1.55v.

I've settled on the 3.7ghz option.

Yeah I found similarly that over 3.6 needed a much bigger jump in volts than anything before that. I dialled it back to 1.5125 and temps have come down quite a bit, haven't properly tested it yet though.

 

[welshdragon]

Right got my 965 at 3.6 with a multi of 18 on stock volts. stable so far...

 

[charltonfan1]

Right chaps, just setup my new system:

X4 955 BE
2x2GB Geil PC12800
MSI 870-C45

I am back to being an AMD o/c newb since my last AMD64 chip years back.

any one point me in the direction of a good guide for a starting point as the BIOS options baffle me!

Cheers

 

[Thejay]

What do we reckon? Turn it so it's exausting towards the back of the case?

Also, anyone using a Titan Fenrir on AM3, can you confirm that you can actually mount it in all 4 positions? I can't remember.

You can't because of the stupid plastic retention bracket the stock AMD cooler uses which means the holes in the board are drilled in a rectangle shape rather than a nice square!

 

[Indy500]

Thanks to an American friend, I picked up an incredibly cheap OEM X4 940 don't think it will clock far on this Asus M2N68-AM+ board though.

 

[Muel]

You can't because of the stupid plastic retention bracket the stock AMD cooler uses which means the holes in the board are drilled in a rectangle shape rather than a nice square!

I know you can't rotate the lower bracket, but the upper one that fits through the cooler has about 50 holes in it, surely some of them will allow you to rotate in on AM3?

 

[Thejay]

I wish heres a picture of the upper and lower brackets they only fit one way

 

[charltonfan1]

X4 955 BE
2x2GB Geil PC12800
MSI 870-C45
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 pro Rev 2

Preliminary testing of the above just fiddling with on the fly over clocking allowed me to run basic stability tests for short periods at 4.2Ghz at 1.43v

Was only expecting 3.8 max so unless these Phenoms are very different to previous chips I've played with I should be able to get ~ 4Ghz stable shouldn't I?

 

[Frozennova]

Preliminary testing of the above just fiddling with on the fly over clocking allowed me to run basic stability tests for short periods at 4.2Ghz at 1.43v

Was only expecting 3.8 max so unless these Phenoms are very different to previous chips I've played with I should be able to get ~ 4Ghz stable shouldn't I?

Most chips crap out at 3.8-3.9ghz, you've got a good chip if you can get 4ghz at any less than 1.55vcore

 

[Zaim]

Most chips crap out at 3.8-3.9ghz, you've got a good chip if you can get 4ghz at any less than 1.55vcore

hmm, is 1.5/ 1.55 safe to use? i can only get 4ghz at 1.52

@mmj_uk Nice oc, you must have a good chip to get 4.2ghz with only 1.44v

 

[Frozennova]

1.55 is the limit, I ran my athlon II x2 240 @ 3.6 1.55v for months without and problems.

I managed to get a very good chip that does 4ghz @ 1.45v though.

 

[Uriel]

See AMD's Unleash the Dragon overclocking guide for Denebs: http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_Dragon_AM3_AM2_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf

Voltage guide table is on page 18. AMD recommend a max of 1.5v on both VCore and CPU-NB voltage for high end air cooling when overclocking.

 

[welshdragon]

See AMD's Unleash the Dragon overclocking guide for Denebs: http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_Dragon_AM3_AM2_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf

Voltage guide table is on page 18. AMD recommend a max of 1.5v on both VCore and CPU-NB voltage for air cooling when overclocking.

Cheers for that!

 

[charltonfan1]

See AMD's Unleash the Dragon overclocking guide for Denebs: http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_Dragon_AM3_AM2_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf

Voltage guide table is on page 18. AMD recommend a max of 1.5v on both VCore and CPU-NB voltage for high end air cooling when overclocking.

Thanks, will have a proper go over the weekend getting this puppy 24/7 stable

 

[welshdragon]

Could I get away with multi+voltage increases or do I need to go in depth with HT links etc?

 

[Uriel]

Could I get away with multi+voltage increases or do I need to go in depth with HT links etc?

If I had a black edition, I would use multi+voltages. Don't forget the CPU-NB though!

 

[welshdragon]

Can I leave the NB on auto?

 

[Uriel]

Well NB (motherboard chipset) and CPU-NB (memory controller and L3 cache) are two separate things.

If you were to overclock on frequency rather than multiplier, everything gets overclocked and it can be very difficult to tell what the problem is when you get instability.

With multipliers you can overclock the Cores and the CPU-NB independently, while not having to worry about the chipset. As long as you do one thing at a time, you know exactly what you've just pushed to far (and therefore what might need more voltage).

 

[Muel]

Hey all, I'm currently overclocked on the CPU only to 3.7ghz and happy with it there. I'm thinking of overclocking the NB/CPU-NB/HT-Link. CPU and board are in my sig. Anyone had any experience with it?

Hoe do you monitor the NB temps for a start, and what kinda voltages are safe?