Max safe voltage, FX-6300?

[Deus Gladiorum]

I'm going on an overclocking binge to get the maximum performance out of my FX-6300. So far I've got to 4.5 GHz (increased CPU multiplier only) at +0.100 V according to my motherboard, so 1.418 V maximum according to CPU-Z after many hours of stress testing. After 10 hours of Small FFT and 13 hours of blend in Prime95, and then 10 passes on standard and 10 passes on very high on Intel Burn Test, I've determined I'm stable here with my max temp having reached 44 degrees.

I think this is a pretty good overclock considering the temps seem pretty low for 2 IBT. However, I really want to see if I can push it to 5 GHz. From what I've come up with, people say the max safe voltage is around 1.5 V, but I see others who say it's above and below this. Ideally, I'd like to have this CPU function for a good 4 years. At some point, I'll be jumping ship to Intel but if I can't afford to, about 4 years seems like a good point. How much would 1.5 V shorten its life span? And what do you guys think is the max safe temp and the max safe voltage?

 

[photonboy]

If you need four more years, then you shouldn't push things any further.

How much you can overclock also depends on several factors:
1) CPU Cooler
2) Motherboard (to provide stable voltage)
3) not every FX-6300 is identical (some overclock better)

The VOLTAGE is the largest contributor to wearing out your PC prematurely. The higher the voltage, the quicker you wear out your CPU.

 

[Deus Gladiorum]

bleh, really? I just tried to reach 4.8 GHz, but it seems like the voltage over clockspeed graph took a very steep climb upwards out of nowhere. With just an additional 300 MHz, I turned the voltage to +0.175 (so around 1.475 V) and I still couldn't even boot, and I'm really hesitant to make that final leap to +0.200 V. Hell, even if 1.5 V did get it to boot, there's little chance it'd even be stable and I'd need at least 1.525 V if I was lucky. That's quite unfortunate. I know I don't have a supreme motherboard, but I was hoping to at least get 4.8 GHz. :\

If later in the day I'm feeling ballsy, I might try for 1.5 V. Exactly by how much would this shorten a CPUs life span? Hell, I don't even know what a base clock CPU's lifespan is supposed to be. 10 years? Would 1.5 V really just throw it down to under 4? If so, how many years could I get out of it? Around 3 do you think?

 

[ffejster25]

bleh, really? I just tried to reach 4.8 GHz, but it seems like the voltage over clockspeed graph took a very steep climb upwards out of nowhere. With just an additional 300 MHz, I turned the voltage to +0.175 (so around 1.475 V) and I still couldn't even boot, and I'm really hesitant to make that final leap to +0.200 V. Hell, even if 1.5 V did get it to boot, there's little chance it'd even be stable and I'd need at least 1.525 V if I was lucky. That's quite unfortunate. I know I don't have a supreme motherboard, but I was hoping to at least get 4.8 GHz. :\

If later in the day I'm feeling ballsy, I might try for 1.5 V. Exactly by how much would this shorten a CPUs life span? Hell, I don't even know what a base clock CPU's lifespan is supposed to be. 10 years? Would 1.5 V really just throw it down to under 4? If so, how many years could I get out of it? Around 3 do you think? [/quotem

my fx 6300 has been running at 4.9ghz@1.5375V under prime95 it goes up to 1.548v but its stable at the temp never went passed 55c. ran it for a long time. if I go lower n the voltage it fails after about 20 minutes. so I bumped it up one notch.
ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0
AMD FX 6300
8 GB G SKILL 1866 CL8
EVGA GTX 970

 

[NightAntilli]

1.55v is the absolute max. Just make sure to keep your temperatures in check.

 

[Pmba79]

Atm I'm doing a stable 4,51Ghz at 1,406V - (21.5mp and 210mhz fsb)..
Have had it running at 4.75Ghz at 1,45V, but it got a bit to hot with only fans.
Now I'm on a full costum water setup, so I'd might try going for 5Ghz again..

 

[rino26]

a quest? why all you guys de voltage so high? I have test something like 8 hours on 4.51Ghz 1.320V en temps vrm max 70 cpu max 44
and have no problem?
and the normal temps with out the high. cpu 36 and vrm 65

software prime95
I have a fx6300 black edition
liquerd cooling
msi 970 gaming motherboard
msi 390 gaming

 

[Pmba79]

a quest? why all you guys de voltage so high? I have test something like 8 hours on 4.51Ghz 1.320V en temps vrm max 70 cpu max 44
and have no problem?
and the normal temps with out the high. cpu 36 and vrm 65

Then you are lucky to have gotten a cpu that don't need a high voltage to run stable..
If I did a 4.51Ghz at 1.320V with my FX6300 it simply sould not start up..

There is a big difference in cpu's, even from the same line of production..

 

[rino26]

how can it be difference?
and is it possible you have a wrong setting?
I have turbo modus off. the OC button on the top is black.

 

[Redneck5439]

bleh, really? I just tried to reach 4.8 GHz, but it seems like the voltage over clockspeed graph took a very steep climb upwards out of nowhere. With just an additional 300 MHz, I turned the voltage to +0.175 (so around 1.475 V) and I still couldn't even boot, and I'm really hesitant to make that final leap to +0.200 V. Hell, even if 1.5 V did get it to boot, there's little chance it'd even be stable and I'd need at least 1.525 V if I was lucky. That's quite unfortunate. I know I don't have a supreme motherboard, but I was hoping to at least get 4.8 GHz. :\

If later in the day I'm feeling ballsy, I might try for 1.5 V. Exactly by how much would this shorten a CPUs life span? Hell, I don't even know what a base clock CPU's lifespan is supposed to be. 10 years? Would 1.5 V really just throw it down to under 4? If so, how many years could I get out of it? Around 3 do you think?

Simple fact is not every processor can reach 5Ghz. Most of the FX 6300s I've worked with recently have been topping out right around 4.8Ghz, I've recently gotten some FX 6350s to 5Ghz but they usually fall within the 4.8 - 5Ghz range. The ability to overclock all depends on the binning of the chip and how you did in the silicon "chip lottery". The FX 6350 has better binning than the FX 6300 and will typically, but not always overclock better.

Maximum safe voltage for an FX processor is 1.55V (although overclocking enthusiasts with water loops will go as high as 1.6V). For the FX 6300 I really wouldn't push must past 1.5V as getting that 100 extra Mhz just isn't worth the extra heat, and wear and tear on your processor. I know with my FX 8370 I was able to overclock to 4.7Ghz with only 1.336V, but go get to 4.8 was a bigger jump, 4.9 even bigger, finally getting to 5Ghz @ 1.44V (multiplier only). I can get 5.5Ghz multiplier only @ 1.55V (under load jumping to 1.6V) but the wear and tear and heat isn't worth the extra performance gain. After overclocking with fsb and multiplier (to improve single core performance) I got my everyday clock of 5.05Ghz @ 1.46V (my goal was best overclock under 1.5V to improve chip longevity).

If you already haven't checked your overclock with the suggestions of the below guide I would try their suggestions to help with your overclock:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard

One last thing you can try- I found that with my particular motherboard (Sabertooth 990FX R2.0) and processor I was hitting an overclock wall @ around 4.9Ghz and needed to pump over 1.5V (like 1.52) to get it to go to 5Ghz and so I started tweaking all the settings. I found that in my case the problem was HPC Mode. I had it enabled (as is suggested by most) but found that if I disabled it my system could hit the overclocks with less Vcore. After disabling the HPC Mode I went from 5Ghz stable @ 1.52V to 5Ghz stable @ 1.44V. In my situation that was quite a difference and allowed me to get some truly monster overclocks. For an everyday overclock I recommend staying under 1.5V and getting the best stable clock you can.

edit: Just realized this was an old thread from 2014, but hope my above suggestions can help anyone working with FX processors 😉

 

[Paleouno]

bleh, really? I just tried to reach 4.8 GHz, but it seems like the voltage over clockspeed graph took a very steep climb upwards out of nowhere. With just an additional 300 MHz, I turned the voltage to +0.175 (so around 1.475 V) and I still couldn't even boot, and I'm really hesitant to make that final leap to +0.200 V. Hell, even if 1.5 V did get it to boot, there's little chance it'd even be stable and I'd need at least 1.525 V if I was lucky. That's quite unfortunate. I know I don't have a supreme motherboard, but I was hoping to at least get 4.8 GHz. :\

If later in the day I'm feeling ballsy, I might try for 1.5 V. Exactly by how much would this shorten a CPUs life span? Hell, I don't even know what a base clock CPU's lifespan is supposed to be. 10 years? Would 1.5 V really just throw it down to under 4? If so, how many years could I get out of it? Around 3 do you think?

Simple fact is not every processor can reach 5Ghz. Most of the FX 6300s I've worked with recently have been topping out right around 4.8Ghz, I've recently gotten some FX 6350s to 5Ghz but they usually fall within the 4.8 - 5Ghz range. The ability to overclock all depends on the binning of the chip and how you did in the silicon "chip lottery". The FX 6350 has better binning than the FX 6300 and will typically, but not always overclock better.

Maximum safe voltage for an FX processor is 1.55V (although overclocking enthusiasts with water loops will go as high as 1.6V). For the FX 6300 I really wouldn't push must past 1.5V as getting that 100 extra Mhz just isn't worth the extra heat, and wear and tear on your processor. I know with my FX 8370 I was able to overclock to 4.7Ghz with only 1.336V, but go get to 4.8 was a bigger jump, 4.9 even bigger, finally getting to 5Ghz @ 1.44V (multiplier only). I can get 5.5Ghz multiplier only @ 1.55V (under load jumping to 1.6V) but the wear and tear and heat isn't worth the extra performance gain. After overclocking with fsb and multiplier (to improve single core performance) I got my everyday clock of 5.05Ghz @ 1.46V (my goal was best overclock under 1.5V to improve chip longevity).

If you already haven't checked your overclock with the suggestions of the below guide I would try their suggestions to help with your overclock:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard

One last thing you can try- I found that with my particular motherboard (Sabertooth 990FX R2.0) and processor I was hitting an overclock wall @ around 4.9Ghz and needed to pump over 1.5V (like 1.52) to get it to go to 5Ghz and so I started tweaking all the settings. I found that in my case the problem was HPC Mode. I had it enabled (as is suggested by most) but found that if I disabled it my system could hit the overclocks with less Vcore. After disabling the HPC Mode I went from 5Ghz stable @ 1.52V to 5Ghz stable @ 1.44V. In my situation that was quite a difference and allowed me to get some truly monster overclocks. For an everyday overclock I recommend staying under 1.5V and getting the best stable clock you can.

edit: Just realized this was an old thread from 2014, but hope my above suggestions can help anyone working with FX processors 😉

Redneck 5439:

Well, almost a year after your post Redneck 5439 you have helped someone. Me! OCing an FX6300 on a new ASROCK mobo, 970A-G/3.1 (8+2 VRM but doubled I believe), a relatively new roll out that has 3.1 USB and M2 slot, sort of a Frankenstein of new and old (AM3+) technology. I replaced a Biostar TA970 (4+1 VRM), which wasn't very good for OCing, mainly because it would thermal throttle when VRMs got hot and nothing you could do about it in UEFI to offset, so max I could hit with that board was 4.3 GHZ. I'm up to a stable 4.4 Ghz on the new board, but still going. VID set at 1.325v, with a +100mv offset (a setting in the UEFI that offsets the Vdroop (that may be an Intel term, but the voltage drop this processor experiences when overclocking processor under load), so at idle at 4.4 GHz I get a 1.392 Vcore, and at load it drops down to 1.328v. The +100mv offset keeps it from going lower. Seems sort of like a LLC type of approach, though it isn't called that specifically by Asrock on this board. Your post gave me a good idea of the freq and voltage limits I might experience, plus your link to the overclocking guide gave me a hint on upping the NB to stabilize a high OC. I haven't tried that yet, but it worked on an old AMD A8-3870K when overclocking, boosting the CPU NB voltage on that processor helped get slightly higher stable overclocks. I'm shooting for a 4.5 Ghz+ with a max Vcore of around 1.45v, seems like I might be able to do it based on the chips performance so far.

As you said in your post, this too is a little late, but hoping it might help someone else. I find that even old posts, if they provide info on type of setup and OC results are helpful when I'm overclocking a processor. Plus, hardware wise I'm always slightly behind the latest and greatest by about a year or more!! Sometimes even more, I have an old EPOX socket 939 mobo and Athlon two core CPU still going strong, running Slackware on it. The key on good overclocks, IMO, is getting to know your mobo and it's limits, and how the UEFI/BIOS settings function and interact. So any info from others on their experience with a particular CPU and motheboard is very helpful.

Deus Gladiorum (if your still around): My mobo has 1.55v plugged into the UEFI/BIOS as max cpu voltage. AMD Overdrive has the max voltage I can set for this CPU at 1.55v. On temps, AMD OverDrive for this CPU has 52.0 degrees C as the Thermal Margin and my core temp is running at the moment 18 degrees C, which suggests 70 deg. C as core temp. before builtin thermal throttling of the processor kicks in. AMD specs on their site also say 70.50 deg. C as max temp. Not saying all this is gospel, but just some data points to consider and it seems to square with what I see in the forums, etc. IMO I'd stay below 1.5v, and closer to 1.4 than 1.5 for long term stable OC, and 60 deg. or less. Less heat and voltage in general will prolong the life of your processor relative to what the max values are if that is a concern. But if your on a binge, hey, go for it! I love the smell of burning silicon in the morning, it smells like.....VICTORY!

Paleouno (i.e. old one!)