First Overclock- AMD FX 4100

Hey Everybody,

I'm in the process of getting prepared to move forward with my first overclock on my gaming pc. I would really love some must read/watch links on Tutorials/ terms/ technologies/ monitoring software/ bench-marking software that I should familiarize myself with first. Thanks in advance for any help, I will check back regularly. If you need any additional info to be of more assistance please let me know.

Hardware Specs:Updated 4/2/15
Case: Antec Two Hundred S -ATX Mid http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129074
PSU: Antec BP550 Plus 550W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme 3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157280
CPU: AMD FX-4100 Zambezi Quad Core 3.6 HZ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103996
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...103099&cm_re=hyper_212-_-35-103-099-_-Product
Graphics Card: MSI R9 270 GAMING 2GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...70_2048MB_PCIe_3.0_x16-_-14-127-769-_-Product
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3EG HD503HI 500GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152305
RAM: 2x Kingston 4GB DDR3 1066 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134927

Some programs I've already downloaded:
CoreTemp
CPU-Z
HWMonitor
Speedfan
Heaven Benchmark
Prime 95

You can find a link to overclocking an FX in my Sig. One thing you will want to do is get a fan for the VRM section on that board to help keep the temps down. Also go ahead and get that Hyper 212 it'll be much better than the stock cooler.

Johan45 said:

You can find a link to overclocking an FX in my Sig. One thing you will want to do is get a fan for the VRM section on that board to help keep the temps down. Also go ahead and get that Hyper 212 it'll be much better than the stock cooler.

Click to expand...

Thanks,

I will be picking up the CPU Cooler sometime this week and should be able to install it this weekend. I will try to do some reading about cooling the VRM on the mobo as well.

Check just about any of the threads in this section and I'm sure you'll see pics and suggestions. Even with the really good boards it helps. These CPUs are just plain hot.

I ended up finding the Hyper 212 for like 23 bucks after rebate at the Microcenter by my house. I opened up the case yesterday to put it in and sadly realized my case was blocking the mounting bracket in the back so I had to remove the Mobo and install it that way. Install went fairly smooth. Once up and running I ran prime 95 for about 3.5 hours and never exceeded 25 degrees. I have 4 case fans, 2 on the front pulling air in, 1 on top blowing air out, and 1 on the back blowing air out. I installed the CPU Fan on the bottom side of the heat sink so it pushes air through the heat sink toward the top of the case where the top and rear fan pull it out. I took a couple pictures and will add them here when I'm not at work.

Good move KookieB, this will all help in the long run.

Are these parts bought yet? I only ask since the 4100 shows out of stock - replaced by 4300 which is $106 shipped. And tigerdirect has the 8300 for $115. But that only holds if you don't have to pay sales tax (I know Illinois residents get stuck with $10 sales tax since Tiger Direct is also in IL).

Then again... maybe might not want to go down that road, we all know where that slippery slope leads

xrror said:

Are these parts bought yet? I only ask since the 4100 shows out of stock - replaced by 4300 which is $106 shipped. And tigerdirect has the 8300 for $115. But that only holds if you don't have to pay sales tax (I know Illinois residents get stuck with $10 sales tax since Tiger Direct is also in IL).

Then again... maybe might not want to go down that road, we all know where that slippery slope leads

Click to expand...

What slippery road? 4 core 95w vs 8 core 95w...... it's a no brainer.

xrror said:

Are these parts bought yet? I only ask since the 4100 shows out of stock - replaced by 4300 which is $106 shipped. And tigerdirect has the 8300 for $115. But that only holds if you don't have to pay sales tax (I know Illinois residents get stuck with $10 sales tax since Tiger Direct is also in IL).

Then again... maybe might not want to go down that road, we all know where that slippery slope leads

Click to expand...

Yes these parts are already bought. The story behind this pc is a friend built it for me in 2011 for the release of SWTOR. I wasn't particularly educated on pc's at the time. I just wanted to be able to play the game on medium to high settings with a decent framerate. I updated the Graphics card Last year when the fan stopped working on my HIS Radeon HD 6770 1g. I was on a pretty tight budget at the time, i've since gain FT employment and am going to be upgrading a lot of parts on this computer replacing basically everything within the next 6-18 months. Next on the list is power supply, RAM, and SSD. Then MOBO and cpu. Then GPU again. I'll upgrade the case at some point as well, maybe opt for watercooling after i've learned more. I just did my first solo build of a PC this week when I built a friend a $600 budget gaming build.

Ah, well cool then. You already have 8GB of RAM, and the radeon 270 should be good (unless you're using like 3 monitors or something) so yea... your plan of overclocking what you have sounds like a good time really

Time to see what that 1066 ram will really do along with the 4100. Honestly I really do think the more affordable parts are way more fun to overclock, because any gains you make from stock really do give more punch than if you're already high up.

Do keep us posted on how it goes! It should be a fun journey!

Though, maybe you should make a backup of your hard drive first if you can. It's actually not very common these days to nuke a windows install with a failed overclock attempts (crazy benching overclocks excluded =D )

But don't want your first overclock journey to lead in tears by fluke.

Again it's rare, but if you have some irreplaceable data on there might want to back it up first while you're feeling out the ropes and learning your system behavior as you tweak the knobs so to speak.

I will be keeping this updated as I move forward with the overclock or as questions arise. I do use three monitors. I 've got two ASUS VE2474H's for my main bottom monitors and one generic 19" that I mostly just use when working or to keep Skype calls displayed on. No irreplaceable data on this computer right now, but i'll be sure to back up before tweaks in the future.

Ordered the Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD as new os and game boot drive. Will be installing that late next week.

KookieB...

...I see you buying some parts for your cofiguration. If you can this would be something I would strongly urge you to consider in the line of better and speedier ram to an extent. In the overall scope of things you are going to want to get all the stable cpu speed that is available in the 4 core FX processor. In gaming the more cpu Mhz > the better. That FX-4 core needs to run at least 4.8Ghz to have some real Oomph in performance. That means you need faster ram to match up with fast cpu speed.

Outlined below:
2 different 'brands' of DDR3-1866 ram in 2x4G sizing.

http://www.microcenter.com/search/s...mputer-Memory-:-Computer-Parts-:-Micro-Center

Overall you likely would do better to have DDR3-1866 ram running at Cas 9 than that DDR3-1000 ram you have in the system now. I much prefer GSkill Ares type ram but Microcenter does not sell that brand and I get mine from NewEgg. So that link above goes to the only two kits of DDR3-1866 shown at Microcenter online. I know both show a huge difference in price and since I don't really care for either brand...the price means nothing to me good or bad.

Over the course of some 3.5 years now with these FX-8 core processors we have found that ram speed on the order of DDR3-2000 is about the best overall for daily use. Most of the time I run 16Gigs of GSkill at DDR3-1940 since that is the most easily adjusted for ram speed when I up my FSB and juggle the CPU_NB and HT Link Speed to about 2540Mhz. So nO I am not just bound to turn over heaven and h*ll to hit on DDR3-2000 but go in that direction as much or as readily as possible and my GSkill DDR3-1866 ram will overclock nicely to about DDR3-2000 but run it slightly lower at DDR3-1940 for easy of overall adjusting.

I like to run my cpu at 235FSB aKa HT Ref Freq and when raising or lowering the FSB aKa HT Ref Feq, the cpu speed, HT Link Speed and CPU_NB speed are also raised or lowered at the very same time. So since I use 235FSB aKa HT Ref Freq I use the other buss multipliers to juggle my ram speed, HT Link Speed and CPU_NB to get in the range I mentioned above.

One last thing to remember is that on an AMD system, I would never (99% of the time) trade just a few extra bits of ram speed if I have to loosen the ram timings. I much prefer ram at about the sweet spot for AM3+ systems and ram timings as tight as I can get them with absolute, unfailing stability for daily use.

RGone...

EDIT:
CrapOla. Thought I was looking at MicroCenter "anywhere" online but found I was actually looking at stores in Atlanta GA area. But you get the idea and can check your local area for those DDR3-1866 type kits.
END EDIT.

I have a set of those same Corsair vengeance ..... nice kit on my 4770K though I admit I have never tried them in my FX rig for that I have my AMD ram. I can toss them in and see how they run if you would like, let me know as AMD can be picky with some ram as we have found.

Nice offer to KookieB to test like that. You know how I am about my GSkill and AMD but surely there are other ram kits that do work. It is the law of averages for the average user that say do X for a more sure Y result. Hehehe. Thanks Bassnut.

RGone...

Thing is I dunno if KookieB was planning to stay with the 4100 configuration for the long haul. I was more thinking he(/she?) was trying out the idea of overclocking at all for the "first time" on this current machine.

The order of part upgrades which he's planned (leaving motherboard/processor last) means that when he gets to that point, he has the option to change platforms all together. Remember also, this is his first FT employment - he might just upgrade out of this "bracket."

KookieB said:

Next on the list is power supply, RAM, and SSD. Then MOBO and cpu. Then GPU again. I'll upgrade the case at some point

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ALSO at the end of that, KookieB will have enough parts to actually have 2 machines

I guess what I'm saying is I don't know if I'd recommend buying new RAM unless it's a surefire part that would transfer to a new build. (16GB kit? DDR3 or 4? we dunno when/if he'll do a new build).

We don't know if KookieB will catch the "overclocking bug" yet

If KookieB does want to stay with his current rig, then RGone your suggestion is right on the money. But I'm thinking KookieB is still "kicking the tires" of building his own machine (he just built a rig from scratch for a buddy for the first time not too long ago), and is now interested enough in overclocking to find these forums, and actually post.

... so maybe as a gentle lead in, we keep it cheap as in "$0 -clock what you've got" and see if overclocking is something he wants to peruse first.

I mean, I'll be the first one cheering if he posts back, and it bothered him enough to complain his 1066 memory will only overclock to say 15xx... that's the beginning of the overclocking bug heehe

Lastly I gotta say he's on the right track - moving to a (highly rated - I think he did research) SSD from a 5400RPM boot drive... that in itself is going to be pretty amazing difference.

if you game you will find that ram speed gives us little, as long as you're above 800, you will never "see" it with your eyes.
I have fought with kingston and crucial ram with fx and would avoid them.
my gskill and corsair dominator ram are plug and play every time with amd and intel, kingston and crucial play fine with intel.
1866 ram has been the sweet spot when clocked as Rgone has stated, get it into the 1900's and tighten what you can, there is little to be gained so i just plug it in and set it at stock and smile i don't have to fight with it.

Thanks for all the replies, I hope I answered all the questions.

I am looking to basically build a new $1000-1500 rig focused on high end gaming with some video editing. instead of waiting and building it all at once I am trying to buy what I know will transfer over to a new build and increase my performance now. I am hoping to have two builds at the end. I think new RAM is first or second on my list. I was concerned that I may also need to upgrade my power supply since I've upgraded the video card and cpu cooler, installed additional case fans, and at the end of next week 2 extra hard drives since the system was built. I was leaning toward G.Skill Trident X Series 2x8GB DDR3 1866 but am not sure if that's the best thing to buy? I'm hoping one of you will tell me if my concerns about the power supply are valid and if so if 850W is going to be pretty future proof or if its overkill? If i do need to upgrade the power supply should I be doing that before upgrading the RAM?

This should be good even if you added another of the same model of video card in use now. At the rate you are building now this power supply should do okay even if you were to go with two 980Ti cards and water cool with two +12V water pumps and 4 more fans on a radiator. This is 850watts of very good power supply. That is if you want to get a power supply now. Or pretty soon.

RGone...

RGone said:

This should be good even if you added another of the same model of video card in use now. At the rate you are building now this power supply should do okay even if you were to go with two 980Ti cards and water cool with two +12V water pumps and 4 more fans on a radiator. This is 850watts of very good power supply. That is if you want to get a power supply now. Or pretty soon.

RGone...

Click to expand...

That is actually the exact power supply I was looking at buying. Just wansnt sure if I should buy that before the RAM or not