[SOLVED] Help with OC'ing FX 6300

[Ravz]

Hello,
My system specs are: FX 6300 w/ Stock Cooler, M5A78L-M/USB3, 2x4GB 1600Mhz RAM and GTX 750 GPU
The temperatures are around 62C and 64C under 30 mins of stress test and an idle temperature of 21.4C and 37C on package and motherboard CPU sensor respectively.
VCore seems to jump upto 1.42V at 4.12GHz turbo. So I decided to try undervolting the CPU, but the BIOS only have option to increase the voltage over stock voltage for the CPU(i.e 1.3v) but not undervolt.
Should I just leave the voltage on auto and disable Turbo Boost or should I overclock the CPU with voltages under 1.375 or so?

What are my options on this? Any suggestions would be really grateful.

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Cool
Hers is running basically stock settings but with the turbo kicked up with a little + offset voltage.

 

[drea.drechsler]

....
The mobo has no heatsinks on VRM's and RAM's, no sensors to check the temps for NB, VRM's and that's a concern for me.

Yeah, M5A78LM is very much a low-end VRM. Trying to OC a 6 core FX processor you'd be wise to find some MOSFET heatsinks and stick them on the VRM FET's. Also locating a fan that blows on them won't hurt anything at all. On a board very similar to that (M5a88M) I OC'd a 6300 to 4.5Ghz reliably that way.

 

[zx128k]

Yes the board has both Turbo Boost and CPU multipliers. Right now I've disabled Turbo Boost, and just increased CPU/HT Reference clock to about 10% (from 200-210) which changed RAM freq to 840MHz from 800MHz, NB to 2100MHz from 2000MHz and changed the multiplier to x18.0 which is equivalent to 3.8GHz running on stock voltages. Here are the results and temps over 10-15mins of p95 stress test.

Stock/Default multiplier x17.5(3500MHz) ≈ 3700MHz
Multiplier changed to x18.0(3600MHz) ≈ 3800MHz

The mobo has no heatsinks on VRM's and RAM's, no sensors to check the temps for NB, VRM's and that's a concern for me.

No heatsinks on the motherboard VRMs, I would keep the overclocking to a low amount.

 

[Ravz]

Cool
Hers is running basically stock settings but with the turbo kicked up with a little + offset voltage.

Looks like you got a pretty good cooling to have it to run on 4.8 on all cores!!

 

[Ravz]

Yeah, M5A78LM is very much a low-end VRM. Trying to OC a 6 core FX processor you'd be wise to find some MOSFET heatsinks and stick them on the VRM FET's. Also locating a fan that blows on them won't hurt anything at all. On a board very similar to that (M5a88M) I OC'd a 6300 to 4.5Ghz reliably that way.

Yeah I'm planning to find some heatsinks in the local, once I find them I'll have some good thermal pads and stick them on the VRM's.

 

[Ravz]

No heatsinks on the motherboard VRMs, I would keep the overclocking to a low amount.

Yup like I did mine. A 10-15% of overclock and it seems like I'm in the safe zone. But, I'll still attempt to increase some cooling inside the case until I feel that I no longer need to worry about anything after overclock.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Yeah I'm planning to find some heatsinks in the local, once I find them I'll have some good thermal pads and stick them on the VRM's.

Thermal pads alone may not work unless they have good adhesive. Instead look for thermal adhesive (will be effectively permanent then) or thermal tape (can be removed with a twist after heating a bit). Also be careful when positioning the heatsinks as they can short across adjacent components.

 

[Ravz]

Thermal pads alone may not work unless they have good adhesive. Instead look for thermal adhesive (will be effectively permanent then) or thermal tape (can be removed with a twist after heating a bit).

Yes I'm gonna look for pads with adhesive in some well known brands.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Yes I'm gonna look for pads with adhesive in some well known brands.

Once you get the overclock going, you'll find a few other things that can happen. The BIOS and CPU probably has an APM function running that tries to hold the CPU within it's TDP operating range. So what happens is under an extremely heavy load you'll see the processor pull clock frequency every now and then. Some motherboards have a setting to completely disable APM but I kind of doubt yours will; mine did not.

ASUS uses pretty good VRM design so the VRM will probably thermal throttle which pulls clocks way further back as it goes into self-protect. This can happen once the VRM heats up good and hot, and it might do that even with APM working. Putting those heatsinks and a fan blowing on them helps by keeping the VRM cooler, and that's highly desireable because when it happens the clock pull is drastic, down to something like 500Mhz.

Pulling that far absolutely KILLS any game action until it comes back. It wound up establishing the EFFECTIVE overclock limit I had to observe on my motherboard, which ended up at 4.4Ghz even though I could get 4.5Ghz with reasonable volts and temps and stability.

 

[Ravz]

I could only find this stating APM. Also like you said, the CPU throttles to 3.5 when the Turbo Boost is on and absurd VCore spikes to maintain between 3.8 and 4.1GHz speeds. This is the reason I decided to switch off the Boost and overclock the CPU to 3.8GHz all cores with lower VCore voltages(right now running on stock 1.2V) and keep temps under control and avoid any throttles.

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

It only turbo's up for short bursts.
And It's is cooled with a h100iv2.

Here is a case mod I done when a 8350 was on that ga 970 sli.
Depending on your case you could do a similar setup for those sinks.

Good Luck
Have Great Day

https://imgur.com/a/HA6BGKJ

View: https://m.imgur.com/a/HA6BGKJ

 

[Ravz]

It only turbo's up for short bursts.
And It's is cooled with a h100iv2.

Here is a case mod I done when a 8350 was on that ga 970 sli.
Depending on your case you could do a similar setup for those sinks.

Good Luck
Have Great Day

https://imgur.com/a/HA6BGKJ

View: https://m.imgur.com/a/HA6BGKJ

Damn those brackets!!! I'll have this in my mind and definitely use this mod in my case too. Is that only a single bracket that is holding the fan? Or do you have any risers or something like that under the other holes of the fan?

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Just the 1 corner bracket from a hardware store cut down and hole drilled so it doesn't block airflow on the exhaust fan.
The fan on that bracket is from 1 of the 8350 coolers I don't use seeing how my 3 systems a watercoolers.

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Also forgot the longer bolt and nut to go through the fan and out the back of case on bottom right fan mount hole.
Since you are using the stock cooler mite be able to do same but from the top right hole.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
Here is a case mod I done when a 8350 was on that ga 970 sli.
Depending on your case you could do a similar setup for those sinks.
...

Dang! that really beats the zip-tie mods I've seen most people using!

Very professional!

 

[Ravz]

Just the 1 corner bracket from a hardware store cut down and hole drilled so it doesn't block airflow on the exhaust fan.
The fan on that bracket is from 1 of the 8350 coolers I don't use seeing how my 3 systems a watercoolers.

Also forgot the longer bolt and nut to go through the fan and out the back of case on bottom right fan mount hole.
Since you are using the stock cooler mite be able to do same but from the top right hole.

That's some serious mod. Thank you for sharing this idea. Totally appreciate it