Should I overclock my AMD Phenom II X4 965?

[crazymarc]

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Deneb RB-C3 revision

I have a liquid cooling system but no clue what the brand is

PSU - XFX Core Edition PRO550W

GPU - GTX 760

MB - Gigabyte GA-770T-USB3

RAM - 4x 2gb sticks

I'm looking for what ghz to clock to, if i will even be able to overclock it. I know there are a lot of different things to look at and i'm just looking for some help from the community.

 

[FloppyNacho]

I'll assume this is for gaming, what graphics card do you have? If not there shouldn't be much of a reason to O/C

 

[crazymarc]

nvidia 760

 

[pbm86]

Try overclocking to 3.9 or 4.0 GHz by setting the CPU multiplier to 19.5 or 20.0. It is pretty easy to overclock Phenom II Black edition.

 

[Onus]

Your original post has a GTX760.
Boards similar to yours are not listed as having problems on https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgN1D79Joo7tdE9xMUFlMEVWeFhuckJEVF9aMmtpUFE&gid=3 so I'd think you should be able to OC. How much, as you may have surmised, is a crapshoot, but 3.8GHz seems reasonable, and you may well break 4.0GHz. Just watch your temps, and you may want to get an Antec Spotcool to cool your VRMs since liquid coolers don't do much for them.

 

[crazymarc]

@ pbm86 Are all AMD Phenom II X4 965 black editions? Because I dont think mine is.

@Onus Thanks for the info man, i have no idea what VRMs are do you mind saying?

 

[Onus]

VRMs are the Voltage Regulator Modules that provide power to the CPU. Overclocking a CPU takes more power, and if the VRMs are weak, they could burn out.

 

[pbm86]

All 965 are Black Editions. There shouldn't be any power problems If you manage to overclock the CPU without increasing the CPU voltage. I have a Phenom II 955 BE on a ASUS M5A97 Pro motherboard and it is perfectly stable at 3.9 GHz.

 

[exroofer]

A great deal of cpu thruput is available on that chip from taking the northbridge up to 2600ish, while not going overboard on cpu clock speed.