GTX 960 & FX 8350 Overclocking

cennan

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Mar 21, 2015
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I need help, I'm unsure whether I should overclock my GTX/AMD.

My graphics card is: GTX 960 2GD5
Core/Memory

1127MHz Core (Boost Clock:1178MHz)
2048MB GDDR5 7010MHz Memory

Video Output Function

Dual-link DVI-I x 1
DisplayPort x 3
HDMI x 1

It only has one fan, which gives me concern. My case does have cooling however, one front fan one exhaust fan on the back and another exhaust fan dedicated for my CPU cooler. My GPU doesn't get too hot during operation however it does sometimes and the fan gets rather loud. I'm not sure whether overclocking my GPU is a good idea.

I also want to overclock my CPU. I'd be more confident in overclocking this because my fans could probably handle the .

My CPU is: AMD FX 8350

I have overclocked in the past and it messed up big time, which is one of the reasons I'm asking now whether I should OC or not.



I also think I've got an air flow issue. I hate a fan blowing in from the front of my case and my CPU cooler is pulling cold air from that stream through a heatsink out of an exhaust fan on the top. Also on the back there's an exhaust fan. Below my CPU cooler is my GPU, it's fans face down and they blow inwards, is my GPU drawing in hot air? I don't have any fans on the bottom of my case.

Note: I have an 500 Watt PSU.
 
Solution
At stock, those are a pretty good match. I would overclock the GPU before I would overclock the CPU, since it will provide more performance gains.

The reason why your GPU sounds loud sometimes, is because you are using a stock reference cooler. They are built to keep the card working within specifications in most conditions, without much wit to how well they actually do that.

So, if you want to see if you can overclock, you'll need to download some programs and gather some data. MSI Afterburner and MSI Kombustor are programs that allow you to play with the fan curves, voltages, and clock rates of your GPU, as well as stress-test them. I would stresstest your GPU using MSI Kombuster, and monitor the temperatures. Anything below...
At stock, those are a pretty good match. I would overclock the GPU before I would overclock the CPU, since it will provide more performance gains.

The reason why your GPU sounds loud sometimes, is because you are using a stock reference cooler. They are built to keep the card working within specifications in most conditions, without much wit to how well they actually do that.

So, if you want to see if you can overclock, you'll need to download some programs and gather some data. MSI Afterburner and MSI Kombustor are programs that allow you to play with the fan curves, voltages, and clock rates of your GPU, as well as stress-test them. I would stresstest your GPU using MSI Kombuster, and monitor the temperatures. Anything below 70C is pretty good, anything above 80C is when you need to start worrying. Since you are using the reference cooler, I would not mess with voltages at all, but I would see how good of an overclock you can achieve on the stock voltage.
 
Solution