Walkthrough FX-6300 overclocking

[Rob_91]

I know this has been covered a lot before, but this is just my experience.
Overclocking the fx 6300
Gigabyte board
Corsair ddr3 ram 16gb @ 1600mhz.

I know this thing is a relic. A piece of history we all want to forget. But I had all the parts to build one, so I thought what the hell. Actually, this thing overclocks very well. Factory max boost clock is only 3800 mhz. I'll tell you about the temperature of that later.

I know the FX series were notorious for not so accurate cpu temperature readouts, and high temperatures, but I used a couple different sources mainly HWinfo for temp readout. I turned off all the cool and quiet, additional boost etc.

I am running a custom water cooling loop that is extremely well setup. It's amazing what you can do with just a small, and correctly setup water loop.

So I locked in my multiplier, and went to work. Starting with 1.3 volts and load line calibration set to medium. I set my cpu speed to 4200 mhz by increasing the multiplier and rebooted. Everything was fine. I was in a very cold room, and at this speed I was at 18 degrees C at idle and under stress was about 30. I kept raising the multiplier until it failed at 4500 mhz.

(3800mhz @ 1.172 volts HWinfo reported 5-8 degrees C on boot, stress test 20 degrees then back down to 13 degrees C after stress. I was in a cold room.)

I raised the voltage to 1.42 and kept going with the multiplier. It failed at 4800 mhz, but I could boot into 4700 mhz just fine. Temperatures at idle where between 20-30 and under stress about 42 now. So I continued with the voltage up to 1.5 volts. Still medium load line calibration.

Up with the multiplier and I was able to boot into 5100 mhz. I could hear my radiator fans and pump spinning up at this point. My idle temperature at 1.5 volts 5100 mhz was about 35 and I under stress 55 degrees

My last attempt was to raise the load line calibration to extreme and try 5100 mhz. I was able to boot but my idle temps where above 45. I was able to submit validation to cpu-z for 5122 mhz. So it seems with more adequet cooling, you could in theory keep going. If you could somehow keep the temps to 30, you could probably boot 5500 mhz at 1.55 volts. That's just a guess. Pretty good for one of these processors.

This was my overclocking experience with the fx 6300 relic processor. I am posting this to make me feel better about myself. I hope you enjoy!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Now you need to test it for stabilty and CORRECTLY test for thermal compliance, because you obviously haven't done that yet since you are talking in numerical terms in relation to the CPU temperatures that don't correspond to thermal margin, and ALL thermal monitoring on AMD FX processors MUST be assessed using thermal margin. You CANNOT get an accurate ACTUAL temperature on an FX processor. They are not set up to be monitored that way, by intent.

This explains that part:

How to Understand AMD CPU Temperatures | Daves Computer Tips

Over the years I've used both Intel and AMD processors and whichever monitoring utility I've used, it has always reported the real temperatures at core and socket. Since upgrading one of my PCs from…

davescomputertips.com

And you MUST use AMD overdrive OR Core Temp. IF you use Core Temp, you need to change the setting called "show distance to TJmax in thermal fields" which is located in the advanced options settings of Core Temp.


As far as testing stability, here is the quick and dirty version.

Quick and dirty overview of overclocking/stability validation procedure.​

Set CPU multiplier and voltage at desired settings in BIOS. Do not use presets or automatic utilities. These will overcompensate on core and other voltages. It is much better to configure most core settings manually, and leave anything left over on auto until a later point in time if wish to come back and tweak settings such as cache (Uncore) frequency, System agent voltage, VCCIO (Internal memory controller) and memory speeds or timings (RAM) AFTER the CPU overclock is fully stable.

Save bios settings (As a new BIOS profile if your bios supports multiple profiles) and exit bios.

Boot into the Windows desktop environment. Download and install Prime95 version 26.6.

Download and install either HWinfo or CoreTemp.

Open HWinfo and run "Sensors only" or open CoreTemp.

Run Prime95 (ONLY version 26.6) and choose the "Small FFT test option". Run this for 15 minutes while monitoring your core/package temperatures to verify that you do not exceed the thermal specifications of your CPU.

(This should be considered to be 80°C for most generations of Intel processor and for current Ryzen CPUs. For older AMD FX and Phenom series, you should use a thermal monitor that has options for "Distance to TJmax" and you want to NOT see distance to TJmax drop below 10°C distance to TJmax. Anything that is MORE than 10°C distance to TJmax is within the allowed thermal envelope.)

If your CPU passes the thermal compliance test, move on to stability.

Download and install Realbench. Run Realbench and choose the Stress test option. Choose a value from the available memory (RAM) options that is equal to approximately half of your installed memory capacity. If you have 16GB, choose 8GB. If you have 8GB, choose 4GB, etc. Click start and allow the stability test to run for 8 hours. Do not plan to use the system for ANYTHING else while it is running. It will run realistic AVX and handbrake workloads and if it passes 8 hours of testing it is probably about as stable as you can reasonably expect.

If you wish to check stability further you can run 12-24 hours of Prime95 Blend mode or Small FFT.

You do not need to simultaneously run HWinfo or CoreTemp while running Realbench as you should have already performed the thermal compliance test PLUS Realbench will show current CPU temperatures while it is running.

If you run the additional stability test using Prime95 Blend/Small FFT modes for 12-24 hours, you will WANT to also run HWinfo alongside it. Monitor HWinfo periodically to verify that no cores/threads are showing less than 100% usage. If it is, then that worker has errored out and the test should be stopped.

If you find there are errors on ANY of the stability tests including Realbench or Prime95, or any other stress testing utility, you need to make a change in the bios. This could be either dropping the multiplier to a lower factor or increasing the voltage while leaving the multiplier the same. If you change voltage or multiplier at ANY time, you need to start over again at the beginning and verify thermal compliance again.

A more in depth but general guide that is still intended for beginners or those who have had a small amount of experience overclocking can be found here:


*CPU overclocking guide for beginners​