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Help overclocking a X2 550 BE

Mr. May

Mr. May

Mr. May

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2009
Posts
3,473
Location
Derby
hello all and welcome to my thread before i start this is my 1st amd sytem i have every tried overclocking so please bare with me :(

so to begin with iam building a rig for my mates dad atm the rig is only half complete still wait on a cpu cooler to turn up and graphics card the specs are as follows

X2 550 BE (on stock cooling atm)
Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 G880 (really dont have a clue about this bios)
2x2gb of 2000mhz G-skill Ripjaws
HD4870 512mb
corsair TX650w
WD Black 1tb 6gb/s
2x 22xDVD-RW

so far ive managed to ulock the cpu to a quad core and got it 3.4ghz prime stable for 30 mins and hasnt gone over 66 degrees with stock cooling but i feel it has got a lot more left in it as i have only alted the multi and if i run the ram over 1600mhz it will crash just before gettin into windows

the settings are atm

Vcore 1.416v (whats the highest i can safely go on this ?)
FSB ? 200mhz (altering this 5mhz higher and it will crash)
multi x17 (cant get it any higher than this 17.5=3500=crash)
ram 1600mhz (cant seem to get the rated 2000mhz in any off the options?)
vram 1.65v (is this to high as it stated at 1.6 but it wont go over 1440mhz at that voltage)
loadline calibration cpu enabled
loadline calibration cpu/nb enabled
C1 off
AMD cool'n'quite enabled (would this be better off ?)


these are the only settings i have changed as iam a bit clueless about the rest any help would be helpful would like 3.6 really but its not for me and i think the guy who is going from a P4 with 256 of ram wouldnt really notice a extra 200mhz but as ive said iam sure i can push more out off it as i think it was great bundle CPU/MOB/RAM for less the £240 the whole rig has only cost £460 just trying to see how much bang for buck i can get out off it as a little side project so any of you amd oc'ers can you help this little sad intel boy :D

many thanks in advance
 
well first things first, where are you getting that temperature reading from? When unlocked, phenom core temp probes dont work, and you have to rely on the motherboard sensor (usually TMPIN0 or TMPIN1). Depending on the board, this probe could be anywhere from 5-10.C cooler than the actual temp, so your actual temps are in the region of 70-75.c, which brings me to my second point. Thats waaay too hot for a phenom. My guess is you're using the stock dual core cooler trying to cool an unlocked quad core (i did that too...). The maximum reccomended temperature for a phenom II is 62.C

The max safe voltage for phenoms is considered to be 1.55v with max 24/7 being around 1.475v, but forget about overvolting the quad with the stock cooler. It WILL frazzle.

probably best to leave cool n quiet off for the time being whilst you're still playing with it, but its a nice feature to put back on when its all nice and stable.
 
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oh okay didnt know that thought they where good for 70 degrees and iam gettin my temps from AI suite which are from the motherboard arnt they ?
 
i would imagine so. I use AMD overdrive because i tend to find motherboard manufacturer software really good, but with extremely 'in your face' skins
 
I have my cpu at 1.45v, its a phenom II 550 at a dual, it it will unlock to a tri though but i hate the fact of no temperature monitoring :(.
i use 16 x 237 = around 3.792
However when overclocking make sure you have the ht link set to 10x and not auto as if you put the fsb over 224 it will lower the ht.
As for cooling i use a tuniq tower 120 extreme which keeps me sub 20 degrees at idle nd sub 30s under load.
I use AOD for monitoring temps etc. and making small changes that i forget to make in the bios, but imo the bios is a much better way of overclocking due to AOD limited features.

Just my 2p
 
Arcimbaldo said:
I have my cpu at 1.45v, its a phenom II 550 at a dual, it it will unlock to a tri though but i hate the fact of no temperature monitoring :(.
i use 16 x 237 = around 3.792
However when overclocking make sure you have the ht link set to 10x and not auto as if you put the fsb over 224 it will lower the ht.
As for cooling i use a tuniq tower 120 extreme which keeps me sub 20 degrees at idle nd sub 30s under load.
I use AOD for monitoring temps etc. and making small changes that i forget to make in the bios, but imo the bios is a much better way of overclocking due to AOD limited features.

Just my 2p
Click to expand...

just set the cpu/nb and the HT link to 2000mhz so there fixed and i've managed to boot at 3.57 about to blend test is the AOD stababilty test any good?
 
No.
Its terrible really, my pc survived that for an hour at 3.85 ghz which made me think it actually worked!
Booted up prime 95 blend test and it died instantly :(,
Btw do you plan on overclocking the multiplier only? or the fsb aswell?
 
both i would like to seehow far this chip can go iam giving it a rest for tonight and going to wait for the cooler to come tommorrow and give it another go :D
 
aye, the stablilty test is a bit rubbish. Also, the latest version of overdrive seems to not like multiplier overclocking with BE CPUs on some machines (im using the second to last release atm, probably should have mentioned that before...)

As to how far you can go is anyones guess with an unlocked chip. Ive seen some stuggling to clear 3.5ghz, or ones like mine that can just about scrape 4. I think the good majority hit 3.7-3.8 though without a great deal of volts.
 
All will do 3.4-3.6 on stock volts, bumping up volts will usually let you go to around 3.8, anything higher than that requires extreme volts and is not worth it.

I currently run mine 555BE at 3.4 but undervolted with higher HT/NB and lower mem timings @ 1640mhz.

It's best to keep them under 50c I'd say, had done some testing in the past, my would bench fine above 4ghz but as soon as temps hit 50-52c it instantly crashes, For high 24/7 clock I think the best I found was around 3.75ghz with just 1.46v and 2770 NB/HT and ram @ ¬1700mhz.

Been using 17.5 multi and 213fsb for that.

Anything above around 3.8 requires 1.52-1.55v through it which I don't think is worth it for an extra 150-200mhz.
 
many thanks people for the replys what pheonix says sounds about right as iam benching and it goes past about 55 it will crash so gotta wait for the cooler to turn up doesnt look like its going to be today as my graphics card has turned up ill be doing a build log on it soon and some benchmarks when iam finished
 
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with me that chip happily hit 59c in prime95 without problems -



the new cooler will deffo help loads though as my tx3 wasn't up to cooling it as a quad.

also i think cool and quiet disables as soon as you change the multiplier as thats what it did with me.
 
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chipps101 said:
with me that chip happily hit 59c in prime95 without problems
Click to expand...

It's on stock volts and clock/ht/nb tho ( well nearly stock ).

Pump it up to 3.9ghz+ and see if it goes to 59c then : ).
The reading could have been wrong too.

---------
edit, deffo wrong reading I'd say, there's no way it goes up to 59c on that settings even with stock cooler on it unless your room is like 30c and case has no cooling whatsoever.

If we took 10c off, that would be about right @ 49c, but you can try pushing it higher and see what you get, not all chips are the same.
 
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that reading is correct and pretty average for an unlocked phenom 550 at that kind of speed without high end cooling, i think you are quoting temps for a dual and not a quad ?
 
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