Completely new to overclocking

I don't want my PC to blow up, so I wanted to confirm if it would be possible to OC an FX-6350 on a MSI 970A-G43 board.

If not, would a ASUS Sabertooth work?

Thanks

Welcome to the forum Omnilux,
I wouldn't use that board myself, first of all the MSi boards haven't faired too well witht he FX cpus and second that one is underpowered to start. Some MSI boards have been known to pop the caps. For the 6350 will run well in a Sabertooth R2 ( not gen3) and would even do well in a M5A99fx but may not clock as high. The new Gigabyte UD3 revision4 ( not revision 3) is also a contender. Asrock extreme 9 and maybe the extrem4 or killer.

Okay, let's say I get the sabertooth.

I am currently using a Coolermaster 212 plus. What kind of clocks can I expect to get? Or is that a stupid question with it being based on trial and error. I hear every chip reacts differently to the same settings?

Thanks

Also, I built this PC in July, and have been running it with OC Genie II.
These are the settings it clocked everything too, I've had no issues in the 7 months of running like this. Think it's safe?

Thanks again for all the help, will be doing a lot of reading/learning for when I do get a new motherboard and can manually OC without the worry of frying anything.

Your voltages are safe but it is hard to tell from that pic of HWMonitor about your socket and package temps which are really crucial. What we need is a pic of HWMonitor after it has been running at full capacity for 10-20 minutes. Resting temps do us no good. Please run the Prime95 blend test for 20 minutes with HWMonitor open on the desktop. Then post back with another HWMonitor pic.

That Cpu voltage is way high for only 4.2ghz fellas.

Bump the Cpu multiplier one or lower the voltage.

Is it getting hot in here yet?

WAIT EDIT!!!

I see 7-21 currently running 19.5?

NVM my first statement IF of 21x is value = true.

Is there some green stuff running in bios, maybe winders?

Yeah, it looks like he still has the green stuff enabled. I noticed that too.

Here are the results after a 22 minute blend test.

I would guess that TMPIN0 is your CPU socket temp. I certainly hope it's not TMPIN1 with a max of 92c! Your package temp (which is the temp inside the CPU) at 53c is okay so far. As I said, we don't like to see the package temp exceed about 60c.

Until you get that Sabertooth, it might be good to leave the green stuff on as I'm afraid you will overheat and damage the board if you turn it off. The green stuff is designed to limit power consumption and heat but it also has a negative impact on performance. For instance, the so-called "Turbo" mode only speeds up some of the cores under load instead of all cores firing at the same frequency. So if only two out of six cores, for instance, are running a 4.2 ghz the others are back there taking a breather at the stock 3.6 or whatever stock is. Your current motherboard does not have strong power phase components like the Sabertooth does.

The next thing to try is increasing the CPU multiplier by .5x increments at the current core voltage. After each .5x increase, run a 20 minute Prime95 blend run to see if it's stable. Monitor temps with HWMonitor whenever you do a stress test. If you get a blue screen, spontaneous restart, lockup or one of the Prime95 core workers drops out then you fail the stress test. Keep adding .5x multiplier increase until you fail the stress test. At that point, add a tad more core voltage (right now under load you are pulling 1.425) and retest. I would try adding .025 volts. This will drive temps up a little so monitor that.

Think I'll wait for a new board before I try anything, I didn't like those temps just running at 4.2ghz so I reverted everything to stock for now.

What is the difference between a gen2 and gen3 sabertooth? How would I tell the difference?

Thanks

Gen3 supports PCIe 3.0 it'll say so on the box, it's best to avoid that board they were only around for a short while but to date I think I have only seen one that didn't have all sorts of weird issues.

Sorry Blaylock but it is still a R2.0 , It'll say gen 3 R 2.0 here's a pic from Asus

Well I'm glad there are forums like this to keep people informed

I was actually going to go for the pcie 3.0 board for my graphics card, but from what I hear pcie 2.0 isn't even fully utilized yet anyway. So if the gen3 is having issues I think I'll be staying away from that.

SABERTOOTH 990FX/GEN3 R2.0 << that board was changed to or was always supposed to be a Limited Edition so less than 2500 made. As far as we can tell from the one or two users ever saying they had one...the first user tried 2 of them without success. Then he got the non-GEN3 R2.0 only board and rokked on.

Further the SABERTOOTH 990FX/GEN3 R2.0 was sold without interuption overseas in places in the EU, but have not seen anymore in the US market after the first few. It had a special chip that tried to split the PCIe lanes to make it appear that PCI3 3.0 was utilized...not so much success as I heard it.

I would steer clear of it for most uses as we understand overclocking in these forums.
RGone...

trents said:

I would guess that TMPIN0 is your CPU socket temp. I certainly hope it's not TMPIN1 with a max of 92c!

Click to expand...

Any way to find this out for sure?


Thanks for clearing that up RGone.

From what I've read TMPIN 0 is the socket, so that would probably mean the TMPIN 1 is the Nb temp which would be not so good, that's hot. Omnilux, that board is good for stock settings, I wouldn't push too hard on it. You may hear snap crackle pop and smell burning electrics. It's not fun to smell and hear that, I popped two Msi G970 boards overclocking my 955be. The Fx 6300 is a more demanding chip as far as the power sections on the motherboard.

Mandrake4565 said:

Omnilux, that board is good for stock settings, I wouldn't push too hard on it. You may hear snap crackle pop and smell burning electrics.

Click to expand...

Back maybe 8 to 11 months ago when we had only had like one of these MSI boads show-up in the forum, so I had to do a lot of g00gling for some information about the 970 G43 board, I was in MSI forum looking and even the MSI board users were urging against using the G43 with 6 and 8 core FX processors. They said just not robust enough. Their recommend for FX processor was the G65 and G80 boards with 6 and 8 core.

Now the G43 has been superseded by the G45 and I think a G46 and I would not use either for pushing a 6 core or 8 Core FX processor. They just don't have the VRM circuit for such pushing.
RGone...

Seeing those temps yesterday after the blend test, I've reverted everything back to stock. I don't need to hear any snap, crackling or popping.

Starting to think I should've kept the HD 7770 and upgraded my board rather than buying the R9...Oh well, if it pops then my wife will have no choice but to let me buy a new board

Blaylock said:

I built my brothers computer with an MSI 970A-G46 and a FX6200 prior to me discovering Overclockers. I wish I could turn back time. This is how his computer looks running stock with a socket temp maxing at 71c and package temp at about 65 during P95(20min). I replaced his NB heatsink with an aftermarket copper tower and added 2 50mm fans directly on his VRM's. Unfortunately he still has to much heat at the socket for that board.

Click to expand...

I will definitely be doing more research on my next build. I bought this as a bare bone kit, was just missing a graphics card and HDD. PSU that came with it died last month, stock amd cooler was sooo loud so I got the hyper 212. Board is next on the list, then hopefully an ssd.

So many plans, so much money....

Omnilux said:

I will definitely be doing more research on my next build. I bought this as a bare bone kit, was just missing a graphics card and HDD. PSU that came with it died last month, stock amd cooler was sooo loud so I got the hyper 212. Board is next on the list, then hopefully an ssd.

So many plans, so much money....

Click to expand...

My first build was with a bare bones combo deal, that came with the Msi 970A G45 board and my 955 be. I overclocked it with a Cm 212 and popped it the same day, Rma'ed it received a new board and popped it as well. Rma'ed it and sold the new board on Ebay. Mine you I wasn't trying for huge overclocks and was overclocking from the "dolks guide" I had found here. I bought an Asus M5A99X Evo and never looked back. I started asking questions on this forum looking to learn how to overclock the 955be the best I could and received a ton of help. I didn't realize when I first started how important quality components are when you're looking to OC, if I knew then what I know now I would have been much better off.

We know what works here because we push these components a lot harder then most people would. The group of people that hang out in here especially in the AMD section get our knuckles dirty, trying to tune these components to wring out every last bit of performance we can. When we recommend a component to someone it's because we know what works. You came to the right place if you want to learn how to push that cpu.