Hitting a wall with Phenom II

Scougar · 23 Aug 2013 at 00:22

Ok, So I have a Phenom II and I've had it for quite some time totally stable at 3.6Ghz. When I tried to overclock beyond this I was always met with rather rather failures, or bad peformance. It's not heat as I'm under 55C when at this, and even if I disable some of the cores, it still shows the same behaviour.

No amount of extra voltage on the main core will help, and reducing memory frequency settings doesn't seem to work. Am I missing something vital being a relatively newbie with Phenoms? I try to go to 3.7ghz and it fails within 15 mins, 3.8 easily within 5 mins.

At 3.6Ghz:

CPU @ 1.425V stable.
CPU-NB @ 1.25V recommended as per Dolks guide
Running (I think) North-bridge at 2400 and the NB-HTT (?!?) at 2200 as per Dolks guide.
Running 18x 200Mhz (Black Edition so unlocked Multi).

Temps normally under 50C under load.

I'm asking as I was going to buy a 750/920 to replace this, but decided to choose RL priorities over this, so need to extend the performance.

Kei · 23 Aug 2013 at 13:36

Cpu voltage can go all the way up to 1.55V safely provided you have sufficient cooling.
CPU-NB can go up to 1.5V too, though I'd avoid exceeding 1.4.

My older 2009 C2 stepping 955 has been running at 3.75GHz for 4 years with 1.456V and the CPU-NB has been running for the last 3 months at 2.66GHz with 1.3V. This is running at 15.5x 242mhz. (11x for NB) Keep the HT link below 2100mhz ideally, mine is 8x 242 giving 1936mhz, which doesn't cause any performance hit. Above 2000mhz supposedly causes instability problems.

Scougar · 23 Aug 2013 at 16:07

Thanks Kei, I'll give those things a shot tonight.

JonSmith · 23 Aug 2013 at 22:09

Keep the HTT at 2000. It's better to have it below 2000 rather than above. The HTT clock has no effect on performance but a huge effect on stability if you start raising it. I'm not surprised you're having problems with it at 2200.

Scougar · 23 Aug 2013 at 23:51

Really? I thought according to Dolk's guide you were meant to raise it?

Scougar · 24 Aug 2013 at 02:16

Been doing some more testing, and as it turns out.. I'm hitting 59/60 C at 3.6Ghz in Prime :-(

(To be fair this was in a boxed up room, so it's the first time I've seen this sort of temp)

Obviously my CM Hyper 212 (original) is not doing a good enough job. (2X sickeflows at 2000RPM).

I tried again this morning, and max temp was 55 C, which is what didn't have me worried last time, but now I think I just need a better cooler (Not gonna happen any time soon lol).