Overclocking AMD Athlon X4 750k

[Jarfulous]

Hi!
I'm thinking of overclocking my CPU (and nothing else), and I'd like some advice. As the title says, I have an AMD Athlon X4 750k with four cores at a stock speed of 3.4 GHz.

I also have 2x4GB Ram (1600 MHz, I think), an MSI A78M-E45 for a Motherboard, an MSI Radeon R7 265 GPU with 2GB GDDR5, and a 430-watt PSU.

My cooling system is a third-party huge heatsink with one fan (room for another).

 

[Ecky]

What's the question?

If you have a large aftermarket cooler, it's likely you have plenty of overclocking headroom, though I'm not familiar with that motherboard. Start increasing the multiplier and see how far you can get with stock voltage.

 

[Jarfulous]

What's the question?

I don't know how to actually overclock something.

 

[Jarfulous]

OK, I found an OCing guide, but it's for a different CPU than mine (still AMD).

What would be some safe maximum settings (temperature, mainly)?

 

[madmatt30]

Amd overdrive for temp monitoring mate , the thermal margin shown in the CPU status tab is the most accurate way.
Anything above 0c is considered safe under a prime 95 stress test , personally I prefer the thermal margin to never ever dip below 10c.

That's a decent little board , should do 4ghz very very easily with your 750k.
Will likely need a voltage hike to 1.33v or so to hit that.
Be sure to disable turbo core aswell before increasing the multiplier.

 

[Jarfulous]

OK, I've got the Target Speed set to 4000 MHz; Current Speed is a little higher (hovering around 4122-4123). I increased Target Voltage to 1.33 as Mad Matt suggested. Thermal Margin is in the upper 50s (by the way, what would be too high?). I think I'm pretty satisfied. I'll be back later with more news if there is any.

 

[Jarfulous]

Also, should I change the Fan Speed at all, or wait until the temperature gets uncomfortably warm?

 

[madmatt30]

You NEED to run a stress test to test both temps and stability mate

Intel burn test is probably the easiest for the novice, simply a one click to start the test & watch your thermal margin in overdrive while its running.

Intel burn test

Http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/intelburntest.html


You are pushing a very big overclock in one hit here, mist people would do steps of 200mhz or so , stress test , then repeat.

How exactly are you overclocking here ?? You should be doing this manually in bios , not with software really.

 

[Jarfulous]

OK, I will. Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Jarfulous]

Report: IntelBurnTest said the test was successful. My Thermal Margin was never below 25, and was in fact usually higher.

What surprised me was that, during the test, my CPU speeds decreased drastically. The multiplier went down from 40 to 14, sometimes on just two of the cores, sometimes all four. They all went right back up when the test ended. Is this OK?

 

[madmatt30]

Its an over stringent power management setting.
This ultimately means those stress test results aren't really accurate.

Try downloading this

http://www68.zippyshare.com/v/28540088/file.html

Unzip to desktop , & double click the off.bat file in win64 directory (itll just flash a cmd box for a split second )

Then run the stress / temp testing again.

 

[Jarfulous]

Nothing happened after the cmd box disappeared.

 

[madmatt30]

It don't , the command just silently disables automatic power management.
However I'm not 100% sure it works on fm2 boards.

Run burn test again & see if you're still getting clock speed drops in overdrive while its running.

 

[Jarfulous]

Oh, OK.

 

[Jarfulous]

Didn't work. The drops are still happening.

 

[madmatt30]

How exactly are you overclocking ??
In BIOS or with software ??
You have disabled turbo core ??

 

[Jarfulous]

I'm using AMD Overdrive.
Turbo Core is disabled.

 

[Jarfulous]

Something's different:
Now, when BurnTest isn't running, the multiplier and frequency are jumping all over the place.
I just watched CPU0's multiplier go from 14 to 30, to 14, to 23, back to 14, up to 40 (which is what's set as the target)...

What is this?

 

[madmatt30]

Ignore it , its fairly normal.

Looking at the 750k it is at default a 65w CPU.
You NEED to go into bios & remove the automatic tdp threshold which it is very very likely to be using.
This is causing the clock drops on some cores under load


This option is under the main OC tab middle left.

While you're there you really ought to overclock in BIOS rather than with overdrive.

At the bottom of the list is CPU features
Open this option
Core 6 state - disable
cDTP - disable

You can either save & reboot & try overdrive overclocking again or click the overclock genie tab in bios for a list of overclock presets.

You cannot overclock properly manually in bios as that board has no voltage control options.

 

[Jarfulous]

Under CPU Features, I found an option labeled Core C6 State. I assumed it to be what you were talking about, and disabled it.
However, I didn't see cDTP anywhere.

It might be worth a mention that I'm using Click BIOS 4, but you may have already known that.

 

[Jarfulous]

I also disabled Turbo Core.

 

[madmatt30]

Yes mate , the option should be cTDP ,your motherboard manual us incredibly sketchy on the info side of things , it covers about 4 different boards.
I'll suggest clicking the oc genie button in bios & seeing what options you get.

 

[madmatt30]

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/A78M-E45.html#down-utility&Win7 64

Don't normally recommend software overclocking, overdrive won't do the job properly as the bios locks down voltages.

The above software should give you full access to all board settings from within windows - its a strange way of going on with what should be primarily a decent overclocking board but that's MSI for you.

 

[Jarfulous]

I enabled OC Genie in BIOS and Command Center. Is that OK, or should I just do one?

 

[Jarfulous]

I ran IntelBurnTest again. This time, the frequency and multiplier stayed stable.
Thermal Margin stayed at 22ish for most of the test, sometimes dipping to 21.

OC Genie seems to have increased the voltage to 1.4125. Is that still safe, you think?