Advice on overclocking AMD FX6300 ... purely out of enthusiasm.

[Rafiul27]

Hi, i have overclocked my fx6300 which is stock at 3.5ghz on a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P motherboard with a Corsair H80 cooler. I've had this build for over 3 years and have never really thought about overclocking until recently purely out of enthusiasm rather than practicality since it's still functioning decently for my current needs.

After some tweaking, im on 4.4ghz (increased CPU ratio from 17.5 to 22 and running @1.332v (Boosted vcore +0.25 in BIOS) with a 100% load Prime95. My socket and CPU core temperatures haven't exceeded 48 degrees after a quick 30 minute test Small FFT and the temps look very very stable and aren't looking to increase in the coming minutes/hours. (Plan to stress test for at least a few hours tomorrow and then even longer depending on the results)

Is there anything else in particular i should watch out for?

If a test fails in prime95, what is the solution, simply increasing the voltage or reducing the overclock speed?

Opinions on how long i should run it for? regarding stability issues the pc is only used for recreational purposes, nothing of too much importance is on there and is powered on maybe 6-10hours/day

Thanks

 

[Elysian890]

Well let me say you got lucky on the silicon lottery, 200x22 @ 1.33v is great and you could go higher with your chip
You might hit 200x24 @ 1.41v ... if p95 fails increase the vcore by .1, if it gets unstable adjust your LLC to compensate the vdroop and tweak CPU-NB + HT frequencies

I used to run a 6300 256x19.5 @ 1.48v 24/7 for gaming, but with a 990 board and tweaking voltages for days to get it stable, I used to run p95 for an hour and then test it with games, I had to boost FSB to get even more juice, good times, the 6300 is a great overclocker, shame I had to switch to Intel because of my graphics card, it used to bottleneck even the 9590

 

[Rafiul27]

Well let me say you got lucky on the silicon lottery, 200x22 @ 1.33v is great and you could go higher with your chip
You might hit 200x24 @ 1.41v ... if p95 fails increase the vcore by .1, if it gets unstable adjust your LLC to compensate the vdroop and tweak CPU-NB + HT frequencies

I used to run a 6300 256x19.5 @ 1.48v 24/7 for gaming, but with a 990 board and tweaking voltages for days to get it stable, I used to run p95 for an hour and then test it with games, I had to boost FSB to get even more juice, good times, the 6300 is a great overclocker, shame I had to switch to Intel because of my graphics card, it used to bottleneck even the 9590

yeah i thought i got lucky too, i see people with unstable 4.4ghz+ with vcores 1.4-1.5volts!
im planning an upgrade to intel since this build is over 3 years old and the fx6300 i believe is/will bottleneck my new gtx1060 to its full potential for sure. But its a huge upgrade on my previous HD7850 so i'm not complaining or in a rush to upgrade the mobo+cpu, hence my interest in squeezing a bit more juice out of the 6300 before its traded in/sold/kept for spares!

back to the post - i'll try that tomorrow/monday and get back to you via this post with results. I've heard the maximum "safe zone" is 1.5v for FX processors, so me running 4.4ghz @1.332v seems pretty awesome with a lot of potential to fry this chip haha.

My only issue with the FSB and ratios are that my ram is only limited to 1600mhz... tweaking the FSB gives me BSOD's with incompatible ram speeds so my only way to OC with my current ram modules is to continue ramping the ratio which is a default 200mhz. NB +HT frequencies are on default 2000 and 2400mhz. Haven't touched them.

Is this an issue? what's better, OC with FSB or ratio's or both?

 

[Rafiul27]

Well let me say you got lucky on the silicon lottery, 200x22 @ 1.33v is great and you could go higher with your chip
You might hit 200x24 @ 1.41v ... if p95 fails increase the vcore by .1, if it gets unstable adjust your LLC to compensate the vdroop and tweak CPU-NB + HT frequencies

I used to run a 6300 256x19.5 @ 1.48v 24/7 for gaming, but with a 990 board and tweaking voltages for days to get it stable, I used to run p95 for an hour and then test it with games, I had to boost FSB to get even more juice, good times, the 6300 is a great overclocker, shame I had to switch to Intel because of my graphics card, it used to bottleneck even the 9590

So i'm currently OC'd @4.6ghz 1.416v

Bearing in mind 4.4ghz was @ 1.332v.

when i was testing prime95, core 1 and 2 simply shut off and didn't continue with testing but cores 3,4,5,6 continued. i think this was the vdroop, so i increased the voltage incrementally until i got it where it needed to be, currently testing prime95, i'm 15 mins in with no core failures but ill keep an eye on it.

temperatures for 4.6ghz @ 1.416v are 60 degrees celcius 100% load.

NB @ stock 2000mhz. HT @ stock 2400mhz.

Ratio is at 23x200mhz FSB = 4.6ghz.

Ram corsair vengeance 8gb @ 1600mhz (OC'd, stock clock 1333mhz)

Do you reckon i can push it more? i want to hit that 4.8ghz lol, but will it be worth the extra heat/power consumption/cpu health etc..