HELP NEEDED! Pc crashes when overclocking temps fine.

[Finiesta]

Hi, I'm 15 and built a pc at Christmas. I went for a budget build and ended up not getting an as great a cpu as I would have liked, so after some googling I decided the best option was overclocking. I bought the cooler master hyper 103 and went to work. I got to 3900MHz and speedfan and another program both said I was under 40C when using prime 95 so I increased the OC to 4000MHz then my Pc would just crash despite the apparent low temperatures. I want to try get the most out of my cpu for gaming, are these programs wrong or what because I'm confused and worried that I'm running at very high temperatures?

Pc specs:
-8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Blue Low Profile 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Dual/Quad Channel Kit
- GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) Micro-ATX Motherboard
-AMD (Piledriver) FX-6300 3.50GHz (4.10GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 6-Core Processor - Retail
-Thermaltake TR2 Challenger 500W 80+ Certified APFC Power Supply OEM
-Thermaltake Versa H23 Midi Mesh Tower Case USB3 Blue ODD Bays With Side Window
- 250GB Samsung 750 EVO Series Solid State Drive - MZ-750250BW
-Asus GeForce GTX1050 Expedition 2GB Graphics Card

Thanks for any help!

Update: got a message pop up that said scanning and repairing hard drive and another after saying windows couldn't load properly.

 

[photonboy]

1) I'm happy your OC helps, but there's simply no way it's helping as much as 50% or so improvement unless there was some very, very odd issue causing your CPU frequency to plummet under 3GHz whilst gaming then maintain 4.2GHz or so with the OC.

You can't increase the FPS more than the amount of the overclock. If you overclock by 10% you can't achieve more than a 10% FPS boost. (it's slightly more complicated as Windows uses some resources but even if there was some core conflict that's not ideal a 10% boost still wouldn't be that significant)

2) 4.4GHz OC?
There are several factors that prevent a higher overclock from being stable so it's hard to answer. This includes:
a) power supply quality
b) power delivery from motherboard VRM's
c) silicon lottery for the CPU
d) temperature
e) BIOS settings related to overclocking

Increasing the voltage will increase the temperature, and will also increase the power draw, and of course the increased frequency (and voltage) affect the CPU so it can be difficult to say which exact issue is preventing the overclock (barring swapping the PSU and motherboard which doesn't make sense).

I never, ever recommend pushing an overclock right to the limit. For one thing ALL electronic chips degrade over time so the closer you get to the limit the sooner the chip will be unstable. It's also difficult to be certain if it even IS stable as passing every test you can think of is no guarantee it's completely stable. You need WEEKS of usage to ascertain that (i.e. no errors).

I recommend you don't push the overclock any farther.

*If it's 4.4GHz vs 4.2GHz that's also LESS than a 5% difference which as I discussed above can at MOST affect the FPS by under 5%. Let's say at MOST it is 4% or 52FPS instead of 50FPS.

Is 52FPS vs 50FPS worth the hassle and potential stability issues?

 

[madmatt30]

I'll agree with photonboy here.
There is a topping point non fx chips whereby once you hit a certain clock speed the voltage required to go a step further becomes unacceptable for the performance boost you'll get by actually upping the clock.

That tipping point is usually 4.2/4.3ghz & I think you're at that stage now.

Bearing in mind that's a cheap old $50 760g board not a $100 overclocking board I would be happy with what you've got now.
4.2ghz is a nice clock speed to be at at the end of the day.