First Overclock

[Doco]

Sorry for the essay, ended up a longer post than I had planned.
Hello all, thought I'd join this fourm here, only found it the other day but it seems helpful. So the boring part -
My system spec. Im running a (in a Mini-Tower MicroAtx Chassis)

Phenom 9950 (125W) processor at 2.6Ghz ( for those who can remember that far back lol )
M2n68-vm Motherboard (v0805 BIOS)
4GB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM - (2x 2GB)
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
HIS IceQ 5670 1GB
corsair vx550 PSU

Apart from the Graphics card and VX550 the rest was bought in 2009 as as whole from the website Mesh, Quite a good deal when I bought it, to be honset for my usase I didnt need the graphics card but I wanted it and got it finally last year for christmas. Any-ways, eventually as everyone here does, I got the itch to overclock my desktop. Now I tried it before and did some researh but it never really workd out. Now I'm using a stock cooler and am not looking to do anything massive just yet, just the basic tweak to get into it (which is kind of useful considering my limited bios)
I've tried O.C. my CPU, atm I've got it at 2724 ( just changed the bus from 200 to 210 and kept multiplier at x13 ), when running occt it runs stable ( unlike when I was tried upping the multiplier on its own my pc kept crashing ) however it does run hot (around 65+ degrees)
so I stopped the stress test ( as in my general usage of the rig the temperature stays around 57 degrees - up from 54 from what it was previous, obv. I'm limited with a stock cooler and a small case limiting air flow but I think its usable at this stage).

Now I'm not 100% on overclocking my graphics card, so around 3 days ago I decided to let AMD's Catalyst Control Center to auto clock my card, left in the car and came back say 15 mins later and my TV screen was black - I assume it had gone into standby, but although my pc was on
there was no response from the keyboard, pulled the plug on my desktop ( did this a few times ) to cut a long story short it turned out that everytime my pc loaded as loaded the CCC on start up my screen would go blank, so I booted
into safe mode and stopped it from running at startup, then reinstalled it later.
After this I left O.C. my GPU for a bit.....okay 2 days, then tried it again, the auto overclock finally settled at the settings -
Coreclock raised from 775 - 840 Mhz
Memoryclock raised from 1000 - 1040 Mhz.

I've done some tests using 3D Vantage and got the following results:


Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Test 4

Score P5732 P6075 P6009 P6135
C.p.u. Score 8214 8061 8015 8809
Graphics 5207 5614 5546 5571
Jane Nash 15 FPS 16 FPS 16 FPS 16 FPS
New Calico 15 FPS 16 FPS 16 FPS 16 FPS
AI Test 1041 1028 1014 1118
Physics Test 13 12 13 14

Test 1 was everything at standard settings
Test 2 Had the graphics at 840 Core/c and 1000 Mem/c
Test 3 Had the graphics at 840 Core/c and 1040 Mem/c
Test 4 Had the Cpu at 2.72 Ghz and the graphics at the setting in test 3.

Thats basically all I've done, nothing drastic however in the tests 1-3 my C.P.U was at its stock value and theres a 200 point value drop in its score, is the due to the graphics being overclocked impacting on it or is it just the C.P.U score fluctuating?

Thanks for reading, If anyone has any suggestions on getting a bit more out of my system I'll gladly accept it ( Doubtful though eps. seeing as it appears the first gen. phenoms are bad overclockers lol )

 

[Doco]

Just a note - I seem to be having difficulty using the multipler, even if I just keep the 200 bus and go to 13.5X I get a blue screen ?

 

[j.col]

Hi Doco, i am not familiar with AMD cpu's but i will try.

first of all raising it from 2.6 to 2.7 will have no affect while gaming, but if you got over 3.0 then you should see some difference.

please stop going higher with the overclock, until you get a proper cooler.
i may be wrong but 65.c is dangerously hot for your cpu, and it may be shutting down to save itself.
what case have you? and what is the air flow like? (basically what fans have you in it)

for your gpu, download msi afterburner, and run it.
also download furmark.
in msi afterburner, raise the bar by about 20 mhz and then do a 10 min run of furmark.
if temps are ok and there is no artifacting, then raise it again by 20 mhz and test again, keep repeating until it gets too hot.

 

[dante`afk]

as already said, a proper cooler is necessary for some nice oc results.

read some basics about phenom overclocking
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023

the gpu overclock seems fine, are you checking temps ? > download gpu-z and msi afterburner.

i personally wouldnt recommend furmark, it kills gpus

some runs of vantage and 3DM11 and some games should be fine for stability tests, also gpu tool from techpowerup is good.

 

[Doco]

J.col - I act. dont game XD, real reason is because I've been using my set up from 2009 and really just want to see what potential (if any) I can get out of my system - spice things up if you will lol.

Yeh the 65 degrees is under full load, and idle sit between 53-54 degrees last few days, my air flow is pathetic im running a min-tower -
The last few days I've been looking for a cpu cooler but they all seem rather large for my case, any suggestions?

I'm happy with with my gpu overclock, temps are fine - depending on usage always around 47-53ish I think no hotter, but I overclocked it to find my limit and restored it to default settings and only use the overclock when I want to compare how it will compare to stock settings.

Additional - more tinkering allowed me to increase the bus, keeping everything auto I can get the bus to 215 and its stable, but not wanting to test fate I lowered it to 210 and decided to up the multiplier to 13.5, system boots up, ran an AVG scan on high priority browsed the internet and watched some youtube videos - all the while keeping an eye on temperatures - idle temps were 54 degress, when I had finished using the pc I decided to run an OCCT scan...crashed within seconds - even though I had full usage of the pc for around an hour and a half?

 

[j.col]

that case is pants, (sorry) that is one of your problems, there must be hardly any air moving through that case, that is why you have very high idle temps of 54.c
have you cleaned the inside/air vents in the case, even remove the side, that should help get it cooler.
i wouldn't buy a cooler yet, you need better ventilation, i would buy a cheap case like the antec 300 (buy used, not new)

turn it back to its stock speed as you are in danger of frying your cpu.
and do not run OCCT again, i said in my first post, the pc is crashing because its too hot, and its shutting down to save itself.

also remove that link, you are not allowed to mention or link to other pc stores, you will be warned by the dons

 

[Doco]

Idle is 57 the 53 degrees is the side panel removed XD, Yeh Its dust free, I regularly do this from my experience of vents on a laptop lol. Agreed the case is crap, but the system was the best I could afford at the time.

I'll look into a cheap case then thanks, and I'l remove the link sorry XD.