Overclocking my FX-4300

[Kevin Teixeira]

Hey guys!

I'm going to get a GTX 760 soon and I don't want to get bottlenecks so I was wondering if I should overclock my cpu.

My cpu cooler is the Cooler Master Hyper T4 and my Motherboard is the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P.

I've never overclocked anything in my whole life but I heard that to overclock the cpu I had to go to the BIOS. My question is how much should I overclock it?

Thanks!

EDIT: My psu is the Corsair VS 550W

 

[Calculatron]

As far as you can!

Err. *Cough* 4.4 - 4.6 will be respectable, and should be obtainable with your cooling solution. As a double-check, hopefully your PSU is up to the task.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Hey guys!

I'm going to get a GTX 760 soon and I don't want to get bottlenecks so I was wondering if I should overclock my cpu.

My cpu cooler is the Cooler Master Hyper T4 and my Motherboard is the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P.

I've never overclocked anything in my whole life but I heard that to overclock the cpu I had to go to the BIOS. My question is how much should I overclock it?

Thanks!

EDIT: My psu is the Corsair VS 550W

I'd start off by putting the graphics card in there, play your games, and seeing how it performs. Your CPU is a quad-core unit and plenty powerful. Leave the CPU alone if gameplay is nice and smooth. The GPU is nearly always the issue with any remotely modern quad-core or better CPU if there are significant (<30 fps) framerate issues, particularly if you play at normal (1920x1080 or higher) resolutions. Just look at the Tom's Performance Charts and that will tell you all you need to know about that.

FYI, you can actually adjust the CPU's multiplier and overclock it without going into the BIOS. AMD makes a utility called OverDrive which runs under Windows and allows you to multiplier-overclock your CPU (as well as overclock your memory controller and change voltages on the CPU and IMC) without rebooting the machine. You should be able to get to roughly 5 GHz on an FX-4300 and your heatsink ought to be able to easily cool it. I say this because the overclocked 45 nm Intel Nehalems taught us a good 120 mm fin-and-heatpipe heatink like yours can dissipate something around 250 watts without issue. Also, AMD sells the 4.7/5.0 GHz FX-9590 which is an 8-core unit with a 225 watt rating. You should be able to get to about those numbers and burn fewer watts doing it due to fewer active cores.

I would be a little suspect of your PSU in this situation though. It's a decidedly midrange 550 watt unit. A GTX 760 takes 170 watts and an FX-4300 overclocked to 5 GHz or so probably takes at least 200 watts from the power supply. Then you have fans, hard drive, etc. as well. That's getting pretty close to the power supply's limit. That's another reason I'd not overclock the CPU unless I absolutely felt I had to.

 

[Calculatron]

The Hyper T4 is an entry-level cooling solution. While it's nothing to sneeze at, I don't think it's going to get him to 5ghz, and I know it wouldn't cool an FX-9590. Besides, between 4.2-4.4 should be enough to reduce, or eliminate, whatever bottleneck there is.