Phenom II X4 965 BE and OC, is my goal safe?

Greetings all! I'm tossing the idea around for OCing my Phenom II X4 965 BE from ~3.45ghz to something closer to 3.8ghz with 100% stability and not too much heat. I haven't overclocked a CPU since, are you ready, a socket 370 Pentium III. I tried reading the topic on Phenom II OC guide but I feel a bit lost on all of the specific details. LOL it didn't seem quite this involved back in those days. I could use some guidance on this.

My system specs are in my signature below.

My main concerns are:
1. Want as close to 100% stability as possible.
2. Want to keep temps didn't to a reasonable level to hopefully prevent and damage to the processor. I'm hoping my Corsair H80 cooler will be good enough.

I greatly appreciate any assistance.

If you’re running a Black Edition things are really easy. Go into your BIOS. First give your CPU a little extra voltage; not enough to damage it but enough to give it to compensate for overclocking. As a general rule of thumb a 5% CPU voltage increase is a conservative amount. So in your section of your BIOS that shows the various CPU settings and there increase the CPU voltage (often referred to as Vcore – consult your manual if you can’t find it) by 5% above its default value. 5% is a good round number

Reboot the PC into the BIOS again. Now you’re looking for the CPU multiplier value. Increase this by 1 above its default value. Boot into Windows and start stability testing (Prime 95 Blend mode for at least 20mins). If it’s 100% stable head back into the BIOS and increase the multiplier by one more. Keep testing until you find your CPU’s ceiling (or reach your intended speed) then back it down one notch to obtain a stable safe frequency. You’re done!

That is just how simple overclocking an AMD BE (Black Edition) can be initially.

Oh you can get into FSB overclocking and overclocking the ram and increasing cpu speed without first adding some voltage to the cpu for increased chance of stability from the get go...most of that is rather convoluted just to get 400Mhz cpu overclock.

RGone...

Thank you for the reply! That seems reasonable enough, I will give that a go and report back once I get the time. I start my work week tomorrow through Tuesday so I expect to get my hands dirty hopefully within a week.

JCE3000GT said:

Thank you for the reply! That seems reasonable enough, I will give that a go and report back once I get the time. I start my work week tomorrow through Tuesday so I expect to get my hands dirty hopefully within a week.

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Oh there are all sorts of tutorials out there that want to check this that and so on but to just plainly get ~400Mhz overclock it is simple enough and not a lot of extra time wasted. Good luck.

By the way pretty good Signature but you left out one very important piece... the motherboard brand model.

Again good luck.

RGone...

EDIT:
One last thought. When testing with P95 Blend mode...have HWMonitor FREE open and running in the background or even visible so that you do not let the CPU/Socket temp exceed about 62c and the Core/Package temp exceed about 55c since those are considered safe, sane and not prone to generate heat induced errors.
END EDIT.

Oh sorry about that! I'll add it. In the meantime I have a Gigabyte GA‑990FXA‑UD3.

JCE3000GT said:

Oh sorry about that! I'll add it. In the meantime I have a Gigabyte GA‑990FXA‑UD3.

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You should have no problems Ocing the 965 Be on that board, here's a link you may want to read.

RGone said:

EDIT:
One last thought. When testing with P95 Blend mode...have HWMonitor FREE open and running in the background or even visible so that you do not let the CPU/Socket temp exceed about 62c and the Core/Package temp exceed about 55c since those are considered safe, sane and not prone to generate heat induced errors.
END EDIT.

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Thanks for adding that, I do remember reading that on the thread linked below. Do you think my Corsair H80 is more than enough to keep the temps down? I'm not looking to push 4Ghz, just ~3.8Ghz is probably enough.

Mandrake4565 said:

You should have no problems Ocing the 965 Be on that board, here's a link you may want to read.

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Thanks! I did read that topic but this is partially where I get lost--especially with the NB, HT, RAM, and etc. I was hoping I could find a sort of "cookie-cutter" setting that someone either has done before or could suggest. I'm at work so I don't have immediate access to the computer but I suppose I could post a CPU-Z screenshot of the CPU settings and I could also take a picture of my BIOS screen as well if that would help?

JCE3000GT said:

Thanks for adding that, I do remember reading that on the thread linked below. Do you think my Corsair H80 is more than enough to keep the temps down? I'm not looking to push 4Ghz, just ~3.8Ghz is probably enough.



Thanks! I did read that topic but this is partially where I get lost--especially with the NB, HT, RAM, and etc. I was hoping I could find a sort of "cookie-cutter" setting that someone either has done before or could suggest. I'm at work so I don't have immediate access to the computer but I suppose I could post a CPU-Z screenshot of the CPU settings and I could also take a picture of my BIOS screen as well if that would help?

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Post those screen shots for us when you get a chance and here's the cookie cutter version. Set the Cpu voltage manually at 1.40 V, raise the multiplier .5. Run prime blend 20 minutes to try and find tentative stability, if the Cpu and package temps stay below 62c and you pass 20 minutes blend raise the Cpu multiplier again, rinse and repeat until you fail 20 minutes of Prime blend. After you fail 20 minutes and only if you're temps are below 62c, try and find stability by raising the Cpu Voltage .00625 or +1 however the board will do it and run prime blend again. This time to try and see if you can pass 2 hours. Continue to raise the Cpu voltage until you can pass 2 hours or you reach the max temps I mentioned. After you pass 2 hours of Prime Blend and if you're temps are still acceptable then you can try and see if you can push the Oc higher.

Mandrake4565 said:

Post those screen shots for us when you get a chance and here's the cookie cutter version. Set the Cpu voltage manually at 1.40 V, raise the multiplier .5. Run prime blend 20 minutes to try and find tentative stability, if the Cpu and package temps stay below 62c and you pass 20 minutes blend raise the Cpu multiplier again, rinse and repeat until you fail 20 minutes of Prime blend. After you fail 20 minutes and only if you're temps are below 62c, try and find stability by raising the Cpu Voltage .00625 or +1 however the board will do it and run prime blend again. This time to try and see if you can pass 2 hours. Continue to raise the Cpu voltage until you can pass 2 hours or you reach the max temps I mentioned. After you pass 2 hours of Prime Blend and if you're temps are still acceptable then you can try and see if you can push the Oc higher.

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Thanks Mandrake. Below are the screens. I have some time off now so I will play around with OCing this week.

Post up a Cpu-Z ss of the memory and spd tab as well, just so we can make sure the timings are set correctly. Then manually set the Cpu Voltage to 1.4 V, you'll have to set the system voltage control to manual, most likely, to do so. I would also set the Cpu load line control manually to high. Then run prime blend 20 minutes with Hwmonitor open. Watch the Cpu voltage, the goal with setting the Cpu LLc is to have it keep the voltage as close to the set Cpu voltage of 1.4 without drooping or overshooting it too much. Also make sure the Cpu and Package temps stay below 62c. Once you make sure that you are below the recommended temps and the LLC is acting like we want it to, start raising the multiplier .5 and testing like I posted above.

Mandrake4565 said:

Post up a Cpu-Z ss of the memory and spd tab as well, just so we can make sure the timings are set correctly. Then manually set the Cpu Voltage to 1.4 V, you'll have to set the system voltage control to manual, most likely, to do so. I would also set the Cpu load line control manually to high. Then run prime blend 20 minutes with Hwmonitor open. Watch the Cpu voltage, the goal with setting the Cpu LLc is to have it keep the voltage as close to the set Cpu voltage of 1.4 without drooping or overshooting it too much. Also make sure the Cpu and Package temps stay below 62c. Once you make sure that you are below the recommended temps and the LLC is acting like we want it to, start raising the multiplier .5 and testing like I posted above.

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Sure thing, I added those two screens to the post above. This is a great start, I'll post again once I've finished the first successful OC.

Ok you're timings aren't set correctly "sort of" if you look at the Cpu-Z spd tab they are set at the JEDEC#6 profile which are a little loose. You can manually set them to the XMP 1600 profile of 8-8-8-24-34. If you do so, I would leave the Cpu set at default and run Prime Blend 2 hours just to make sure the setup is stable with the tighter timings before you start overclocking. The other option is to leave them where they are set and start overclocking, then when you find an OC you're happy with, try tightening the timings and test for stability, up to you.

Mandrake4565 said:

Ok you're timings aren't set correctly "sort of" if you look at the Cpu-Z spd tab they are set at the JEDEC#6 profile which are a little loose. You can manually set them to the XMP 1600 profile of 8-8-8-24-34. If you do so, I would leave the Cpu set at default and run Prime Blend 2 hours just to make sure the setup is stable with the tighter timings before you start overclocking. The other option is to leave them where they are set and start overclocking, then when you find an OC you're happy with, try tightening the timings and test for stability, up to you.

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Thanks for the heads up! I changed the timing on the RAM and have tested my HD/4K texture modded Skyrim several times for multiple hours and haven't experienced any issues. I will run prime probably tomorrow or Sunday after our neighborhood garage sale. In the meantime here is the updated CPU-Z memory screen.

Ok looks good now, just to let you know why I'm saying test it two hours at default is. When overclocking it is easy to lose our way and having a known stability point to fall back on helps a lot. That is also the reason why I suggested raising the Cpu voltage to 1.4 in post #8 and finding another stable Oc higher, then if you want more you have that new higher stable Oc to fall back on. Good luck and report back.

Mandrake4565 said:

Ok looks good now, just to let you know why I'm saying test it two hours at default is. When overclocking it is easy to lose our way and having a known stability point to fall back on helps a lot. That is also the reason why I suggested raising the Cpu voltage to 1.4 in post #8 and finding another stable Oc higher, then if you want more you have that new higher stable Oc to fall back on. Good luck and report back.

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Absolutely will do thanks!

Ram is only running in single channel mode? Do you only have 1 stick of ram installed?

dyckah said:

Ram is only running in single channel mode? Do you only have 1 stick of ram installed?

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No, I'm running two 4GB sticks.

JCE3000GT said:

No, I'm running two 4GB sticks.

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well, make sure that your ram sticks are plugged into the right slots in your motherboard, it should show up as being in dual channel mode.

Ok cool thanks, I will double check but I think they are in the right spots.

if installed right, it should show that it is in dual channel mode, like this.