Overlooking my AMD X2 240

[lee20010]

as the title says. Although my Sig suggests I've got my cpu at 3.1ghz. i put it back to stock as i thought my chip was running hot at 44c-50c. Maybe Im paranoid.

All I did was up the frequency from 200 to 217...but what's a safe overclock. Could someone suggest some settings please

thanks

 

[Hagar]

44 - 50C is not hot under load, but was that using prime or something?

Are you using a stock cooler? 60C is a practical upper limit for daily use.

250 is my 24/7 overclock but am using a thermalright TRUE heatsink. Max 50C with Prime.

You will easily do 230+ from my experience with the Athlon 240 but you do need to monitor temperatures under load.

Maybe you could also undervolt the vcore in the bios a notch or two.

 

[lee20010]

if i use the AMD overclock software. whenever I go above 215...i blue screen lol. Those temps are during playing crisis 2

edit. my cooler is Cooler Master Hyper TX3

 

[Hagar]

Download

prime 95
HWmonitor
CPUz

Bios overclocking is the way to go. You may be overclocking the PCIe as well which is not recommended, fix it at 100Mhz.

 

[lee20010]

Download

prime 95
HWmonitor
CPUz

Bios overclocking is the way to go. You may be overclocking the PCIe as well which is not recommended, fix it at 100Mhz.

how long do i run prima?

what max speeds am i looking at?

 

[Reaper 392]

have you tried unlocking any of the cores, or is the athlon X2 one of those that cant be unlocked. that will give you more benefit in gaming over any overclock you manage.

as for the temps, as long as it stays below 62C in prime95 small fft test for a couple of hours everything is fine

*edit*
to run prime simply download the program, open it and select small fft test, 2 threads, and leave it.

you will want to have no other programs in the background except for whatever you use to monitor the processor temperature and motherboard temperature

 

[lee20010]

i will do that after work tonight. Im sure it only has 2 cores. Its hard to look it up as Im using my mobile to post on here lol

edit* I just noticed we have similar specs

 

[Reaper 392]

edit* I just noticed we have similar specs

thats why i was saying about the core unlocker. i know my motherboard has a core unlocker (which i dont need) so i thought yours would too

 

[lee20010]

I'll check now, just got home, checked my idle temps and it's down to 31c. Even if my pc is abit noisy

GUnna check bios now

 

[Reaper 392]

i dont think the core unlocker is in the bios, but im happy to be proved wrong. when i boot my PC up i get some screen that says "press F11 to activate core unlocker" or something similar.

will see if i can find a picture of it

*edit*
just had a look and your motherboard doesnt support core unlocking
guess its just standard overclocking for you then

 

[lee20010]

Sucks, but to be honest I bought this PC mainly as a web browser last year, then added ram, gfx card and new drives...Will be getting new pc in few months, but need this to run smoother on high end games. Got CPU-Z open, how do I upload pics??

 

[lee20010]

an update... been running over an hour max temp 43c on a 2.97ghz oc

 

[lee20010]

Hmmm AMD overdrive sucks...I put it 1 mhz higher on the hyperlink..and crash.

Suggestions please. Pretty sure 2.97ghz isn't the max, temps are very low too

 

[Reaper 392]

you really want to do your overclocking in the BIOS. as long as you keep the Vcore below 1.5V (i think its 1.5V for AMD chips), leave the other voltages alone and only fiddle around with the FSB and multiplier you will be fine.

thats what i'll be doing when i finally get around to overclocking my PC

 

[lee20010]

i have no idea what to do in the settings though...

 

[|Thomas|]

i have no idea what to do in the settings though...

Read this guide. It's very old, but still applicable.

Essentially you have to manually set the front side bus (FSB) frequency. The final clock is dictated by:

FSB x multiplier = Final Clock speed

So for example for my athlon 620 I have a FSB of 255 and a multiplier of 13. Therefore the final clock is 255 x 13 = 3315Mhz

To get the highest stable FSB, you'll need to manually set the voltage going to the cpu (vcore). Search here for your cpu and find the recommended range for which the voltages your cpu can take. So we have an iterative process of something like:

1. Increase FSB
2. Check stability. If it's stable, go back to step 1. If not, increase vcore by the smallest increment your motherboard allows.
3. Check temperatures and stability. If it's stable and temperatures are ok, go back to 1. If temperatures are too high, stop.

Something like that anyway . I'm not great at overclocking myself!