Newbie Too Overclocking

[Kellogz]

Hey guys well ive had my rig for a month now i just wanted to "break it in" before i atempted to overclock or anything. Now its been great i havent has a single problem with it so far so now ive decided its time to give overclocking a go. I dont have a clue where to start or what i need so ill list my Spec and than you can hopefully help me where to begin.

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz
Asus M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower Case with Window
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 5850

Thanks

 

[eddyc]

Well you have a BE cpu so overclocking will be relatively easy. Do you have an aim in mind or are you just going for the maximum you can get it stable?

In the simplest terms the technique will be to go into BIOS and increase the cpu multiplier. This will cause the cpu to run at a faster clock rate. Once you have set the multi you will need to check that this new cpu speed is stable. You can do this by running a stability test. Most people take a 8+ hour run of prime95 blend test to indicate good stability.

If your setting fails the blend test (system / program crash). Then you will need to either lower the multi or increase the cpu vcore (the voltage going into the chip). The max recommended vcore is 1.5 so dont go above that unless you want to take the risk.

Have a read through the Phenom II Overclocking thread any questions you have will most likely be answered there.

3.8GHz is a good speed to aim at for a 24/7 clock. Good luck