First time overclock. Some questions! (athlon II 640 propus)

Hey everyone. I am currently trying to overclock a AMD Athlon II x4 640 propus. I cant get past 3400mhz on prime95 blend without bluescreening after about 15-20 minutes.
Here is my CPU-z:



So far my settings I have changed in bios:
FSB Frequency: 200 to 227 (220 was stable on prime 95 blend 1+hour)
vcore: from auto on bios to 1.385V
HT Link: I heard that the HT link speed should be below 2000mhz when the NB speed is above 2000mhz. My bios set the NB frequency to 2300mhz from 2000mhz. The HT link would have been over 2000mhz on the auto setting so I lowered it to 1815mhz.
FSB also upped my DRAM voltages to 900mhz from 800mhz.

I know my motherboard FSB is linked to everything else so it upped my ram frequency to 454mhz from 400mhz. Not sure if that has anything to do with the BSOD. Im currently running stable at 3400mhz but the voltages keep going up from 1.385 to 1.4+ when running prime95 blend. My max temperatures on bios are 39c where as motherboard CPUTIN reading was 49c max.

My system specs:
Asrock 970 extreme4
AMD Athlon II x4 640 Propus (3400mhz)
Gigabyte GTX 570 rev 2.0
550w psu
8gb (2x4gb) Crucial Sport Dual Channel kit ddr3 1600
MUGEN 4 CPU cooler
here is my hwmonitor. Max temps idle are 34/33c CPUTIN and in bios is 29c.

First of all welcome to OCF Trollyy

And yes your ram can make things unstable over a certain frequency. You either need to increase Dram voltage or drop the ram speed back one step. For now I would dropit back if you intend on going higher with your OC. I would also suggest that you give us a HWMonitor shot of the CPU under load with P95 so we can see how it's working. Idle is really not much use for Overclocking purposes. Also can you post CPU-z memory, Main And SPD tabs.

Trollyy,

As Johan45 said, we need a shot of HWMonitor taken after Prime95 has been running for at least 10 minutes. Idle temps are not very helpful unless they are unusually high which would indicated poor cooler mount or poor TIM application.

Having said that, it looks like to me that your vcore is too low at 1.392. I've overclocked several of those Propus core CPUs over the years and they seem to require about 1.45 vcore or so in order to be truly stable in the mid 3.x ghz range. you can expect to top out at about 3.6 ghz on that CPU.

Also, please attach some pics of CPU-z. We need three pics, one each for these three tabs: CPU, Memory and SPD. We don't have all the information we need with what you have given us so far.

Yes, you want to limit the HT Link fequency to around 2000 mhz. Usually, it will handle a little more before becoming unstable but there is no performance to be gained by the higher frequency anyway. Lowering it like you did is appropriate. However, if your CPU/NB frequency is exceeding 2000 mhz you want to give it a small voltage bump. 1.225 seems to work well.

If you are trying to run your 1600 mhz RAM at the full 1600 mhz you should not do that on this CPU. The Propus integrated memory controller (IMC) is not very strong and is only rated for 1333 mhz. It will usually handle around 1500 mhz with a voltage boost to the CPU/NB but poops out at higher than that.

So give us some load temps and some shots of CPU-z tabs.

Ok ill start a prime95 blend test. and ill post some screencaps. Also Im not trying to run my ram at the full 1600 but it keeps upping auto the dram frequency to 900 from 800. The lowest dram frequency i have available for selection in bios after applying FSB settings are 900+Mhz Dram frequencies.

here are my CPU-z screenshots






I will post temps/prime95 results momentarily.


here are temps after 10 mins of prime95. Max Core temp is 31C and the max CPUtin temp has been 45c. My voltage hasnt gone above 1.38 but its set to 1.35 in the bios.

Your ram is OK for now didn't realize you were running it so slowly already. You might actually want to raise the speed one bump to get you closer to the speed you'll be running everyday. Like Trents says I think the only thing that's standing in you way at the moment is Voltage. The next few steps will likely require more and more voltage since the higher you get the warmer it gets so voltage requirement increases per step.

Im a little confused by the DRAM frequency in the bios. When i dont up the FSB it auto sets my memory to ddr3-800mhz. Since two sticks dual channel both would equal 1600mhz right? because in CPU-z it is showing my dram frequency as 450. thats 450mhz 1:2 so 900mhz is my current frequency? not 1800mhz? Also i did up the DRAM frequancy to 1100 something in the bios but then it changed my dram multiplier in CPU-z to 7:2 from 1:2

After running for 25 mins my max temps were still 45c. I just restarted and upped DRAM voltage to 1.520 and the nb voltage to 1.22. It seems very stable at 3400mhz but im trying to push 3500mhz hopefully. Not sure about that because FSB link to dram frequency.

I changed vcore in BIOS to 1.4 and upped my FSB frequency to 234 to get 3500mhz clock speed. I also changed the DRAM frequency to 1250 but it changed my multiplier in cpu-z to 8:2 not sure if that means anything. Ill post screenshots. I will run a prime95 blend test here in a moment also


CPU-z Also is listing my vcore voltage as 1.376 but bios is 1.4

I'm not quite sure what you're saying with the ram but if you change dividers in BIOS it'll show in CPU-z as a different divider. Either way it's at 1248 right now which is good. From what I see you're doing OK. If the system crashes add a touch more voltage and try again.

Here is a current hwmonitor temps/prime95 blend 8 mins in screencap. Just posting before the chance i bsod.

Edit: My question about the ram is I have two sticks of ddr3 1600. on cpu-z it shows my memory as DRAM 624mhz. Im running dual channel. Would each channel be 1250mhz? or is it the total of both channels 1250mhz?

Your attachment didn't work but the ram question the 624 = 1248 because of the DDR or dual data rate not becuase it's running dual channel.

Johan45 said:

Your attachment didn't work but the ram question the 624 = 1248 because of the DDR or dual data rate not becuase it's running dual channel.

Click to expand...

Ok thank you. that clears things up. So to be on the safe side could i revert my DRAM voltage to 1.5? Ill keep the NB voltage at 1.22 right? After 20 minutes I didnt crash with 3500mhz FSB/vcore 1.4/nb 1.22/dram 1.52v.

How are your temps? If all seems good at this point then you may want to go the next step now and speed it up again. Leave the NB and RAM the way it is for now you just may need more V_Core with a higher speed.

Alright. My temps never passed 48c. Ill change the FSB and ill let you know how its going.

Edit: In the bios I upped the FSB to 239 for 3585mhz. I kept the voltage at 1.4v and i did drop the NB multiplier to x9 from x10 to drop the NB frequency to 2151mhz. With the FSB set at 239 it upped it to 2400~mhz and that just didnt seem safe. Going to run prime95 now.

2400 is safe, just is harder on the CPU for stability. That's fine the NB plays a role in ram performance but it can be addressed later. That 48 I assume is the CPUTin?

CPUtin max temp is 48c. In bios max was 34-39C. Also another quick question. when adjusting the NB voltage should i be adjusting NB CPU voltage or just NB voltage? Because I have a CPU NB voltage that i can change and also a NB voltage.

update: When the fsb is at 239 i crash about 4-6 minutes into Prime95. I dropped it to 235 and will try again.
update: Prime95 blend made it past 5 minutes. Temps are under 45c. We'll see how it goes.
update: prime95 blend 12mins~ temperatures havent gone above 44c. I feel like i should be able to get 3.6ghz out of this processor tho. Not sure what i should adjust. Its stable at 3524mhz currently.

It is said that a picture may be worth a thousand words...

...so as outlined below to actually 'see' what is happening. At least see as well as possible from a great distance outside your computer room.

This is what we need to see for sure and a real good starting point.

Normally during setup and testing we disable C1/E, C6, Cool N Quiet, APM, TurboCore and in windows performance manager itself we set to "performance" mode. ALSO if you have HPC in bios you would ENABLE it. That way there are not "other" settings messing with the overclocking process. Some of those settings are not available on all models of cpu but where in evidence we disable for setup of overclock process.

CPU Tab in CPUz from CPUID com


Memory Tab in CPUz from CPUID com


SPD Tab in CPUz from CPUID com


And this is screen capture of HWMonitor (free version) from CPUID com
HWMonitor has been scrolled enough and large enough to show Min/Max of Voltages and includes the CPU CORE TEMPS / "package" temps fully visible. Latest versions of HWMonitor show the CPU Core Temp as " a Package Temp" and is only shown as a single temp since there were never multple, individual core temp sensors anyway.

This capture is made of HWMonitor after it has been open and running on the desktop logging Min/Max temps and voltages while Prime 95 was running Blend Mode test on all cores for at least 20 mins and then the capture of HWMonitor was made and it shows the Min/Max temps and voltages before P95 Blend was started and while running P95 Blend mode and gives much greater insight into how the system is performing without guessing.



In order to attach screenshots of INDIVIDUAL images as suggested, first crop and capture the images with Snipping Tool found in Windows Accessories or equivalent. Then click on Go Advanced, a button at the bottom of every new post window. Then click on the little paperclip tool at the top of the Advanced post window when it opens. Clicking on the paperclip tool brings up the file browser/upload tool and the rest is fairly obvious.

Ok this is current CPU-z and HWmonitor at idle. Ive already disabled C1/E, C6, Cool N Quiet, APM, TurboCore, etc in bios. I have not yet checked for HPC, once this prime95 test is done i will restart and enable that if its in my bios settings. I just enabled "performance mode" or "adjust for best performance" in windows.





I will upload hwmonitor screencaps after running for prime95 blend 20 minutes. Posting just incase crash.
here is hwmonitor w/ prime95 blend running for 10 minutes. I will keep it running for another 10-15 minutes.

current HWmonitor readings w/ prime95 running currently at 20+ minutes.
View attachment 155642

Your temps are quite well controlled at this point. You should realize that we monitor two temps: CPUTIN (which is actually the temp of the motherboard socket area) and Core temp, which is the calculated temp of the processor cores themselves. We know from experience that when core temps begin to exceed 55-60c when significantly overclocking that we start to see instability and the same is true when socket temps begin to exceed about 65c. You are well below those levels so pour on some more vcore. Now your max vcore is only 1.424. We don't start to get concerned about voltage on that generation of AMD CPUs until vcore starts to exceed 1.5 (assuming temps are still under control). The other issue that might soon come into play, however, with the vcore is the thermal limits of the motherboard power phase components. That motherboard doesn't have a real stout power phase, only 4+1.