Overclocking A8 3870k

Good morning,

I have used the search feature quite abit and done some research but I am looking for some help on overclocking my 3870k. I am very new to overclocking but I know a fair chunk about computers. I got an a8 3870k with a ASRock A55 PRO3 FM1 AMD A55 mobo, 6670 running in dual graphics with gskill sniper series 2133 ram 8gb. I also have an arctic 7 cooler, this was just a cheap budget build and looking for any basic information on overclocking it.

Thanks,

Thats a $75 motherboard with no cooling on the power delivery area. Not exactly a board made for overclocking. You will want to have great airflow in your case or actively cool that area with a fan.

That said, the AMD people will get in here and help you out!

NYG1482 said:

Good morning,

I have used the search feature quite abit and done some research but I am looking for some help on overclocking my 3870k. I am very new to overclocking but I know a fair chunk about computers. I got an a8 3870k with a ASRock A55 PRO3 FM1 AMD A55 mobo, 6670 running in dual graphics with gskill sniper series 2133 ram 8gb. I also have an arctic 7 cooler, this was just a cheap budget build and looking for any basic information on overclocking it.

Thanks,

Click to expand...

First off, congrats on the part selection and the sort. I'm a bit sad to see you got a Llano part, that makes overclocking and performance a bit of an issue (As opposed to Trinity parts). That being said, you are going to be severely limited in overclock potential without a pretty good amount of air being directed at your Mosfet / VRM area of the motherboard, these Llano parts put a lot of pressure on your board. I'm not comfortable telling you to throw a bunch of voltage at your CPU and integrated GPU with no steps taken to monitor that part of your board. Other than that, we can look at modest settings if...

A: Download CPU-ID. Screenshot the main tab, and also the memory tab and post it here! (Crop the SS, please)
B: Download HWMonitor-- We want a screenshot of both your socket and core temps. We want this under 100% load, so..
C: Download a CPU stress test suite of some kind. Prime95 is the best in my opinion. LinX and IBT are other options
D: Post it all here. I don't have the fancy example template that some of the other users have, but its around here somewhere

I'll see what I can do-- I will be very modest considering I'm not interested in bricking your board

I am not sure exactly what your board baseline requirements I am at work so I don't nessisarily have the time right this sec to look it up but I can give you some basic llano info to get you started.

To start with, You need a real heatsink for these guys. 3870k's typically are not that overclockable on air. Little to none on the stock heatsink. The get quite hot quite fast.

If you have the heatsink covered than your ready to move on. You will probably want to update your bios to the current version before you start playing around with it. Llano's are notoriously bad at memory support out of the box without bios updates. Usually the boards bios images are a year or so out of date. So this will not only help you with over clocking but give you a compatibility and performance boost.

Voltage wise the chips themselves are very forgiving. I am not sure how forgiving the a55 chipset is, I have only worked with it once and on a limited scale since I killed the board when my Impromptu Liquid nitrogen pot died. Your Limitation for voltage control will likely be the board in this situation. I am not sure at this point exactly how strong the VRM's are on you board. But they are likely to be a limitation. Llano's are rather power hungry even more so when attempting to run the integrated video while overclocked.

Air wise if you have good cooling you can push to around 1.6v max for the cpu core voltage. At that point the diminishing returns from temperature will be a cause for instability if not before that. You can increase the North voltages and FCH voltages aswell 1.2v max for fch on air, and 1.3v ish max on air for NB. But you are likely to reach temperature limitations before you get quite that far. Both Contribute quite a bit to the overall cpu temp. FCH voltage is really only needed to be increased when the Drive controllers fail to recognize on boot.

This info should help you get started, Its alot of trial and error inbetween this.

btw hwmonitor will be incorrect generally for the actualtemps of these chips. Try core temp, it should reflect the internal core temperatures more correctly. Or atleast on a consistant level that you can compensate and work from there with. A temperature that shows as zero for a core usually means the core is in a idle state at the time and is in a low power state. Its not a false reading since generally the core is being turned on and off as needed.

I will be happy to help provide additional information as needed along your journey, time permitting.

Wow thanks for the quick responses, heres a couple screen shots the max temp got up to was 58 than kicked back down. I built this rig about 3 months ago and messed around with basic overclocking so its at about 3.3ghz now but I would really like to push it. I know I am limited with just an arctic 7 air cooler and a cheap mobo. Thanks in advance for the great help !