[SOLVED] Will I be able to overclock my CPU with these parts? (FX8350)

[asdh]

Specs:

Mobo: Asus M5A78L-M

CPU: Amd FX-8350

Cooler: Corsair H55

RAM: 16GB DDR3 HyperX Fury

GPU: Msi GTX 970

SSD: Kingston 120GB

PSU: Corsair CX600



I wanna go to 4.5GHz maybe even 4.7GHz but im not sure if it is doable with this set up.



I have 2 intake fans at the front of the case and 2 at the top to take air out as well as a fan for the watercooler.



Is overclocking with these parts doable or do i need to buy new componants, and if so, which?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I would not recommend overclocking that system. The motherboard has a very weak looking vrm with no heat syncs. That coupled with an AIO that won't blow air over the VRM could cause vrm throttling or overheating.

You shouldn't waste money to buy a new mobo for that system just to overclock a bit.

A 120mm aio will be somewhat limiting too.

 

[DSzymborski]

No. It's a cheap motherboard and cheap AM3+ motherboards, including this one specifically as a commonly used low-end motherboard, are notorious for throttling issues at load even at stock clock speeds with 125W CPUs. The PSU is also fairly low-quality and not something with which you want to be pushing an overclock. You can always try to overclock, but even if successful, I wouldn't want to place bets on the lifespan of your motherboard given the anemic VRM configuration.

Nor is it recommended to spend anything to get parts that can overclock. Spending $200-$250 on a new (used) 990FX motherboard and a better power supply doesn't make sense for a slight incremental boost on a platform from 2012. The money would be far better saved towards far better equipment.

 

[asdh]

No. It's a cheap motherboard and cheap AM3+ motherboards, including this one specifically as a commonly used low-end motherboard, are notorious for throttling issues at load even at stock clock speeds with 125W CPUs. The PSU is also fairly low-quality and not something with which you want to be pushing an overclock. You can always try to overclock, but even if successful, I wouldn't want to place bets on the lifespan of your motherboard given the anemic VRM configuration.

Nor is it recommended to spend anything to get parts that can overclock. Spending $200-$250 on a new (used) 990FX motherboard and a better power supply doesn't make sense for a slight incremental boost on a platform from 2012. The money would be far better saved towards far better equipment.

Damn that sucks, I built this set up in like 2015 and have recently been interested in getting back into PC gaming (mainly for Warzone), so I havent really been paying attention to recent equipment.
Does my cpu or gpu still hold up at all or is just worth saving up and buying all new equipment?

 

[DSzymborski]

Damn that sucks, I built this set up in like 2015 and have recently been interested in getting back into PC gaming (mainly for Warzone), so I havent really been paying attention to recent equipment.
Does my cpu or gpu still hold up at all or is just worth saving up and buying all new equipment?

The GPU sort of holds up, but along the lines of a budget entry and the RAM config of the 970 is an issue. It's still usable at 1080p, somewhere between the RX 570 and the RX 580/1650 Super depending on games, though somewhat worse in a few games that are quite VRAM hungry.

The CPU doesn't hold up at all. For gaming, AM3+ wasn't really recommended even in 2015. The AM3+ CPUs woefully underperformed and in gaming workloads, i3s and then the least expensive Ryzens were regularly beating the most powerful, overclocked AM3+ CPUs. An FX-8350's best use was as a budget workstation, not so much for gaming. And overclocking doesn't fix that; the nightmare 9590/9370 CPUs were just overclocked FX-8350s and they were also beaten by those aforementioned i3s and least expensive Ryzens in gaming.

 

[asdh]

The GPU sort of holds up, but along the lines of a budget entry and the RAM config of the 970 is an issue. It's still usable at 1080p, somewhere between the RX 570 and the RX 580/1650 Super depending on games, though somewhat worse in a few games that are quite VRAM hungry.

The CPU doesn't hold up at all. For gaming, AM3+ wasn't really recommended even in 2015. The AM3+ CPUs woefully underperformed and in gaming workloads, i3s and then the least expensive Ryzens were regularly beating the most powerful, overclocked AM3+ CPUs. An FX-8350's best use was as a budget workstation, not so much for gaming. And overclocking doesn't fix that; the nightmare 9590/9370 CPUs were just overclocked FX-8350s and they were also beaten by those aforementioned i3s and least expensive Ryzens in gaming.

Damn i was a stupid kid lmao. I guess ill just save up and do some proper research this time.
Thanks!

 

[Karadjgne]

The FX cpus had 67% of the IPC of a 3rd gen i5, if that helps put the nail in the coffin. Putting them closer to being equitable with the better lga775 cpus from 10 or so years ago.

The H55 is a capable cooler, on par with a 140w hyper212, and amd TDP of its cpus was a LOT more accurate and realistic than Intel has been in 2 decades. Normally you'd not really see an issue with @ 4.5GHz (ish). But as said, that's really a low end 760G chipset motherboard normally rated for 95w cpus, when to get any decent stable OC on the 125w cpus required a 970 or the 990FX/FXA boards.

You can try the OC, but what I'd recommend is buying a couple of small cabinet type L brackets, mounting them to the motherboard-side screws of your rear exhaust fan and then a seperate 120mm mounted to the brackets. Basically suspending a 120mm fan above the VRM's and pump block area. That might be enough to get you to 4.5GHz, but I'd not push it further as there is nothing left in the cooling at all.

 

[madmatt30]

Not even worth trying.

Had a 8320 running at 4.3ghz back in the day on that board but it required the use of a really good downblower cooler (raijintek pallas) to cool cpu as well as vrm setup.

With a aio it's just going to throttle horrendously, you also need to completely disable p states in windows.

It won't really gain you much performance wise anyway even it could run successfully, and 4.6ghz is a Big overclock for all but the best fx 8 cores.

Run it as it is, you can still game on an fx chip fairly successfully anyway, they were never actually as bad for that use as they were generally regarded.

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

These guy's are right Op it's really not worth the effort on that mobo.

But if you decide to try what Karadjgne suggests it would look something like this.

https://imgur.com/a/jjU3ynL

View: https://imgur.com/a/jjU3ynL


Those pics are when a 8350 was on a gigabyte 970 Sli mobo.

Unfortunately fx users are left rummageing
Craigslists , Ebay, garage sale, flea markets, for used parts so keep in mind It's Buyer Beware.

 

[cryoburner]

The CPU doesn't hold up at all. For gaming, AM3+ wasn't really recommended even in 2015. The AM3+ CPUs woefully underperformed and in gaming workloads, i3s and then the least expensive Ryzens were regularly beating the most powerful, overclocked AM3+ CPUs.

To be fair, the same could be said for the competing i3s and i5s that were in a similar price range back in 2015. In late 2015, it should have been possible to get an FX-8350 for less than the cost of an i5-6400, and closer to the cost of an i3-6320 when on sale. Those locked i3s and i5s may have been a bit better for gaming at the time, but the FX-8350's roughly 33% higher multi-core clock rates, even at stock, prevented those parts from pulling too much ahead, unlike Intel's more expensive unlocked parts.

And since then, core counts have been increasing, and a lot of the more recent AAA titles really want more threads than those older mid-range Intel processors have to offer. In a game heavily utilizing four threads, that i5 might still manage to get over 20% higher frame rates provided it's paired with a higher-end graphics card, but the i3-would be choking with its mere two cores with SMT, preventing it from being much better than the FX-processor, and probably worse in terms of frame stability. And in a game like Warzone, that's been shown to run best on processors with more than 4 threads, even the quad-core i5 would likely choke a bit. There are plenty of modern games where an i5-6400 will still outperform an FX-8350, though an increasing number are likely to see benefit from the FX procesor's higher thread count, even if ultimately neither processor is particularly ideal in 2020. And with a GTX 970, many modern games will be limited more by graphics performance than anything, so you generally won't see the kinds of differences between processors shown in reviews utilizing much higher-end graphics cards.

It's probably worth asking, have you tried running your existing hardware in Warzone and other games to see whether performance might be suitable enough? And have you tried lowering graphics settings somewhat to see whether that might lessen demand on the graphics card and improve performance to any significant degree? This hardware isn't exactly ideal for gaming at this point, but should still run the vast majority of games fairly well, provided you are willing to turn down settings a bit and are okay with dips below 60fps.