How/how much should I overclock my CPU?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

Tabeeb

Honorable
Apr 7, 2013
90
0
10,630
I recently made some major upgrades to my PC that I have had for 2.5 years and now I want to overclock my CPU to maximize my performance.

I have an AMD A10 5700 currently running at 3.7 GHz (apparently) at 1.356V and a 37x multiplier. I have not altered this so this is how this PC came from the box.
https://gyazo.com/f5ce6ba70a972afaf111062df7d2ae99

I used to get ridiculous temperatures at idle like 50-60 and then the CPU would just throttle doing anything more intensive. As a result, I recently purchased the Cooler Master Hyper T2 which is an absolute beast of a cooler. Idling I get 8 to 20 degrees Celsius and while playing CPU intensive games like CSGO it has never gone above 40 degrees with the side panel closed.
https://gyazo.com/4ce409d846e77e7ecdfdc3ef8cd38cbc

How should I go about overclocking and what clockspeeds do you think I can get this CPU up to?

The other components in my system are:
XFX Radeon R7 370 2GB
Asus F2a85m Motherboard
8GB DDR3 1600 MHz
EVGA 500B (500 watt bronze)

I also have one 80 mm LED case fan by Deepcool which lights up my system pretty nicely. c: I have two fan slots in my pc, the rear is a 92/80 mm while the front one seems to be either 80 mm or 120 mm not too sure.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
There is something wrong with your temperatures.

There is no way your CPU is running at 8degC ever unless you are wearing a parka and gloves. Also, not going above 40degC under heavy load with that cooler also seems very unlikely to me.

It almost looks like you are about 20degC too low with everything, more like a DELTA (difference) than absolute temperature.

Other:
The T2 is a fine basic cooler but it's hardly a "beast" of a cooler so I'm not sure what you can expect with overclocking.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Realize that CPU overclocking typically has a minimal effect on gaming. Your GPU is a far bigger factor, especially at higher resolutions and detail settings. And CS:GO isn't a demanding game at all by today's standards. You've got an R7 370, which is a great mid-range card, so tweaking your CPU will hardly give you better framerates.

However, if you do want to, Robert has some good advice. Also, I'd disable the GPU side of your CPU since it's not doing much of anything with a discrete GPU in your system. That should give you a little extra thermal headroom to work with.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Try this utility instead: http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

I'm going to try the one you chose out of curiosity because either it is WRONG or your CPU sensor is wrong.

Update:
I compared both utilities and get the same answer within 1degC. Thus, I recommend trying both. If you're getting a CPU value that's not a few degrees above ROOM TEMP while in idle usage then that's not right.

If for example, both programs tell you 11degC and it's 18degC in your room then I think your CPU sensor is broken (it's part of the CPU).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
If it can be deactivated, I believe it would be in the mboard BIOS, yes. Even if it's not spinning up, the GPU is still consuming electricity and contributing some heat. And I'm not sure if the GPU side is tied to the CPU side, meaning if you speed up the CPU, does that force the GPU to go up as well?

Of course, AMD likes its HSA, so it might not let the GPU side get deactivated since its supposed to assist the CPU in some tasks. This is the reason I don't work with APUs, I'm just not up on everything about them.

I've had problems with temp monitoring software and AMD chips before. I think a lot of them mix up Tcase and Tjunc with AMD or something. The SBM build I just worked on had HWMonitor saying my chip was running at 85°. If you have tweaking and monitoring software that came with your motherboard, I'd recommend trying that first, if you're not already.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
AMD APU deactivation:
I'm not up on this either, though I'm pretty sure the BIOS would be the only place to deactivate. If there's nothing in the motherboard manual about this then it's likely you can't deactivate it.

*good point on using motherboard specific tools to analyze CPU temp. My gut says idle temp should be roughly 10degC above room temperature (i.e. 28degC if room is 18degC) as a minimum but it depends on the cooler, whether CPU is overclocked, case fans etc.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I've used CoreTemp and it gives me the same results. As I have chrome and steam open my temperatures are going from 13-25. It stays at 13 degrees and jumps up to 20ish every now and then. My room is definitely hotter than room temperature so I don't know what's up 😛 On the stock cooler I got temperatures readings of up to 80 degrees. My temp sensors could be broken. I have no idea.

I know most games rely on GPU than CPU. CSGO, however, relies HEAVILY on the CPU as I've seen with video tests and discussions on the net. In one test overclocking the Pentium G3258 almost doubled the frame rate. I would also like to overclock my GPU but it gets up to 80ish degrees at full load which I'm not really sure about.

And I have already uninstalled the 7660D drivers before installing my new card and it doesn't show up in device manager or anywhere so yeah.

Also, will my power supply EVGA 500W Bronze be able to handle a CPU overclock and maybe a GPU overclock?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


1) APU GPU disable - I answered that to the best of my ability. I said if there's nothing in the motherboard manual it's probably not something you can do manually.

Removing drivers is a good idea but that's not the same as disabling the hardware. For example, I can disable my onboard sound in my BIOS then Windows won't even see it.

2) CPU overclock - your temperature results are not correct, however I guess if you aren't crashing or getting errors there's not too much to worry about.

You can't get a higher frame rate than how much you overclock whatever component is the bottleneck. For example, if you overclock the CPU by 10% at best you can go from 30FPS to 33FPS and that's only if the CPU was a complete bottleneck in the system.

So keep that in mind when trying to push things to the limit. If stability starts to be an issue then back off because an extra 5% as said is a small real-world result.

3) Game tweaking:
Off topic a bit but this is the most important. You may want to get RADEONPRO and learn how to use Dynamic VSYNC which works like NVidia's Adaptive VSYNC. (Unless AMD has added this feature)

For example, tweak settings to maintain 60FPS at least 90% of the time. Your game stays VSYNC locked at 60FPS (no screen tear) but VSYNC is disabled if you can't (VSYNC ON while not reaching the target causes varying frame times which shows up as a quick stuttering).

(Max Payne 3 is one of the few games that hard locks to 60FPS on a 60Hz monitor but then forces a hard 30FPS. No microstuttering due to varying frame times but it is jarring to suddenly drop to 30FPS. I used Adaptive VSYNC and when I dropped below 60FPS it simply disabled VSYNC so I'd drop into the 50's temporarily and get a small amount of screen tear which is far better than suddenly getting a sluggish 30FPS experience for a few seconds).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I understand CS:GO is CPU bound. I'm saying it's still not very taxing compared to the majority of games now. A G3258 is pretty weak when compared to what else is out there. Regardless, what kind of performance are you getting in it now, what are you hoping to reach, and why? You're on a low-budget system ( no shame in that, I've been there plenty of times too ) which makes me believe you're using a budget monitor ( which is what I still use even though I've got a much stronger system ). That means your monitor likely isn't faster than 60 Hz. So as long as you're maintaining a 60fps minimum rate, speeding up CS:GO doesn't do anything for you since you're rendering frames faster than you can display them.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I tried to see what the temperature was in ASUS AI Suite II, the monitoring program that came with the PC.
https://gyazo.com/fb20dcc3c5e3dd3b8940393a1d8bd1eb

Too high? :/

Is it possible for me to know my true temps? I am slightly concerned about if these readings are wrong because if they are then oh my lord. What temps did I actually get before? xD

I'll see what I can do about the onboard graphics. Thanks for the advice so far.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
That sounds about right as well.

And actually water cooling a CPU typically produces even smaller temperature swings. It's just that CPUs can report a number of different temperatures. The two most common are Tjunc and Tcase. Tjunc is the temperature the CPU reports at the actual silicon junctions. This tends to be pretty hot. Tcase is the temperature it reports at the heat-spreader lid, or close to it. This is the temperature that most people consider to be the actual CPU temp we monitor. However not every CPU reports these the same way, which is why you get software that sometimes gets confused as to what sensors are reporting what.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom