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How to overclock athlon x4 860k with amd overdrive

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Looeelooee1

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Jul 8, 2015
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Hello, I am planning on getting an athlon x4, and I want to be able to overclock it to around 4.2-4.4 ghz, i know that I can use overdrive to achieve this, but im not sure what to do in overdrive, I looked at two tutorials and one said to disable turbo and manually mess with the frequencies and voltages myself, and another said to leave turbo enabled and adjust it from turbo core control. what should i do, will i be able to even go that high just using turbo? and how much should I change the voltages? here are the rest of my specs
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/llevene/saved/pbbzK8
thanks in advance any help much appreciated
 
Solution
clutchc
You are just about at the top of the food chain now with the Athlon X4 860K @ 3.7 GHz/4.0 GHz. The new A10-7870K will gain you a couple hundred extra MHz, but at quite an increase in cost. And I'm not sure your board's BIOS will recognize it.
But if you are having weak performance from your system, the problem is the gfx card. The GTX 750 Ti is a good card for lower-end systems. But your 860K can keep up with much faster cards. But your PSU will be the next limitation. With it, you can safely go up to a GTX 960 for much better performance than the GTX 750 Ti.
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Do as the instructions say... disable turbo and take the CPU clock multiplier up a click at a time, testing for stability between increases. When it becomes unstable, increase the Vcore (sometimes called CPU volatge) up 0.01V at a time and see if you are stable again. Repeat.

At all times watch the thermal margin. If it drops into the single digits, you are getting pretty warm. Don't let it fall below zero. Personally, I like to live with the TM in double digits. But it is safe to use all the TM.

Now for the bad news...
You picked a really poor board to do any OC'ing with. If you don't already have the system, please go for a better board. One with ehat sinks on the VRMs and better phase power.
 
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Would the fx4300 be a better option? They have good OC capabilities and about the same price. An fx4300 paired with a gtx 750ti would make a good budget rig.
Oh you have the motherboard. I checked and both chips are almost identical in performance.
 
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Sorry, typo. I meant "heat" sinks.
You will of course need a good cooler to OC. But the problem is the board itself. It isn't designed to handle an increase in the specs of the processor. Increasing the clock freq. and voltage will put undue stress on the weak components. OC with that board at your own risk.
 
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You are just about at the top of the food chain now with the Athlon X4 860K @ 3.7 GHz/4.0 GHz. The new A10-7870K will gain you a couple hundred extra MHz, but at quite an increase in cost. And I'm not sure your board's BIOS will recognize it.
But if you are having weak performance from your system, the problem is the gfx card. The GTX 750 Ti is a good card for lower-end systems. But your 860K can keep up with much faster cards. But your PSU will be the next limitation. With it, you can safely go up to a GTX 960 for much better performance than the GTX 750 Ti.
 
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Solution


That will depend on your monitor's resolution and the in-game settings you choose. But the CPU isn't what's holding you back. It's the gfx card.
 
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I don't understand. You were willing to spend more cash to replace the CPU a moment ago. But you balk at replacing the gfx card? A replacement that would indeed improve performance?
 
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im still saving up to buy even the cpu, like i said at the beginning of the thread im planning on buying one, and saving up $ in order to do so. and then after i have bought that i will have to save up even more to get the gpu. i didn't say i wont upgrade the gfx card, i just said not atm, maybe in a couple months
 
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Overclock but watch your temperature.don't use a liquid cooler ,instead use a better cpu fan and heat sink plus lap your cpu (use arctic silver 5 or a similar good thermal paste)Don't use a liquid cooler the other components won't get cooled ,,otherwise you should be ok. Arctic are good and inexpensive cooling fans .
 
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Leave turbo alone and just up the clock to 44 (4.4) add .05 to voltage ,that should do it ,u WILL need to add more ram ,preferably 2x8 gb ddr3 ram .your CPU and low ram will bottleneck your graphics card no matter how good it is.Heat syncs draw heat away from their source through conduction (touching)
 
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