1100T OC Help

Hello guys, as you can see I'm new, I've been lurking for quite a while, trying to figure some things out without bothering anyone, but I've hit an obstacle, and I need some expert advice. I got this far by just reading these forums and I'm grateful for the immense amount of information available on here.

Specs

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black 4.0 OC (Corsair H60 Water Cooled)

PowerColor ATI 6970 2GB

ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AMD 880G SB850 AM3 Motherboard

8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz

Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000

CoolerMaster HAF-X Case (+added fans)

27" Main + 17" Vertical (x2) Monitors

Sidewinder X6 Keyboard

Logitech G9X Mouse

Issue:

Something is giving me a stability problem, on certain games (mainly APB:Reloaded). I use APB as benchmark, because it's very CPU heavy, and for some reason it works better than Prime or anything else when I try to find a problem. In other words, if I think I have a stable config, I run Prime and it takes me about 4 hours to get a crash, but APB takes care of that in 20-30 minutes. Anyways.

I was experiencing a crash with a previous configuration, it looked like a GPU crash (I have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm a noob, please don't flame) as in, the screens would freeze, with the colors all mixed up for less than a second, and the system would turn off.

I dag around in the BIOS settings and realized that GPU Booster was Enabled. I disabled that and it seemed to fix my crashing. Now, with the current settings, it's been stable, but I feel like my RAM configuration has some issues. It's not as fast as it's always been. (again, this might be a complex from tinkering too much) and I feel I have something wrong in my BIOS OC settings (attached bellow). If you guys can please take a look and tell me what I have done wrong, I would greatly appreciate it. Mainly in the DRAM area, and my voltages, I feel like there's a crucial rookie mistake in there somewhere. The RAM I'm using is 2x4GB sticks Corsair Vengeance rated at 1600Mhz 1.50V (this is on the sticker).

Here are the images, I tried to provide as much information as I can. Thank you again for your time, and I apologize if I made some of you angry with a stupid question.

The GPU booster in bios would only affect the onboard video, not the discrete video card you are using.

I wonder if you are getting temp-related down-throttling. You say nothing about what your CPU (socket) and core temp are like under heavy load. I know you don't like Prime95 but please indulge me here for a bit because Prime95 is a standard defacto agreed upon tool by the regulars on this forum and it's very difficult to help folks if they aren't using the same tools as the helpers. So . . .

If you have not, please download and install HWMonitor. Open it on the desktop and leave it open while you run the Prime95 "blend" stress test for 20 minutes. Then post back with a pic attached of the HWMonitor interface.

Also, have you disabled the green stuff that causes down-throttling and messes with frequencies, multipliers and voltages in order to contain heat and power consumption. We advise overclockers to disable these. Look at your pic of the CPU_z CPU tab. It shows your core speed is only 2414.1 mhz. So you must have some green stuff still active.

Finally, when you post pics of CPU-z please include the SPD tab as that one gives info about manufacturer recommendations for ram voltages and timings at given frequency levels. With just the Memory tab all we know is what your memory frequency and timings are currently set to in bios.

Also, from the bios pic I find it concerning that your CPU/NB voltage is showing 1.496 on Auto. That's too high, way to high! Manually set it to 1.225v and lower the CPU/NB frequency and the HT Link frequency down to around 2500 mhz. At 2840.1 mhz they are probably too high and this might be the main reason you are not quite stable. You need to realize that when you overlock with the CPU/HT Reference Clock, not only will the CPU frequency increase but also the ram, the HT Link and the CPU/NB frequencies will also go up. They are all tuned to the HT Reference clock and you need to make downward adjustments to some of them as you go.

Also, did you realize you can overclock the CPU with the CPU Ratio and not have to touch the CPU/HT Reference Clock? It's much easier that way because other frequencies are not affected. You can, however, increase those other frequencies individually as desired. You have a black edition CPU with an unlocked multiplier.

Thank you, I'm following your instructions step by step, I'm gonna do the bios changes now and report back.

Thank you again.

Please post back with new bios pics and new pics of CPU-z tabs: CPU, Memory and SPD.

I am in BIOS right now, (posting from my surface) so I adjusted the CPU/NB Frequency to 2556MHz (closest thing to 2500 I could find) and the CPU/NB voltage to 1.225000. Do I touch anything else before I reboot?

EDIT: I took pics, will post in a minute.

Thanks again

EDIT2:

Found Cool 'n' Quiet Settings in Advanced Tab, it was Enabled, I disabled that too. I'm guessing that's the green thing you were talking about

Here are the pics

and CPUZ CPU Tab, sorry I had forgotten it



It's no longer dropping under 4GHz even on idle.

UPDATE:

Running "Blend" with Prime 95 results in an instant crash

Disable C1E.

Notice how your CPU voltage in bios is set to 1.45 but it shows up in CPU-z as 1.428. You're getting significant "vdrop". Increase your CPU voltage to 1.5, at least temporarily. Then rerun your Prime95 blend stress test. Watch core and CPU temps in HWMonitor. Don't let the core temps exceed 60c and don't let the CPU temp exceed 70c. Stop the test if either of those happens. If these changes don't help stability, increase your CPU/NB voltage to 1.25.

Thanks, under temperatures, the CPU is at 61C, mainboard 27C and under AMD Phenom, where you can see individual cores it's at 58-59C

Ok, so after 4 minutes on blend, I got the CPU to 63 and the cores to 60 and stopped it. Now what

P.S. it's idling at 35-37

Should I change the NB voltage to 1.25 now or is there something else I should do. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to help me out man.

Idle temps are not much use except to tip you off to the possibility of a CPU cooler not working properly for some reason like not being seated well or the thermal paste not being applied properly.

So, at least we see that the problem before was insufficient CPU core voltage. Try splitting the difference on the vcore. Lower it from 1.5 to 1.475 and retest.

trents said:

Idle temps are not much use except to tip you off to the possibility of a CPU cooler not working properly for some reason like not being seated well or the thermal paste not being applied properly.

So, at least we see that the problem before was insufficient CPU core voltage. Try splitting the difference on the vcore. Lower it from 1.5 to 1.475 and retest.

Click to expand...

Thanks, will do and post results as soon as I get back home. Had to leave, kind of an emergency. Thanks again

I hope no one is seriously ill or hurt.

I'm back, sorry about that. My cousin got into an accident, but she's fine. Nothing serious. Anyways, back on topic, I changed to 1.475 and I'm running Prime now. Will post results.

Crashed... :|

Prime crashed, and the core voltage in CPUz is fluctuating between 1.440 and 1.452... is that normal?

How long did Prime run that last time and what were the max CPU and core temps you observed before the crash. If you have all the green stuff turned off as I instructed earlier, no, you should not see that kind of voltage fluctuation.

I gotta drop a car off at the shop. I'll be back later.

Check around in the motherboard bios for a section labeled something like PC Health. See if there is an item entitled "Thermal throttle" or something like that.