amd fx 8120 overclocking help please

[allegedsin]

how do i overclock my amd fx 8120 from stock speed of 3.1

now my pc is really cool i have the antec khular 920 so i should be able to overclock as for my mobo if this matters its a biostar ta970

cant figure out how to overclock but my freinds say i should becuase i will get much faster speeds and i have everything needed to

?

 

[ingtar33]

ok. overclocking is pretty easy to do... first i suggest you read this

http://www.overclock.net/t/902756/amd-overclock-guide-for-newbs

it's important to know what you're doing so start there. there are good guides out there to overclocking phenomII cpus as well, and the general principle is the same for your FX. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023 This is an outstanding guide if you want to learn more about what you're doing, granted a bit of the specific details are different for the fx cpu but the general principle and techniques are the same.

As for your cpu, the quick and dirty of it would be to load into your bios. go to the advanced settings tab. change the clock settings from automatic to manual. then bump the CPU multiplier by 0.5. save and restart your machine. see if you can load into windows. if you can, restart the computer and bump the cpu multiplier another +0.5. save and load into windows. do this until windows crashes your computer on startup, or the computer doesn't POST. don't worry if it won't post, after 3 failed attempts to POST motherboards will reset their own bios back to basic settings. If that doesn't happen, just clr_cmos, and start from the last good multiplier number. now we need to start to bump voltages.

Go you your vcore number, and change it from automatic to manual. the baseline vcore number should be something like 1.3250V... something in that range... bump the vcore 1 step up (depending on the motherboard you can either set the vcore manually to whatever number you chose or it will go in small bumps of 0.0125V; if its manual use the 0.0125V as your base line bump in voltage. it's a good small number and you won't hurt anything with it). so bump the vcore by +.0125V save and restart the machine, load into windows and download prime95. you're going to want to get hwmonitor as well, and keep an eye on your cpu and motherboard temps. run prime95 for a few passes and make sure the cpu temps don't break 68C, make sure the motherboard doesn't get up over 10C over ambient temps (the socket temp should be about the same as the cpu temps so don't worry about that one.)

As long as you have an aftermarket cpu cooler you should be able to get something of an overclock going, solid case airflow will keep temps low despite the torture test of prime95.

Prime will probably crash on you, or the system will blue screen... in which case you're going to bump your vcore another step up. keep bumping the vcore as needed, and keep a close eye on temps when you run prime95. more vcore means more temps. If you hit your thermal limit before the system can run prime95, you'll need to lower the multiplier by 0.5C or get a better cpu cooler. and see if your stabilize it without overheating.

there is a lot more to overclocking like your nb frequency, and ram or even the cpu frequency/fsb... but for now thats the basics.

 

[allegedsin]

wow thanks for the help trying it now

 

[allegedsin]

okay i did everything
i got it to go to 3.8 then blue screen uped the voltage like you said then it was stable
then went to 4 gz which is what i was going for and had to put the

voltage to a 1.272

then ran prime 95

and the the temps never past 47 c

lowest was 39
thats during prime 95 if that good or not

and just regular pc usage its at 22-34c

idle is 22-27c

about to try gaming in a bit

but are these temps good

i used hwmoniter
speccy
core temp

all the same hw says its .1 higher in which is the temp i put above

 

[allegedsin]

my pc shut off after about 1-2 hours of gaming ?
how do i fix this

 

[usbgtx550]

How long did you run prime95. Generally you run it for 10min when fiddling around with the clock and voltage. Once you get to a satisfactory clock, run it for 2 hours to check for stability.

Also, what is your psu and wattage?

 

[allegedsin]

psu is 980 watt
an o i ran prime after i got to 4ghz not before so ill just reco everything and run prime after each increase see if that works

 

[ingtar33]

if you pc shutdown and restarted without a blue screen that's called a "black screen restart" and it usually happens when the cpu is undervolted. you'll want to bump the vcore another step, and try a longer prime95 burn... let it go for a few hours and see what happens. Other signs of the cpu being undervolted include but aren't limited to hard freezing (everything locks up) and programs just closing/crashing on their own without a full system crash.

BTW: your temps are fine. so you have a good cpu cooler and solid case airflow. that also means you have more overclock headroom... that said, lets stabilize this one. try that bump in vcore and see if the system is stable for a few hours on prime95

 

[allegedsin]

okay ill try in now

 

[allegedsin]

okay all done
got it to
4.5 ghz
voltage is 1.380
ran prime for 3 hours
highest temp 43
lowest 28
used hw moniter core temp and speccy all the same temps for the most part
liquad temp is just 44

idle temp 20-27
regular usage 21-30

is this good

 

[ingtar33]

that's awesome. you have some more room in the overclock if you want to try higher, but that's awesome. well done for for your first time! When you get to the limits of your desired cpu overclocking (i wouldn't go much beyond 1.45V on the vcore, and definitely stop if your prime95 burn starts to get into the mid 60sC on the cpu temp) read those guides i posted about playing with your northbridge and northbridge frequency as well as ram timings and voltages.

but it looks like you just did your first successful overclock! hope you're having fun cause once you get into this you'll be tinkering with your ram, northbridge and cpu for months off and on trying to sqweeze the perfect max performance from your system. =D

 

[allegedsin]

ah okay thanks for the help much aprecciated