Please help me get my [email protected] GHZ and possible heating issue

Build my rig 2 days ago and finally got it stable at 4.3GHZ (250x17.5) 1.4V. I cant OC any further than that I've tried with 250x18.5 but it would crash randomly with the rig on idle, I think because of heating problems.

Spec
MOBO > ASUS Sabertooth 990FX 1102 BIOS
CPU & Cooler > FX-8120 /w Noctua NH-D14
MEMORY > Patriot Viper @ 1666 9-9-9-24 1.5V
POWER SUPPLY > OCZ 1000W
VIDEO CARD > ASUS GTX 680
HDDs/Optical drives > 1TBx2 on Raid 1
SOUND DEVICE > Onboard
O/S > Win7 x64
Case > HAF XM with all case fans installed

Core temps
Idle : 17-20C
Load /w P95 for 30min :50C

I think I should be able to have lower temps than these with the NH-D14 considering all the good reviews from users and critics alike. I have used the grain of rice method and evenly spread it on the CPU. Used NH-H1 thermal paste

Whats happeniung when you make the next step with the multi. If all that is happening is a worker has stopped responding then the cure is just a little more VCore. Your temps seeem fine though I just got up and am not quite awake yet the only thing I noticed is you are starting to show a bit of a seperation between core temps and socket temps. You might want to try adding a fan blowing into the socket area or zip tie one on the back of the motherboard sucking air out away from the behind the socket area of the motherboard.

Heres a couple threads you can loook to see what we have been trying with others who have recently bought an FX CPU.....

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=715845
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=715368

There is no secret that these puppies put out lot of heat and I have been playiong with water cooling to help get rid of it. Recently I overhauld my loop and cooling of my system , you can find that thread here. It deals as much with airflow as water cooling ..... you might find something there to help you. I am off to work now but I am sure some of the guys that can get on once in a while will pop in later on. I'll check in when I get home and see how you are doing.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=715371

So it sounds like the instability only happens at idle and not under load. I wonder if you HT Link and CPUNB frequencies are too high. Many FX overclockers report that those chips don't like those two frequencies to climb above 2400 mhz. Also, keep in mind that the FX core temp sensors seem to report temps artificially low, often about 15c.

Do you still have Turbo, C1E, Cool N Quiet, C6 and APM enabled? You need to disable all that green stuff.

Morning "bassnut", went back to read your link in the cooling section and this maybe the best/better statement I have seen made. " and getting a working air circulation in the case really helped"

I have spent the better part of two hours looking "again" at how to REMOVE the heat generated by the h0t FX-series processor. Just throwing a big cpu cooler on the cpu is not the 'real' answer. That cooler is inside the case and if the cooler removes the heat from the cpu itself, that heat is *still inside* the case and then IF that hot air is grabbed and run back thru the cpu cooler and suddenly or even slowly the best Air Cpu Cooler is not able to do its' job.

It seems somewhat apparent that case companies that also sell fans, will have cases with holes for fans all over the place. The tendency then is to slap fans on and look awesome but in reality, there will dead-spots with next to no air-flow in the case taking the heat out or the circulating air is not able to dig into the hotspots to remove the hot air.

I don't and never have subscribed to the more fans is better and this by 'erojin' set me off on that two hour look-see this AM. "Erojin" says >> Case > HAF XM with all case fans installed. That is copied from his specs not yet in his signatue.

Now does he really mean ALL the fans are installed as in every possible place for installation or does he mean 'only' the three fans the HAF-XM comes with? Either way the situation can be less than optimum. Which way the air enters the NH D-14 and exits can cause problems. Air leaving the NH D-14 can be remaining inside the case and rasing the air temps available to the cpu cooler the longer the system runs.

If ALL the fans were actually installed that 'can be' installed, then there is no telling where the air is actually circulating inside the case. If all the fans possible were actually installed, then what still seems the best is low front air in and high rear exit of the hot air may not be anything like what is going on inside the case itself. That can make for more heat for sure. There maybe little to no air going to the cpu cooler intake and getting on out of the case and thus 'erojin' is saying, I don't think my Noctua NH D-14 is cooling like all the reviews. And often the reviews are shown with the 2500K cpu which is not nearly the furnace the AMD FX series is when pushed.

After seeing the heat my used FX-8120 can put out when pushed into the +4.5Ghz range...well just throwing fans at a case will not do the cooling deed as you so ablely pointed out in your link to the cooling system forum section. Again thanks man for that write-up in the cooling forum section.

RGone...ster.

@bassnuts, everytime i raise the FBs or multi it boots on windows but not stable, shuts down on idle and have p95 errors I've put a 80mm fan behind the MB still no temp changes. And thanks for the articles

@trents, my HT Link and CPUNB are both 2200 you think I should lower it down some? All the green stuff are disabled

Thank for the quick reply guys

Erojin said:

@bassnuts, everytime i raise the FBs or multi it boots on windows but not stable, shuts down on idle and have p95 errors I've put a 80mm fan behind the MB still no temp changes. And thanks for the articles

@trents, my HT Link and CPUNB are both 2200 you think I should lower it down some? All the green stuff are disabled

Thank for the quick reply guys

Click to expand...

No, they are not. They are at 2500+. Look at your own pictures in post# 1 (Note: "Rated FSB" = HT Link). Don't forget that when you increase the FSB the frequencies of the ram, the HT Link and the CPUNB rise in concert because they are all tuned to the FSB. CPU-z uses "NB" to mean CPUNB, not chipset NB.

Habe a look at your cpu temp in cpuid that is your proper temp not the core temps below it and the thermal thresh hold is 62c on that chip so you dont want to go any higher i have my 8120 at 4.2ghz on air at 1.43v 59c

@ bigwils .....

Habe a look at your cpu temp in cpuid that is your proper temp not the core temps below it and the thermal thresh hold is 62c on that chip so you dont want to go any higher i have my 8120 at 4.2ghz on air at 1.43v 59c

Click to expand...

Nice to see you are getting some better tempsbigwills. I have seen and have had temps of 70*C to 75*C on my socket temps and stable though I wouldn't recomend doing this as a 24 / 7 OC. There was a time when we didn't really bother watching the CPU Socket temp and we generally just ignored it but now with the FX chips you really dont want to see that temp get over70*C as that can cause some stability. That is my opinion more so than anything I have seen written here on OCF but more and more people that I know have pushed thier OC's real high have said similar things recently.

@ Erojin ....

everytime i raise the FBs or multi it boots on windows but not stable, shuts down on idle and have p95 errors I've put a 80mm fan behind the MB still no temp changes

Click to expand...

I was in a bit of a hurry this am but looking at your settings your FSB is set at 250. I have been playing with my OC a bit lately and tried a higher FSB but I have not seen much advantage to doing so if any. My last stable OC of 4716MHZ was done with a 230MHZ FSB and I believe RGone's 4800MHZ was doone with an even lower FSB .... 220MHZ if my memory is right. I do believe that a combination of Raising your FSB and your mulitiplier is the best way to approach OCing your FX CPU's and unless you are really streching your OC I dont think you will need to go that high. Another thing if you are really shooting for that high an OC you will need better cooling than even I have as I ahve found out when trying to get up to 4800MHZ lately though I ahve not given up on it yet.

Saved the best for last.

Thanks for the kind words RGone ...... I can't agree more or putt it better myself than in the following statement.

I have spent the better part of two hours looking "again" at how to REMOVE the heat generated by the h0t FX-series processor. Just throwing a big cpu cooler on the cpu is not the 'real' answer. That cooler is inside the case and if the cooler removes the heat from the cpu itself, that heat is *still inside* the case and then IF that hot air is grabbed and run back thru the cpu cooler and suddenly or even slowly the best Air Cpu Cooler is not able to do its' job.

It seems somewhat apparent that case companies that also sell fans, will have cases with holes for fans all over the place. The tendency then is to slap fans on and look awesome but in reality, there will dead-spots with next to no air-flow in the case taking the heat out or the circulating air is not able to dig into the hotspots to remove the hot air.

Click to expand...

I spent allot of time thinking about what to do with my cooling and more money than I should to actually do it. The surprising thin is that I have 2 less fans in my case now then before, something can be said towards your theory about the amount of case fans.

There are systems out there that work fine with different or not optimized case airflow but I don't think that you will be able to get away with that using and OCing an FX cpu. I am not sure if it was conumdrum or hookielamus that posted this about dissipating heat from the CPU goes in all directions and can be exhausted out the front with a reverse flow. Yes it can if you take the time to do it right while taking into consideration the amount of heat that needs to dissipate and be removed. The question is can it be removed with a less than optimum airflow.

There was a time when the air coming out of my case was warm to the touch

We have seen this with a few systems lately looking for help OCing and for cooling advice lately. One good case is with GamerMagnet who I think is dealing with a dead spot in the socket area and then others, bigwils also comes to mind as well using and FX CPU not to mention madmeatballs who also was dealing with dead spots though with an PII 1090T. I have no doubt in my mind that with the big price drops we have seen lately there will be more as well.

Like you said in your thread that jump from 4500MHZ to 4700 MHZ is a big jump and creats allot of heat. How can we get rid of it in different systems and cases. Yes we can give advice on what we think will work but I then feel bad when it doesn't but my advice caused someone to go out and spend money that they probably shouldn’t. I have been fortunate that I have some disposable income to play at this hobby but most as we know don't have the same luxury.

Now its supper time ..... I'm starved.

Yes if mine goes to 63c i see instability it will lose video signal but at 59c its all good

Ok .... I see what you are saying bigwils ..... that is probably more to do with the quality of your motherboard. You have the Asrock 970 Extream 3 if my memory is correct. I am not that familiar with Asrock boards and I would hazard a guess that it just cant handle the heat as well as some of the top boards from Asus ot Gigabyte. All the same I am glad you have gotten some better results with your OC.

Enough ???

Okay guys I think we have labored hard without anything like 'enough' information from the OP. I will show where we likely don't have enough information from the beginning. However I think we did have enough information in the end and the answer was there all along.

1. > He shows a spec as [MEMORY > Patriot Viper @ 1666 9-9-9-24 1.5V]. Well that does not say enough. There is Patriot Viper Xtreme Series / Viper III Series / Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 4 / Patriot Viper ll Sector 7 and those I could find easily in g00gle. So we have no clue what he is using for ram for real. The Patriot Viper @ 1666 9-9-9-24 1.5V could be DDR1600 ram that is running at DDR1666 and does not like it overall. But I don't think that is the problem.

2. > He shows a spec as [Case > HAF XM with all case fans installed] That was what sent me looking for a few hours to see about getting the heat from the case after the NH D-14 got it off the cpu. He made absolutely no response to my questions about the case cooling when he replied the one time he has replied.

3. > He shows a screen capture of only 30 mins P95 stable but covers up the P95 menu so we cannot see if it completes but for sure after only a 30 minute P95 run the HWMonitor temps show 63c on the socket/CPU and shows 50c on the CPU Cores. Using 1.4Vcore according to HWMoitor. This speed is accomplished by setting 250x17.5 in bios.

Here we all tried to be the diligent technicians and tried to look deep into his issues for the real core problem, but we did not just nail the problem. His stuff is just running T00 HOT. 63c CPU temp and 50c CPU Core temps are already at the border of causing stability issues and those temps will certainly not allow a 300Mhz jump to 4.6Ghz from 4.3Ghz without a hefty bump in Vcore which will surely raise his already high temps.

WE let him confuse the issue by saying he could boot into windows at 4.6Ghz but it would crash doing nothing and NOW I know it surely would not run P95 Blend for even only 30 mins and we don't count stability until about 2 hours are passed in P95 Blend without failure.

So his CPU/NB and HT speed could be too high overall for long-term goodness, but it passed at least 30 mins of P95 Blend and he called it stable. REgardless of ancillary speeds his configuration is just running TOO HOT.

He says [I think I should be able to have lower temps than these with the NH-D14 considering all the good reviews from users and critics alike.] Yep he might should be able to run lower temps on the processor, BUT currently his stuff is still just running TOO HOT. Sure it might boot windows at 4.6Ghz without us knowing what Vcore he tried to use and had windows crash while doing nothing, but his temps at 4.3Ghz were already just T00 HOT.

He says [I've tried with 250x18.5 but it would crash randomly with the rig on idle, I think because of heating problems.] Yep it probably does crash because at 4.3Ghz using 17.5 x 250 it was so borderline at T00 HOT, how much worse would the temps be at ~ 1.5ish Vcore (up from 1.4V) to attempt P95 Blend Stability for 2 hours.

WE all have done our due diligence gentlemen. What we did fail to do though was to emphasize that his 4.3Ghz was certainly super close to T00 HOT and if that was not fixed, then any speed increase was surely doomed to failure since his CPU temperatures are just T00 HOT.

Can he adjust and get the heat out of his case? Don't know. Can good case ventilation lower the temps so his NH D-14 can do a better job? Don't know. What do I know? I know that at 4.3Ghz and only 1.4Vcore indicated, the CPU overall was running on the cliff-edge of T00 HOT already.

I did mention in my own thread where I ran upwards of 4.5 Ghz that these FX-series processors do run HOT. The OP's temps are likely just T00 HOT to run beyond 4.3Ghz. Too hot is the diagnosis. Nothing more and nothing less.

RGone...ster.

Absolutly right RGone ..... it seems Erojin has gone off to try something or has decided to give up on getting a higher OC but untill he does provide some info there isn't much we can do to help him and as it is now he is at the far outer edge of an OC with his sytem.