AMD Phenom II X6 2800

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mistawac

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Nov 11, 2010
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A little bit pissed right now. After a few months of saving money I decided to buy myself a really nice, high end machine because I needed one for school (computer major). I ended up getting AMD Phenom II X6 2800 processor, MSI 880GM-E43 mobo with 4gb DDR3 1600 RAM a 1tb harddrive and a nice, new case/PSU. I've had it for about three weeks and WAS loving it.

A few people in my classes were speaking glorious multitudes about overclocking their chips. Ive never done it because I don't want to break my ***. I don't play many PC games so any power I have is dedicated to any virtualization I'm doing and due to having purchased this thing so recently I haven't even had the chance to max the damn thing out yet. Well I was cleaning my desk up and stumbled upon the disc that came with the motherboard and noticed there was a very nifty control center I could install, so I did. I was perusing it and noticed the Overclocking section had an OC Genie. I did a little light reading about it and it sounded totally harmless "Let the system overclock itself!"

So I clicked it, like an asshole. It asked me to reboot and I did, like an asshole. I had just installed VMWare and that needed a reboot so I figured what the hell, reboot. I'm now sitting here, 45 f***ing mintues later staring at a blank screen, working on an old laptop.

tl;dr - I jacked my brand new desktop up with the OC Genie

Anyone have any insight to why my computer boots up, but doesn't POST, boot, or show anything at all? Nothing but fans making noise right now.
 
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mistawac

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I know this sounds like a very amateur situation, but as I've said I'm new to overclocking and everyone made this sound painless, especially the "OC GENIE" feature which led me to believe it won't destroy itself.

Someone please let me know there is a solution to this and I'm not out a CPU...
 
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rfatcheric

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If you look at the manual for your motherboard, or look up the manual online, there should be a jumper to reset the CMOS. If you reset the CMOS and boot back up, all settings should be restored to safe defaults. That should do the trick.
 
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mistawac

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Just tried the CMOS reset to no avail. Computer was off - I swapped the jumper from pins 1 and 2 to 2 and 3 for a few seconds - swapped jumper back to pins 1 and 2 - powered back on and it still sits at a black screen with nothing happening.
 
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rfatcheric

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If all else fails, unplug all unnecessary hardware (hard drives, cdrom, USB headers etc) and just power on using 1 stick of RAM to see if you get video. And when you have the battery out, make sure the power cord is unplugged also, I know its probably obvious, but I've done this before :/
 
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mistawac

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No go with anything so far. Just popped the battery out for about 10 minutes (everything unplugged and one RAM stick only). I also swapped the Clear CMOS pin again with the battery out - no go.

At this point I'm assuming something malfunctioned during the OC Genie. Any ideas?
 
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mistawac

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I got it working finally. I ended up taking the battery out, swapping the jumper for the CMOS to Clear, unplugging everything, turning off the power supply, and playing Super Smash Bros. for about an hour then came back to a working system.

I do want to give overclocking a whirl though. Any advice before I try this again?
 
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mistawac

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While it was a scare, you can't let one bad experience ruin it. I take full responsibility for the issue because I didn't read up as much as I should have for someone new to overclocking.

Gotta get back on the horse if you fall...
 
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fencer55

fencer55

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If you are using the stock cooler on the X6, you can't overclock it very much. If you get it to 3.1ghz, that's a 10% overclock, that might run stable. If you spring for a good aftermarket cpu cooler, you will probably be able to go higher, but a good one will cost you $50 and you need to have lots of room in your case because they are usually monstrous. Also, those really big coolers usually require a back plate to be installed and that means pulling the motherboard, a real pain the butt, so it might be more trouble than its worth.

Another thing, its better to overclock using your jumpless settings on your motherboard, if it has them. I've never had much luck with the software overclocking tools. You want to bump the multiplier in small increments. If you go too high, the system will reboot itself, so back it down a notch, then run prime95 of folding@home to torture test it. If it runs for an hour without a problem, that should be a stable overclock.
 
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mistawac

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I think I'll be okay for temperatures. I ended up buying thermal PASTE by mistake and not compound and ended up using the cheap *** that came with it until I get good thermal compound. In any case, with the cheap ***, I'm sitting around 75 f idling and 85f under stress. I think I can stay well below 130f at overclock.

I'll keep ya posted though.
 
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Mrthorp

Mrthorp

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thermal paste, and thermal compound are pretty much interchangeable terms. if you ordered arctic silver, i dont know what you are griping about, it is considered one of the best paste/compounds on the market.
Most folks also list their temps in degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit.
 
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Mrthorp

Mrthorp

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all compounds run the risk of the CPU sticking to the cooler. the paste/compound acts like polident for old folks dentures.. its not a glue, but it holds it tightly in place. ( as well as eliminating air pockets , transferring heat etc..)

ive only had my CPU stick to cooler just one time. i wouldnt really worry about it too much.
 
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mistawac

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Awesome, thanks for the info. I just recall reading somewhere that Alumina was a product in their Thermal Paste line and was designed for heat sinks that couldn't properly attach, securely, to the mobo.

Think I may give this stuff a whirl tomorrow.
 
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mistawac

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So I got the new heatsink/fan on the CPU. It took a bit of finagling because it fits just right up against my PSU. It is working though, I'm sitting between 20 degrees C on idle and about 28 degrees C on heavy use. It's also WAY quieter than my other fan. I can hear this one, but only barely compared to the stock fan.

AWESOME products! Thanks for your help everyone!
 
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