Safe speeds to overclock an FX 6300 with a Hyper 212 EVO to

[leftisthominid]

I have an FX 6300, a Hyper 212 EVO, and an M5A99FX PRO R2.0

I was wondering what kinds of speeds are safe to overclock to? I was looking at this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI1GQ9tjPPw) as guide. The guy reached 4.3 Ghz, but he was using water cooling.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

The H80i BARELY outperforms the 212 EVO.

That's a decent board should overclock fairly well.

 

[InvalidError]

The only official 'safe' speed is stock speed. There are never ever any guarantees with overclocking.

What sort of clock speeds you can get with a given setup depends heavily on the "silicon lottery" and to some extent, the quality of the motherboard's VRM and PSU. You may be able to reach 4.3GHz easy or you may barely break 4GHz, you won't know until you try it. Every chip is different, anything you read online about people overclocking the "same chip" is nothing more than a reference point to estimate your chances of achieving similar results.

 

[Cole_9]

Well... what is the stock speed of your processor? I have an 8350 with a evo overclocked to 4.6 ghz and its still going strong

 

[utroz]

There is really no safe speed limit, more like a safe voltage and temp limit that tend to limit your speed. Generally for your chip keep the temps under 70C (65C is preferred) under full load and keep the voltage as low as you can with a max around 1.5V-1.55V with really good cooling, only go over 1.45V if your temps stay below 65C on load.

 

[leftisthominid]

The stock speeds for an FX 6300 are 3.5/4.1GHZ (Base/Overdrive)

I use AMD Overdrive to figure out my thermal margin (i.e., how much hotter the CPU can get). What is a safe limit for the margin to come down to under load? What about when idle?

 

[utroz]

The stock speeds for an FX 6300 are 3.5/4.1GHZ (Base/Overdrive)

I use AMD Overdrive to figure out my thermal margin (i.e., how much hotter the CPU can get). What is a safe limit for the margin to come down to under load? What about when idle?

Generally 20C is good limit and I would not get any closer than 10C. For idle I would want 40C or more thermal margin if possible but 30C at worst. This is all my opinion so I would be curious what other think.. I have had pretty good luck following these guidelines.

 

[leftisthominid]

Thanks! Also what kind of Prime95 tests should I run? Blend is best right?

 

[utroz]

Blend does a decent job. You may want to use custom to set the RAM usage higher than the 2GB of blend.

 

[Shaun o]

Average overclocking of any FX based cpu be it a Quad, Hex, or Octa core is about 800Mhz.
With the Asus M5A99FX motherboard and the evo 212 air cooler you should be able to hit 4.3 to 4.4 Ghz without any problem.

Depending on how good the silicone of the FX 6300 will determine if you have to increase the core voltage of the cpu.
But most FX based cpu`s with a 800Mhz will reach 4.4Ghz from the factory default speed of 3.5 Ghz by simply changing the cpu multiplier option in the bios settings of the Asus M5A99FX motherboard.

If the system fails to post after setting the cpu to 4.4Ghz then you will need to set the cpu core voltage manually to 1.36v
or at least 1.4v.

1.6v set for the cpu core voltage is the absolute maximum voltage that should be set. do not go over this voltage setting.

For anything above 4.4 Ghz.
Stick to around 1.45v on the cpu core.

 

[leftisthominid]

I am testing out 4.2 Ghz first

Based on the video, I set these settings:
AI overclock manual
CPU Ratio 21
Turbo core off
CPU spread spectrum disabled
PCIe spread disabled
EPU power savings disabled
CPU & NB Voltage - Manual
CPU manual 1.40V
CPU/NB 1.231250
Core C6 state disabled
HPC mode disabled

(some of them were apparently disabled by default).

I also read to disable Cool N Quiet and C1E. I just wanted to confirm if there are any other suggested tweaks?

I just started a stress test. My thermal margin is steady around 20-21 degrees C.

Also, what is the appropriate idle temperature for a GTX 1060? Does 45 degrees sound right?

(My desktop is running the stress test. I am posting this from my laptop)

 

[leftisthominid]

And just as I post that, my thermal margin starts dropping. It is around 18 now...

 

[utroz]

The temps could have something to do with the fan settings in the BIOS as well. Most boards are configured to keep the cpu fan quiet by default but can be changed to keep the cpu cooler at the cost of being louder. I would push the system even further as prime 95 is going to be a worse case scenario when it comes to making the cpu hot, most loads won't get it with 5C of what prime 95 will. Most of the time I push the clock till the system crashes and then go down a half multiplier at a time till it is fully stable.

 

[leftisthominid]

The temps could have something to do with the fan settings in the BIOS as well. Most boards are configured to keep the cpu fan quiet by default but can be changed to keep the cpu cooler at the cost of being louder. I would push the system even further as prime 95 is going to be a worse case scenario when it comes to making the cpu hot, most loads won't get it with 5C of what prime 95 will. Most of the time I push the clock till the system crashes and then go down a half multiplier at a time till it is fully stable.

I disabled Cool N Quiet. The Blend test has been running for about 20 minutes now. I am going to wait another 40 minutes before I end it. It stabilized around 19 for a while, now it is having a few excursions down to 16 and then rises back a bit. I want to see how AC Syndicate runs at 4.2 GHz before I try to up it to 4.3

 

[leftisthominid]

As I wrote that, it had an extremely brief drop from 17 to 12 then back to 12 (guessing something in the background was trying to do something).

 

[utroz]

Glad it seems to be running ok so far. 4.2Ghz is decent. I think you will be able to notice a difference in some games and programs.. Let us know how AC Syndicate improves and if it is stable..

 

[leftisthominid]

The performance was not really any better than pre-OC. It stayed around 35-35 fps with almost everything at Ultra (using a GTX 1060 6GB).

I am going to try to bump the multiplier up the 21.5, maybe 22 on Sat/Sun to see how it goes

 

[leftisthominid]

I bumped the multiplier up to 21.5. The thermal margin stayed very similar to 21.

I noticed earlier that randomly my taskbar and system tray icons randomly disappeared and then started reloading. (I was trying to virus scan a CD at the time). Is this OC related or just some instability in Windows 10 Anniv edition?

 

[Cole_9]

The stock speeds for an FX 6300 are 3.5/4.1GHZ (Base/Overdrive)

I use AMD Overdrive to figure out my thermal margin (i.e., how much hotter the CPU can get). What is a safe limit for the margin to come down to under load? What about when idle?

Generally 20C is good limit and I would not get any closer than 10C. For idle I would want 40C or more thermal margin if possible but 30C at worst. This is all my opinion so I would be curious what other think.. I have had pretty good luck following these guidelines.

The performance was not really any better than pre-OC. It stayed around 35-35 fps with almost everything at Ultra (using a GTX 1060 6GB).

I am going to try to bump the multiplier up the 21.5, maybe 22 on Sat/Sun to see how it goes

I could be wrong, but I think you overclock the graphics processor for that. Either that, or just lower the detail settings, or maybe the game or program is just not very graphically intensive and diesnt need that many frames rendered. Sounds weird, I know, but I was running a couple of games with a Usage measurement utility the other day to see which programe were causing my GPU to bottleneck, and while most games I Played like DOOM and Alan Wake were using about 97% GPU and around 20-30% cpu, GTA 5 preety muched evened out on the GPU at 47% and the CPU at 42% usage. I was averaging about 47-50 FPS.

 

[leftisthominid]

The stock speeds for an FX 6300 are 3.5/4.1GHZ (Base/Overdrive)

I use AMD Overdrive to figure out my thermal margin (i.e., how much hotter the CPU can get). What is a safe limit for the margin to come down to under load? What about when idle?

Generally 20C is good limit and I would not get any closer than 10C. For idle I would want 40C or more thermal margin if possible but 30C at worst. This is all my opinion so I would be curious what other think.. I have had pretty good luck following these guidelines.

The performance was not really any better than pre-OC. It stayed around 35-35 fps with almost everything at Ultra (using a GTX 1060 6GB).

I am going to try to bump the multiplier up the 21.5, maybe 22 on Sat/Sun to see how it goes

I could be wrong, but I think you overclock the graphics processor for that. Either that, or just lower the detail settings, or maybe the game or program is just not very graphically intensive and diesnt need that many frames rendered. Sounds weird, I know, but I was running a couple of games with a Usage measurement utility the other day to see which programe were causing my GPU to bottleneck, and while most games I Played like DOOM and Alan Wake were using about 97% GPU and around 20-30% cpu, GTA 5 preety muched evened out on the GPU at 47% and the CPU at 42% usage. I was averaging about 47-50 FPS.

A GTX 1060 or a GTX 980 are supposed to be able to max out Syndicate. The issue is that the game is very CPU intensive, so that is why I am trying to overclock my CPU to minimize the bottleneck, but I am still getting similar frame rates.

 

[jmckinney28]

I have my 6300 at 4.3 with the same cooler as you. Not getting the performance I would like with H1Z1 and my Rx 480. Might look to push my cpu a bit further as well. maybe 4.5. M5A97 MB. Don't really wanna completely replace my MB, CPU, and ram till I absolutely have to.