fx8350 and a gigabyte 990fxa-ud3 rev 4.0 Overclocking issues

[xMeowingtons]

So i decided to try out and overclock my 8350 (4.0GHz) after moderate use for six months. I attempted to overclock in the bios using various guides such as:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1140459/bulldozer-overclocking-guide-performance-scaling-charts-max-ocs-ln2-results-coming

and

http://www.overclock.net/t/1434322/amd-multiplier-overclocking-guide-vishera-bulldozer-phenom-more-ga-990fxa-ud5-rev1-1-non-uefi-bios-example

However, i couldn't get it to work. Every time i changed the settings and ran Prime95, Windows would freeze and eventually shutdown. It doesn't appear to be a heat problem because it never got over 60 c during testing. right now speeds around 4.2 GHz would be nice if they were stable.

Pc specs:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3AQfc

 

[damric]

The problem is heat. The Hyper 212 EVO is a good cooler, but unfortunately it's very overhyped, especially around here. Even though it's technically safe, when these AMD CPUs get much over 55'C they tend to not clock very well. To clock further you will need a big boy air cooler or a dual radiator water loop, so that you can raise voltages and still stay within temperature thresholds.

RM series is not a good PSU for overclocking either.

Try this guide, and pay attention to the tuning targets at the end of the pdf.

http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_FX_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf

Also read this and understand thermal margin:

[faq] http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2122665/measure-temperature-amd-cpus.html [/faq]

 

[xMeowingtons]

The problem is heat. The Hyper 212 EVO is a good cooler, but unfortunately it's very overhyped, especially around here. Even though it's technically safe, when these AMD CPUs get much over 55'C they tend to not clock very well. To clock further you will need a big boy air cooler or a dual radiator water loop, so that you can raise voltages and still stay within temperature thresholds.

RM series is not a good PSU for overclocking either.

Try this guide, and pay attention to the tuning targets at the end of the pdf.

http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_FX_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf

Also read this and understand thermal margin:

[faq] http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2122665/measure-temperature-amd-cpus.html [/faq]

Thanks for your input, maybe I need to consider a new cooler. Also I forgot to add when I ran prime95 with the 8350 on stock settings the heat never exceded 38 c. Perhaps maybe its the voltages?

 

[damric]

These FX chips can really tank voltage, but they dislike heat. Certainly see how far you can get on the EVO, but from the huge sample of FX-8350 overclocks that I have seen, probably 95% of the ones over 4.5GHz had to get something better than a 212 EVO. Even a dual radiator can get pushed to the limit around 5GHz. These suckers just run hot as hell when you run all four cores at 100% with OC.

A workaround is to just adjust the Turbo P States in AMD Overdrive so that only some of the cores clock up at once during medium loads like gaming. That will use much less heat and power, though less performance than just doing it the old fashioned way.