How much can I overclock with this cooling ?

[DarioB]

I have an AMD Athlon X4 740 processor with the stock cooling. (It's loud and I want to replace it)
And I want to upgrade it to a Cooler Master Seidon 120V water cooling.
So I was just wondering, since this is a very overclockable CPU how much GHz will I get out of it ?

Thanks in advance for your help !

 

[Tserot]

Something around 4ghz.

 

[Ian Mahaney]

To start, the Athlon X4 740 isn't an unlocked processor like the 750k is. You won't be able to simply increase the multiplier to overclock it. (I have heard stories of some motherboards with certain chipsets allowing locked processors to have their multipliers vary, but I wouldn't trust that hit or miss info.) The cooler would be plenty powerful for the 740 and keep it cool just fine as you wanted to make your system quieter. In addition, it would also be decent when and if you decide to upgrade. Just keep in mind that even though it starts out quieter than stock cooling, it will get louder trying to keep an overclocked CPU cool because of the extra heat outputted by overclocking.

 

[DarioB]

Something around 4ghz.

That's more than I expected ! We will see, I'll try to find the golden middle between silence and the amount of GHz

 

[DarioB]

To start, the Athlon X4 740 isn't an unlocked processor like the 750k is. You won't be able to simply increase the multiplier to overclock it. (I have heard stories of some motherboards with certain chipsets allowing locked processors to have their multipliers vary, but I wouldn't trust that hit or miss info.) The cooler would be plenty powerful for the 740 and keep it cool just fine as you wanted to make your system quieter. In addition, it would also be decent when and if you decide to upgrade. Just keep in mind that even though it starts out quieter than stock cooling, it will get louder trying to keep an overclocked CPU cool because of the extra heat outputted by overclocking.

Thanks for the info ! How will I overclock it then if I can't simply increase the multiplier to overclock it. And if I don't upgrade it to a "K" version, what do you think would be the golden middle between silence and the amount of GHz ? And if you need my full build i will list it, with the power supply also.

AMD Athlon X4 740
Asus AMD Radeon R9 270
MSI FM2 A55M E33
1x Toshiba DT100ACA 1TB hard drive
2x4 Gigs of Kingston RAM memory.
1x 120mm case fan.
Raidmax Seiran II case.
All that powered by a LC Power 600w power supply.

 

[rubix_1011]

To be fair and honest, overclocking is much more about your ability and knowledge of how to overclock and your actual hardware, not necessarily the cooling solution you are using.

 

[Ian Mahaney]

Thanks for the info ! How will I overclock it then if I can't simply increase the multiplier to overclock it. And if I don't upgrade it to a "K" version, what do you think would be the golden middle between silence and the amount of GHz ? And if you need my full build i will list it, with the power supply also.

AMD Athlon X4 740
Asus AMD Radeon R9 270
MSI FM2 A55M E33
1x Toshiba DT100ACA 1TB hard drive
2x4 Gigs of Kingston RAM memory.
1x 120mm case fan.
Raidmax Seiran II case.
All that powered by a LC Power 600w power supply.
[/quotemsg]

rubix_1011 makes a point in that overclocking requires knowledge in how well your hardware configuration can handle any extra amount of system stress delivered through an overclock. To answer your locked processor question, there really isn't an alternative. I don't have much experience with the AMD "front-side bus" speed, but I was able to increase the FSB speed on my old Intel C2D E8400 processor and cheap G43 chipset board from 333MHz to almost 400MHz. The FSB on the C2D generation also increased the pci-e lane frequency and the core clocks. I have read that messing with the FSB on Intel nowadays quickly leads to crashes (even <1MHz). I don't know how the AMD equivalent compares however.