8120 and a MSI board (I know, I know) Capabilities.

[Pamirace2012]

Hello everyone. After getting to great a deal to pass up at Frys, I got a combo deal of the MSI 970A-G46 bang head) and the 8120 for 148.00. I could not pass it up, as I was going in to get a Vishera chip and Asus board expecting to pay 300. I'm on a budget, as we all are, so I took the deal.

After getting home and doing a bit of research, seems everyone is against the 9 series MSI boards when it comes to OC'n.

Here's what I've got, and what I'd like to do: Without touching voltage yet, I bumped the multiplier to 17.5 and FSB to 210, and I have a stable clock of 3674.75 right now. OCCT for an hour, and 44C max temp. My idle temp is at 16-20, it's a bit chilly in my apartment right now. I want to get it to 4.0, and be stable. I do light gaming, and easy rendering of 1080p vids I make at home. Also, I'm very new ot OC'n, and I want to get the advise of the experts. I have come to read many times, but have never posted. Here's my first post.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and advise will be heeded. Thanks in advance.

Pami

 

[Pamirace2012]

Here are my specs for this budget build btw
FX 8120 3675.75Ghz
MSI 970A-G46
Coolermaster Hyper 212
Raidmax Hybrid 630
Coolermaster HAF 912
HIS HD6770
Corsair XMS 1600 DDR3

 

[ssjwizard]

MSI motherboards are not bad, but the 9xx series AMD boards from them just arent as "modern" as Asus or Gigabyte(high end) motherboards. The 212+ is a good HS/F and should be able to take you to 4Ghz pretty easily.

Heres a few tips to help you find your OC.

Disable Cool 'N Quiet, C1E, C6, APM, and Turbo/Core Performance Boost.
Set CPU LLC to medium or high to start.
Manually set the CPU vCore to stock.
Find your preferred BCLK, I personally run my FX's on 220HT Ref as this puts the ram solidly at 2050Mhz.
Keep your HT link and CPU NB frequencies as close to 2200 as possible until you finish tuning the CPU speed.

Good luck!

 

[Pamirace2012]

Awesome. Some of that I have done, however, I am going to manually set the Core voltage, and take it off Auto. I'll post back with snips in a bit.

Thanks

 

[Pamirace2012]

I have just downloaded Prime95, I normally use OCCT to stress test. First time running it, #7 stops within a minute, but the rest of the tests keep going. I am guessing that's a no no.

 

[Pamirace2012]

Here is where I am at now.

 

[Pamirace2012]

After a full 30 minutes, Prime95 passed. 3780Ghz stable so far. Thanks for your advise earlier. I will continue to bump the multiplier by .5 and run the tests.

This is my second build, and first OC attempt.

 

[Pamirace2012]

After reading some other threads, I see some people talking about memory clocks after an overclock. I was wondering if anyone could give mine a look. As I said, this is my first OC attempt, and any advise at all helps a ton.

Thanks again in advance.

 

[RGone]

1. Ram speed if n0t too high and causing failure is best adjusted WHEN you reach the max overclock.

2. Your Ram multiplier is set to DDR1333 which is okay NOW since you are using FSB and multiplier to overclock. Your Ram is at DDR1400 and not DDR1600 yet but is rising as FSB rises. NOT as multiplier rises.

3. Your HT and CPUNB multipliers are strangely set to x11 and not x10 or x12 as is seen generally.

4. I would raise CPU voltage to 1.4V and CPUNB voltage to 1.25 and then raise FSB to 215 and see if that passes P95 Blend Mode or OCCT P95 mode. They are really about the same.

Doing as in #4 above will raise Ram speed, CPU speed and HT Link speed. All three. You should n0t go over 60c "package" temp and 70c CPU TEMP which I have no idea what of the TMPXXX will be the CPU Temp. Temps we understand are from the freeware version of Hardware Monitor from CPUID dot com. Open on desktop and logging Min/Max temps during the run of P95 Blend mode. Then captured to post to the forum after snipping to just the menu size not screen size.

 

[Geonerd]

According to http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database your motherboard is not the greatest for an OC. I see the board has heatsinks for the mosfets. These will help a little, but are no guarantee.

For light gaming, you might consider emphasizing the Turbo Clock speeds, while leaving the base (8x) clock a little lower. This would give you a good speed boost when running a few threads, yet not melt your system at full 8 thread load. I think the AMD Overdrive utility allows you to tune the Turbo Clock parameters.

 

[TeknoBug]

Whats wrong with MSI? I've had a share of good boards fromthem then again I've had good luck with ECS too lol.

 

[RGone]

Whats wrong with MSI? I've had a share of good boards fromthem then again I've had good luck with ECS too lol.

In the last 20 odd months there have been only maybe 8 MSI AMD board users come into this forum section. Four of those in the last 3 weeks. Users must know some reason they are not popular.

 

[Pamirace2012]

Thanks for all the replies. I can't get it past 3778Ghz stable. I had 3900ish stable for 23 minutes, but failed on core 8. I have done so many tests, I am all tested out at the moment. So, I am running the last stable clock I got. It's great for what I need it to. No issues so far.

TMPNN1 gets hot about 20 minutes in Prime95 blend test, breaking 70C. I am seriously thinking about returning the board, and spending the extra 40 bucks for a Gigabyte or Asus. I will give it another shot this weekend, but if I can't get 4ghz stable this weekend, it's back t Frys I go.