The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Russ, weren't you saying once upon a time, that the NB frequency should be slightly higher than the HT? I have BD Rebuilder running right now, and seems more stable than before, but I'm not maxing the CPU as much as I'd like. I suppose that could just be the way it behaves though...

This is interesting!
http://www.overclockers.com/the-importance-of-northbridge-overclocking-with-the-phenom-ii/

Since it seems like my CPU is waiting for something, I must need to stabilize something, or speed up the NB?

Well, unstable once again. Nearly finished the X264 encode too I switched to Prime95, to attempt to get a better understanding of what's going on. I also noticed in everest that my Ram voltage is below the standard. I increased it to 1.65 stock, and now it's stable longer in Prime95. What's weird is, I'm only running CPU stress tests. VERY little ram tested.
In any case, I'm putting it on hold for a few hours. I need to do something about the NB temperature. It hit 60C in prime95. I don't like 60C! 50 - 55 is where I'd like it. So I'm finally going to remove the blueshield on my heat pipe, and position a fan there. See if I can drop it even 3C...

 

Oman7,

Close! LOL!! You can't run the HT link faster than the NorthBridge, or it will default to a lower setting. Both of mine are now set to 2600, so my Hyper Transport Bus is now running at 5200 MT/s.

Northbridge Frequency



HT Link Frequency



Memory Bandwidth



MIPS



I also turned on the IOMMU Support in the Advanced Settings in the bios, which adds a useful 6000 MIPS, with the NorthBridge and the CPU NB VID Control set to 1.1v. I also raised the NB/PCIe/PLL Voltage Control +1 click up. I have to say, I'm impressed for such a low overclock. The 900 Series AM3+ motherboards are the way to go. And don't be ragging on me for using an older Sandra. At least I can understand the terminology and I don't have to put up with all the "Kiddie Crap" and the incessant need for Bling! That aside, I'm pretty happy with what I put together and the results I've gotten from it. As easy as it was to get to 4.2GHz, I have no doubt that it can go as high as 4.6GHz without having to resort to 1.5v+ for the CPU voltage.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Thanks Russ. It actually doesn't bother me if somebody uses older software for tests. As long as the comparisons are done with the same version

Sounds like I may purchase an AM3+ board anyway. I'll likely be purchasing an AM3+ chip in the future. There will likely be a suitable revision to bulldozer I may be interested in.

The blue shields came off of the heat pipe easily. The temperature appears to be unaffected though(maybe 1 - 2c cooler at idle). I'd really like a better cooler for the NB Perhaps I'm nitpicking it too much though. In order to reapply thermal compound, I have to remove the board. Not into that right now Probably when I get a new board.

Well... back to stabilizing. Wish me luck!

 

Was your last board able to hold a 2600Mhz NB frequency? I bumped my NB/HT to 2600Mhz. I got stuck in a reboot loop. Had to clear the CMOS. Which made it really interesting. Whoever designed the board should be shot! The Jumper is right next to the battery, and both are hidden under my GPU. Wonder who's hair brained idea that was! LOL! Just about as bad as the S-ata ports. I suppose there's only so much they can do with the design though. Cramming as much as they do on the board. No doubt it's challenging. They really should relocate the CMOS battery though. It needs to be easier to get at.

Forgot to reset the clock. Opened firefox to my homepage(Hotmail), and it didn't recognize the security certificate, or something to that affect. Said it wouldn't til september of this year. I looked down at the clock and thought "oh yes! Of course!" LOL!

And now I have to fiddle with my Ram again. I'm not certain what it's settings were. I'd like to run some tests at the current configuration though, and see what happens.

EDIT -
I ran Prime95 once with stock Ram settings, and CPU at 1.45V, NB at 1.22V, NB/HT frequency at 2200. Blue-screened. ~10min.
Ran again, this time upped the CPU volts to 1.475. Stable for ~17min, when I stopped the torture test. So it appears to me, the CPU simply needed more volts. This was not the case when I first purchased my equipment. It seemed to prefer a lower CPU voltage, and higher NB voltage. Strange turn of events. I remember this perfectly too. My memory is a bit rough. I prefer to call it selective though

 

Oman7,

No! It wasn't able to go past 2400 on either setting. I wound up at 2400 NB and 2200 HT-F. I managed 4.0 with my 1090T at over 1.5v on the 790X. This motherboard is way more friendly and forgiving than the 790X. I haven't had any encoding or Trans-coding errors, and they will usually bring any overclock to it's knees if things aren't right, given the processor/memory precision required for video. No temperature issues either, just an accumulation of processor errors, that finally reboots the computer without a BSOD, just like hitting the reset button! If my AutoCad program doesn't crash it, I guess nothing will! It put's more load on the computer than any other program I use, and it uses all 6 cores.

Russ

 

I had a feeling you'd say something like that.

over 1.5V? Eesh! I don't even like being at 1.475, but I'm o-k with it, since the max temp I've seen so far was 53C(VERY high load), and 58 on the northbridge. A stock AMD cpu cooler fan is pulling heat from the northbridge. It lowered load temps about 2 - 3c. I'm really wondering if supreme water cooling could bring the CPU any lower though. I've read reviews of people getting my load temps, on higher dollar water cooling. I suppose there's reasons that could cause that though. I'm sure I could lower the temp if I wanted to. a double/triple radiator, with an excellent pump for instance, would probably help at least slightly.
VERY impressed with the Coolit eco. From 1.4V to 1.475, load temps only increased 4-5C!

The ultimate stability test will run tonight(Bd Rebuilder/X264). If it passes, I'll try to tweak my Ram next.

I read that I shouldn't worry about a 60C chip. I'd like to hear what gigabyte/AMD has to say about their chipsets In my browsing, one guy said a mosfet can handle 150C! And the heatsinks on them is for show. I wonder about that though. Longevity certainly comes into play. And they are generally only on the higher end boards, that people are guaranteed to be overclocking!

 

Oman7,

I sincerely doubt the 150C claim. That's 302F! You would have a devil of a time cooling any computer with that much heat inside the case. All computers have Mosfets, even $35 ones, as they are what controls the voltage. They are the voltage regulators! The better boards simply have more of them.

Here's some basics on them. I'm pretty sure you will recognize them.
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/voltmods/21

Russ

 

Oh yah. I've seen those little doodads

150C could be their threshold/maximum temperature. Yes, that's extremely hot. Well beyond boiling boint Plenty hot enough to blister skin!

I'm simply suggesting that watercooling the VRM's/Mosfet, may be a bit overkill. But then, it really does depend how much one is overclocking, and how cool they want their case as well. As well as longevity of course.

 

Yes, VRMs can handle 150C. The VRMs on GPUs with aftermarket coolers routinely run 120-130C, and amazingly enough, they handle it. I'm not sure it's a temperature I'd be happy with, but 150 maximum sounds about right...

 

Bd Rebuilder/X264 stable. So far anyway. I'll run a few more encodes to be sure, then I'll bump my Ram up

You have no idea how pleased I am about this

 

Hasn't AMD been locking down their chips since Thunderbird?

 

xiaotuanzi,

Thunderbird is an 11 year old processor, and was made for socket A. It's 7 socket generations old. AMD started making unlocked multipliers in late 2007, calling them "Black Edition". I had an early Phenom Quad based AthlonII x2 7750 Black Edition Kuma Core, that I could unlock all 4 cores on. Sadly, I didn't get a good one, and it wouldn't run with the cores unlocked. All black Editions since then have had unlocked multipliers.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I have a Tyan Thunder i7505
Dual Xeon 4, 3.06Ghz CPUs that rate at 3060MHz / 4 x 133, multiplier 23/1x
Supports 128MB, 256MB, 512MB and 1GB unbuffered DDR200/266 modules memory.
I have two 1024 2100s (133MHz)
I have (not installed) two 1024 2700s (333MHz)
Lots more, it is a pretty beafy PC that I use as my workstation. I have 6 rackmount servers also and want to learn how to OC so I can tweak any one of them but I do not know what I am doing.
Any Help is appreciated

 

You can't normally overclock server-grade components, the BIOSes do not allow for it. It's really designed with consumer-grade PCs in mind. Further, two single core 3.06Ghz Xeons really aren't that powerful these days. A $125 basic home user Core i3 dual core would be far faster than that system, and even in a $60 motherboard will accept as many as four 4096MB memory modules.

Overclocking rackmount servers, even if it were possible with the hardware you put in, is strongly disrecommended due to heat concerns.

 

Most rackmount servers and their cooling solutions are designed with a certain thermal output and power draw in mind. Overclocking would be a big nono. Have worked in server rooms before and it's a gargantuan task just cooling them at stock settings. They do not have adequate cooling for any sort of OCing.

Sam is basically right in that any off-the-shelf or budget home-built system with basic components will outclass that server and take much more updated components. It was considered beefy 8 years ago. You are going to be very limited in what components will work with those servers and likely have a hard time tracking anything down.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but old hardware is old. Find newer stuff better suited to your needs or use it as-is.

 

leahsguide,

Cooling would not be the only problem either. You are talking generations old here, that will not accept modern components. I ran into the same problems with an old Dell 420 Workstation that I wanted to improve the performance on. Video alone would be a major problem, modern Sata drives would be another headache. It would cost you far less to build a new Intel or AMD, dual or quad core. You would wind up with a modern computer that would blow away the performance of your Tyan Thunder, and run so much cooler, in the process!

I agree 100% with sammoris and Estuansis on this.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

hey,ive got an older phenom 8650 triple core and have it overclocked from 2.3ghz to 2.7ghz stable.my core temps are no higher than 42c when stress testing. how much can you go on these things? i have a foxconn m61pmv board and am using fox intelligent overclocking.

 

That sounds very low for any overclocked CPU in a stress test. Are you sure you're reading the right sensor? What cooler are you using?

 

I doubt you can go much higher on that motherboard, the CPU in a motherboard with better voltage regulators may handle 700mhz OC but a lot of those CPU's were not that great for OC'ing.

Also I would be very surprised if your cpu was giving you the right temp readings as a lot of those generation CPU's were sketchy with the temp sensors.

List your full specs and we may be able to get a bit more out of it OC'ing through the bios, but I wouldn't hold your hopes too high

 

Indeed, I think getting 2.7Ghz out of an original Phenom X3 is pretty good as it is, I don't think you'll be going much further.