Am I safe to overclock?

[Fapjack]

I have just got Just Cause 3 and I am loving every minute of it, but my CPU which is an FX 6300 is letting me down and causing me to lag. I have a M5A97 LE R2.0 MoBo, GTX 770, Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU cooler Corsair 500m PSU. The problem is I am worried about my wattage raising because I know I am at 460w at load and 511 recommended already and I don't know if I can overclock it without exceeding. Can anyone help please?

Thanks

 

[CountMike]

Temperate OC shouldn't raise power requirements too much. Even at 4.2 GHZ it won't be over 110w and processor is normally 95W. The mobo and it's VRM are of more concern.

 

[Sakkura]

Maybe buy some heatsinks to put on the VRMs first. I know the Enzotech VRM heatsinks are popular for the VRMs on water-cooled GPUs, they should work on motherboard VRMs too.

 

[Fapjack]

So would 4.2 GHz with the Mobo's VRM still be fine or should I not go that far?

 

[CountMike]

So would 4.2 GHz with the Mobo's VRM still be fine or should I not go that far?

Should be attainable, it's not too far from turbo speed. You should really put a small 40 -50 mm fan over VRM section.

 

[maddogfargo]

I have just got Just Cause 3 and I am loving every minute of it, but my CPU which is an FX 6300 is letting me down and causing me to lag. I have a M5A97 LE R2.0 MoBo, GTX 770, Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU cooler Corsair 500m PSU. The problem is I am worried about my wattage raising because I know I am at 460w at load and 511 recommended already and I don't know if I can overclock it without exceeding. Can anyone help please?

Thanks

Well, that motherboard looks like it has a 4+1 or 4+2 phase power circuit with no cooling on the MOSFETs. Asus usually uses good quality components on these VRMs, but adding some cooling would be a good idea. Something like this will work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835708011

Just don't go crazy with the voltages. Most FX 6300-6350 can hit 4.4-4.5 GHz on stock or near stock voltage with good cooling. So your target of 4.2 is reasonable.

 

[computers_are_freaky]

rule of thumb: always have 20% more wattage than you need. You are already quite close to this limit. I would advise getting a new psu before attempting any major OC, but like everyone else said, you should be fine raising the multiplier but not the voltages.

 

[affinitydesigns]

You are reaching the upper limit of your power consumption on the GPU, in terms of overclocking your CPU, it shouldn't cause too much of an issue as you can't really feed it too much more energy so you should be fine. However, since you're operating at the high end, you'll be stressing that PSU more than you probably want to and it won't be nearly as efficient as if you had a 650/700w 80+ certified PSU. The 80+ standard is used to indicate how efficient a PSU is at an 80 percent load. That's the sweet spot. Using more than 80% and you probably wanted a larger PSU, using well under and you went overkill.