Advice for a novice on Overclocking my new computer

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bryanb58

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Good day everyone,

I am an avid pc gamer and have just recently taken an interest in overclocking, as my new pc came with a pretty hefty cpu cooler (coolermaster V6).

My specs are as follows:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T w/ coolermaster v6
12 GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance RAM
Cooler Master eXtreme Plus 700W PSU
ATI Radeon 6850 HD running at 830/1075

Now with regards to temps... I am kind of unsure which reading is correct. When I look in AMD overdrive at the status page of cpu Ive never seen it go above 25C...but for some reason I dont think that is the right reading...as most people seem to report higher then that. There is another reading in the extras sensors that will show around 40C I think that one might be a little more realistic?

What I am looking to find out is what the best way would be to overclock the processor. I have seen/heard that windows based tuners are no good, and that doing it from the BIOS is the best way. I also see that most people say you just slowly bump the base clock (200mhz) up 5 mhz at a time and I guess if it doesnt crash go until it does and then up the voltage a notch and then try again, etc. Is this exactly what I want to do? Are there any other considerations I should be aware of?

While Im here starting a post about overclocking, I also have a question about my video card. I am using msi afterburner to OC my card and right now I have it at 830/1075 and it seems that my games are running fine. I have experienced something weird though. When I stability test it with furmark and kombustor, I can put the card to the max allowable levels (850/1200) and it doesnt go above 70C which as far as I know is a perfectly acceptable temp. I ran it for 2 hours one night and it just stayed constant. I am using a custom fan profile too. However, when I load crysis 2 or black ops, the computer crashes. I'll be playing and out of nowhere, at a random point (ranged from 5 min to 20 min) the TV goes black saying no signal, I hear sound for 5 seconds and then it crashes and I hear the sound loop and I have to hard reset. Does anyone know for any reason why I can stability test it so well but then boom games crash like that? I have reinstalled the drivers (using driver sweep to rid everything) and I updated the VGA bios too.

Sorry for the long post, I am just eager to get this squared away and I hope some experts out there can give me some good input as the video card especially kind of bothers me.

Thanks a lot in advance everyone.

Bryan
 
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saint19

saint19

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Those TMPIN0, 1 and 2 are for mobo, NB and CPU (not sure the order), but looks fine for me since you will never go at the same use that stress test programs, the temps maybe never hit that temps again.

Regarding the BSoD, your rig is safe with it, even if sound dangerous the "Blue screen of dead" it's for protect your rig.
 
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bryanb58

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Hey Saint19,

Ok right on, yea I have noticed if I run Crysis 2 and run HW monitor the temps are never nearly as high as what I get on prime95.

Good to know about the bsod. I understand the risks in overclocking, but as long as my temps are good and the odd crash isnt hurting it then it makes me feel a bit better in knowing I am not hurting my new comp too bad in any way.

I ran prime95 for almost 4 hours today and it was good. I want to be able to do 6-8 before I am somewhat happy (I just didn't have the time to keep it going and I think for now 4 hours is at least decent) so I will try it again tonight overnight.

If I want to try to raise the FSB so its at 3.8 (I think around 270 fsb). I am wondering about the HT, NB and even Dram voltages. you had said previously that when I want to go for this I will have to alter other voltages as well. Can you enlighten me on which ones I will need to also be raising at this point? or should I just try it at 1.375 and see if its stable like that?

Thanks
 
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bryanb58

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Hey Saint19,

Alright I just finally got a chance to change some settings. I bumped the FSB up to 270. cpu = 3.78 Ghz NB and HT are at 2160 Mhz and dram I downclocked a bit to 1439 because if I left that multiplier the same it would have been 1800 and that seemed a little high (besides I don't want my ram crapping out on me, I wanna make sure the CPU is good to go first, then I can worry about bumping that up later.

I left it at 1.375 first, ran prime95 and it bsod'd in about a minute lol. Then I bumped it up to 1.4 and tried again. It ran for about 20 minutes, but I had to stop it because I have to goto bed and I'd rather watch it at this point and make sure its ok for at least an hour or so before I leave it on its own. So thats good that it didnt crap out immediately, but tomorrow morning I will test longer and see how it holds up.

The temps this time were a tiny bit higher, but only by about a degree or so. I am kind of scared to leave it without watching it because I am worried the temps will somehow start to soar. Just tell me that the temps stabilize generally in the first few minutes and I will feel more confident. I wasn't so worried closer to stock voltage but now that Ive moved it up a bit I am obviously a bit more nervous...But I definitely want to keep going with this! I will test it in the morning and let you know if it fails after a good 4 hours or so.

I know I write a lot lol...also you had mentioned changing some other voltages at this level. Is there anything else I should change or does the fact that it didnt crap out immediately mean I shouldn't have to alter any of the other voltages yet?

Thanks!!!!
 
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bryanb58

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Hey Saint19,

I ran prime95 for 2 hours this morning and it went well. CPU temp maxed at about 49. I am going to wait out to try for 4 ghz (which is my ultimate goal) until tomorrow because I have company coming for easter dinner today.

I guess the first thing will be to try at 1.4 and then bump it up until I get it stable. I know when you get it to 4 ghz, you can reduce the other multipliers so that the HT and NB remain at 2000 Mhz and I will make sure the RAM is not too high as well.

It seems if that is the case that the only voltage to remain higher then stock should be CPU, but I will report back tomorrow when I do this and maybe those other "calibration" voltages you mentioned can come into play if I cannot get it to run stable like that.

Thanks again for all your help...I am VERY happy that I have gotten this high thus far.

Bryan
 
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bryanb58

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Hey Saint19,

I ran prime95 for 2 hours this morning and it went well. CPU temp maxed at about 49. I am going to wait out to try for 4 ghz (which is my ultimate goal) until tomorrow because I have company coming for easter dinner today.

I guess the first thing will be to try at 1.4 and then bump it up until I get it stable. I know when you get it to 4 ghz, you can reduce the other multipliers so that the HT and NB remain at 2000 Mhz and I will make sure the RAM is not too high as well.

It seems if that is the case that the only voltage to remain higher then stock should be CPU, but I will report back tomorrow when I do this and maybe those other "calibration" voltages you mentioned can come into play if I cannot get it to run stable like that.

Thanks again for all your help...I am VERY happy that I have gotten this high thus far.

Bryan
 
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bryanb58

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Hey saint19,

This morning I tried bumping up to fsb 286, cpu 4004 mhz, nb and ht 2002, and dram 1524 mhz. I i had to bump the voltage up to 1.475 otherwise it was crashing basically immediately. When I ran it at 1.475 it ran prime for about 10-15 min then bsod'd. So as per your last post I should try doing 1.5? so long is it doesnt go above 55?

Again I don't think it seems like I should have to change any of the other voltages but if you think I should change something else that might help too?

If I have hit my limit at 3.78 I am still very happy to have gotten it this far but i will wait for what you have to say about this and take it from there.

Thanks
 
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bryanb58

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Hey saint19,

I tested at 1.5, the core temps never went above 48. TMPIN0 was 34 max, TMPIN1 55 max and TMPIN2 68 max

I ran for just under 2 hours and 1 core got an error and stopped but the remainder were still working.

I will revert to my previous settings for now. Is there any other settings I could change to fix this?

Thanks
 
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bryanb58

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Before I do this I need to confirm 2 things. First that with these setting (CPU 4004mhz, ht 2002) I can only get NB up to 2860 but I assume that is close enough. Secondly there are 2 voltages relating to NB in the bios. NB voltage control which is already at 1.3 by default and the. CPU NB VID control which is at 1.15 normally. Based on what you said It should be the NB voltage control I'm changing right? I will wait for your reply and then start bumping that up. In the mean time I'm going to install another fan in my comp :)
 
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bryanb58

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Alright I tried this. When I booted up I immediately got a bsod. it said it shut down because of MEMORY_MANAGEMENT. I dont exactly know what that means? memory is at 1524 mhz.

Maybe I just can't get it up that high? I should mention that at my current settings (3.78 ghz, 2160 NB and HT, and 1440 dram) 1.4V cpu core. I ran prime95 for 8 hours and it did not bsod. I had one core fail, after 3 hours, so I don't know how to interpret that (just need to bump up the core voltage a bit more?).

You have been of amazing assistance to me Saint19, I am still totally interested in getting my comp maxed, I just want to make sure you arent starting to get annoyed as this has gone on for a while hahaha. Let me know what you think about all this.
 
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bryanb58

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It says on the website its rated at 1.5. But I know this memory is designed for overclocking and the first website you pull up they say they put it at 1.65 to test the max potential so does that mean I should still try it?

Thanks!
 
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bryanb58

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Lol too late I'm running at 1.65. I found some posts online and it seems running .15 over is still OK so I just went with that. The comp booted and I'm running prime now so I'll see how long it goes till it crashes.

So...

CPU 4004 MHz @ 1.5v
NB 2860 MHz @ CPU NB vid 1.3v
Ht 2000 MHz
Dram 1524 MHz @ 1.65v

So if it crashes again then bump up the NB vid voltage until stable or max 1.4.

I'll report back with how long Prime runs for anyway.
 
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bryanb58

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Hey saint19,

Ok so when I ran it with the above specs it was good for about 30 minutes and one core failed the test. I had to go out so it left running. About 2 hours later when I got home the program was still running but just with one core stopped. I assume this implies instability but what does it mean when 1 core fails but the others continue on? I'm trying on 1.375 now
 
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saint19

saint19

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Well, could mean instability but how we said some post above you will never use the CPU at the same percentage that prim95 does. In that points, maybe you can run it with those specs and the rig never fail or fail after five minutes.

Let me know how the test ends.
 
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bryanb58

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Hey saint19,

The test ran until 2 hours and at that point one core failed. Should I up the NB vid to 1.4 and try again? Is there anything else at this point that I should change? the CPU cores maxed at 50. The other TMP temps were all about the same as previous. I am pretty happy that I got it to 2 hours. I was going to turn it off right as that failure happened tho so that was kind of annoying grrrr.

At this point it feels a lot better than it did before. I would love for it to be able to run for at least 6 hours or so before I am completely satisfied though.
 
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bryanb58

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Ok to be honest, 3.8 ghz felt a lot better, I feel like that is still a good overclock. So...if I go with these settings:

FSB 270
CPU 3.78 Ghz @ 1.4V
HT and NB 2160 Mhz
Dram 1440 Mhz

As mentioned previously I ran this overnight and although I had it still running after 7-8 hours one core had failed after 3 hours. Is my solution to this to keep bumping up vcore until it lasts longer?

I am unsure why when going up to 4 ghz I started to play with the NB voltage. Will this come into play again?

Thanks Saint19
 
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