First "successfull?" overclock, need some help.

[Dlaw]

So, I just successfully got to 3300MHz, but I cheated and used my board's "overclock profile", and set it to 10%. I did it this way, because I couldn't get by 3100MHz on my own, despite the overwhelmingly useful information regarding my CPU on these forums.

So, the first thing I did when I booted into Windows, was started HWMonitor, CPU-z and SpeedFan (mostly for the tray icon), and started up P95 to check how stable it is. P95 hasn't thrown any errors yet, but I've been watching CPU-Z, and it's telling me every once in a while that my CPU multiplier drops from 15 to 8. According to HWMonitor, the max temp so far has been 54C on the CPU (core temps don't work), so I don't think it's throttling, but correct me if I'm wrong. I've attached SS's

 

[RGone]

1. Speed Fan has not made sense in a few years now. HWMonitor is all most of us use today with AMD setups.

See what it says for cpu usage? Bar graph says 100%. But down below where it says speed01 it shows 0% for three of the cores and 100% for the other three cores and then it shows Vcore at 1.31V and if 3 of those cores are at 100%, the Vcore will be higher for sure. SpeedFan just is not up to the task anylonger it surely seems.

2. Min/Max Vcore of the cpu shown in HWMonitor shows 1.46Vcore for a max and that is high for just 3300Mhz.

3. You need to turn off all the green stuff in the bios. C1E, C6, TurboBoost, Cool N Quiet and set Win 7 to performance mode. All of that should have been noted in the guides you have been reading. Set Cpu voltage to 1.425 and multiplier of cpu to 18 for 3600Mhz. See if it boots to windows. It should if your ram is not giving issues.

4. Need 3 screen captures of 3 modes of CPUz. Across the top of CPUz are three buttons named CPU, MEMORY and SPD. Need to see all three of those for any further help since those screenies tell us information vital to giving out help.

5. Run Prime 95 on blend for at least 2 hours when you get close to the cpu mhz speed that you think is getting close to the most overclock you will get. 2 hours is the very least I would consider to point toward stability of my setup when running P95 in blend mode.

 

[Dlaw]

I think the speed % indicators are for fans, ie. I have 3 fans that it can read from, the case fan I have hooked up to the mobo, the CPU fan, and sometimes it gives me a reading for another fan, which I'm assuming can only be the GFX card fan, as nothing else is directly connected to the mobo. I don't use the program for anything other than the tray icon though. It's nifty for quickly checking averages too, because it minimizes to the tray, so I don't mind leaving it open.

Yea, I noticed the Vcore got really high at some point, but like in the pictures, it didn't really get much above 1.31. I didn't actually see it peak.

Anyways, yea, I have all that stuff turned off, except for maybe C1E. I haven't had Windows in anything but performance mode since that was an option (XP had it, I think?) on any computer I've ever had.

Isn't 1.425 high for an air cooled system? I'm new to this, so I'm asking to make sure. I thought I read somewhere that you didn't want to go over 1.35 for 24/7 use.

Also, I didn't really notice any performance gains at 3.3GHz. I'm wondering if it'll be any different at 3.8?

 

[RGone]

1.425 Vcore is not diddly for good air-cooling. If you don't think 3800Mhz is going to be much better than where you currently are stable...well stay there and enjoy what you have.

 

[trents]

. . . I thought I read somewhere that you didn't want to go over 1.35 for 24/7 use.

I don't know where you read that but that's bad info. I would say not more than 1.5 vcore for 24/7 but you will get some variation in advice about that. Some would go a little lower, some a little higher. But, no. No one who is knowledgeable would say 1.35 is the safe limit. We're talking about with cooling good enough to keep temps safe, of course.

 

[Dlaw]

I see. I may have read wrong too, I don't really remember. Well, I'll try that Monday and post back the results. I work all weekend, so I have no time to mess with it right now. I reverted everything back to stock (except of course for the "green" stuff. I never use it anyway), to keep the system safe until I can mess with it.

On a side note, last night, at some point, my computer randomly rebooted. I found out because I run a dual boot with Linux Mint, and it was sitting in Grub when I got up this morning. I set everything back to stock yesterday, so I don't think it was related to a bad overclock, so I booted into Windows again, and left it on like I always do. When I got home, I was still in Windows. The weird thing is, this isn't the first time that's happened.

My question is, The only thing I think I can link to it, is maybe running 2 instances of SpeedFan did it? I don't remember if I was the first time or not, but I definitely was the second time and last night. Gonna try again tonight without running the second instance and see if I wake up to grub again. If it does, what other reasons might there be?

and before someone asks, the reason I was running 2 instances is so I could have both CPU and GPU temps in my tray.

 

[trents]

More than likely a memory problem or a PSU problem. Run Memtest86+ for several hours on your memory to test it.

 

[Dlaw]

I'll run memtest overnight before I go to bed, and see what it says in the morning. It ran all night and all day with no problems.

Is there a way to test my PSU? I know I'm not hitting anywhere near peak on it, if that makes a difference.

 

[trents]

If you have a multimeter to test the voltage output you can check to see if the voltages are within 5% either way on the 12v+, 5v+ and the 3.3v+ lines. Unplug the main 24 pin power connector and with a paperclip or short length of wire bridge any green wire pin with any black wire pin. All the other pins will be either 12v, 5v or 3.3 but I don't know which goes with what color wire except the black wire is the ground I think. One probe of the multimeter would have to go on a black wire pin. Just experiment.

A simpler but less reliable way (because you are relying on the accuracy of the software) would be to check the voltage variance on HWMonitor. If any of them depart more than 5% from their rated voltage then you might have a problem.

 

[Dlaw]

Ok, sorry it took so long to get back. So, I ran memtest86+ on Saturday night, and I woke up to Grub again. Needless to say, that made for a long 12hr shift on a Sunday. Yesterday, I took it to my girlfriends stepdad's office (he does computer repair), and had him look it over. Turns out, that when I took the DIMM out of the slot closest to the processor to check memory timings (while the system was off, of course), I didn't seat it all the way back in on the top. That is the only clip that I can't see with my CPU cooler installed. Now I feel dumb.

Perfectly stable at stock voltages/clocks now, both memory and processor.

 

[trents]

Live and learn.

 

[Dlaw]

Pretty much. At least there was no long term damage, short of my ego.

 

[Dlaw]

So, I've got my CPU back to x4 960T. OC'd to ~3817MHz, CPU multi is at 19, voltage is set at 1.35v. Doesn't seem to need any more. IDK why, but my bus speed is 200.9MHz and HT link is ~2009MHz in CPU-Z. BIOS reads them at 200 and 2000 respectively. I won't worry about it unless someone thinks I should? running P95, and about 20mins in, core temp hasn't topped 36C.

 

[Dlaw]

30mins in, no changes in temp. First pass on P95 threw no errors. Gonna leave it here and run some real world tests (namely games, gimp and a WEI rating).

 

[Dlaw]

Well, everything checked out, so now I'm trying to choose between running at 3.8GHz on a quad setup, or running at 3GHz on a hexi. I could probably push to 3.8 as x6, but it already runs pretty warm at stock (if my comparison is correct, my core temps are 36C with P95 on x6 @ 3GHz). I know most of you will probably say "that's plenty of headroom, go ahead and bump it up!" but it's already faster than I need, and nobody I know has a system that even comes close to comparing with mine. Honestly, that's enough for me, for now. I don't see any reason to stress it until it doesn't do what I want where it's at.

For now, I'm gonna keep to the x6 @ 3GHz, for less stress on the CPU. I saved my x4 3.8GHz setup as an OC profile in BIOS, should I decide on doing that instead.