Overclocking AMD FX 8300 w/ Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

[tracnica]

Hello, I'm new to PC gaming. I received my PC about a week ago with the following specs:

CPU: AMD FX 8300
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
GPU: MSI GTX 970 4G
MOBO: ASRock 980DE3/US3S
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1866 Kingston HyperX Fury Black
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB
PSU: Fortron Hyper 500w, 80+ Bronze
(Prices in my country are so bad that I could have bought i7 4790k and better mobo for same price in e.g. USA)

My friend told me I should overclock my CPU and explained quickly that it is basically gaining free performance, although he didn't tell me can I overclock with my system and how to do it.
I hope you can put aside some of your free time and help me, thanks

 

[DonkeyOatie]

Hi. There are a lot of stickies above that provide guides to overclocking, and there are many videos too.

Your motherboard is not very robust for overclocking, and it's power delivery is not up to overclocking a FX8300 on it. In fact, given a choice, I would not run a FX8300 on it at all and I would certainly not overclock it, unless I were prepared to risk my motherboard failing.

Overclocking will help you only a bit. You have a great GPU, but even so, many games are GPU limited. Overclocking will only help you a few percent in those games that are CPU limited.

I would also want a better PSU in any case, and especially for overclocking. You need good, stable power for a good overclock.