FX-8350 @ 4.5 Show/Story/Struggle Thread

[MstrRoshi]

Hell All!
First time on OCF, but the majority of my research leads me back here so I figured its a good place to be. Shout out to all the pros! Rgone & Johan45 post in just about everything i read lol. I appreciate all the info I've gleaned from everyone here. Story to come, but the What Have I Killed thread was really helpful! Finally got my rig stable at 4.5 - Screen shots later, and I'll have to do the Sig thing after the post - but the struggle was real! I figured you all would enjoy a good story, and the new comers like me can definately learn from my mistakes

First things first, I've never overclocked before in my life, but i've always been a gamer. PC as a wee lad and was distracted by the console generation for a while but have always built or tinkered with my computers. Over the last 5 i've started building more, and just love the puzzle of a custom rig for a specific purpose. Long story short, I upgrade my PC to the 8350 and loved the preformance it gave me. My buddy was having issues gaming with his rig, and after seeing the bump I got, he started looking to upgrade. He settled on a 4960k, and I've been way behind ever since lol. Anyway, I wanted to learn how to overclock and see how much I could close the gap. Not expecting miracles, I've done the research and know what to shoot for. I started this battle summer 2016..

Originally I was rocking this setup:

FX-8350 - Started at stock clocks, then settled for 4.2 but without adequate testing. After learning a little ended at 4.3 with 1.43v or something crazy like that.
Arctic Freezer Extreme rev. 2.0 Air Cooler
MB: GA-78LMT USB3 (rev. 6.0) - *I know(now)... that is not the board for an 8core, let alone to OC*
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB @ 1600 - Didnt realize at the time but they were mis matched. 2x 4GB sticks with 9-9-9-24, and an 8 GB stick with 10-10-10-27 timings.
GPU: XFX R9 280x Double Dissapation Edition
PSU: Raidmax RX-735AP 735W - 80 Plus Bronze
Case: CM MasterCase Pro 5

It was crazy to try to learn to OC on this mobo. Not only are the controls very limited - LLC only has Reg/Extreme settings - All values are selected from drop down lists, not typed in, with no option to undervolt(which was needed!) - almost non existent VRM heatsink.. - Just a terrible board lol. I had some issues with the vcore settings - I distictly remember that the voltage drop down started 1.32 or 1.35 as the minimum voltage you could set. suddenly, after a reboot, my minimum vcore setting jumped! the lowest I could set it at was 1.43. Still dont know what happened, but I have a new board now (yay). Anyway, took a while to get this thing stable @ 4.3 - to pass p95 Blend for 2 hours and small FFT for 1 Hour it was crazy hot. Core temps at 55C on max load (dont recall the blend temps). But it did great for a while! Ill see if I can find a pic somewhere of these tests. Ran this way for 6 months or more, played all the games I wanted, and even took out the damn annoying stutter in Total War: Attilla.
Check out the crazy Vdroop with LLC @ Regular! At the time I thought I was golden! lol
View attachment 191744

This is going well (so I thought) - Lets get a new Mobo and see what we can really do! Settled on the Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura mobo. Its Awesome! Love how it looks, the RGB stuff is cool, but the Bios differences were staggering. I basically had to re learn everything on this new board, but thats also why I was doing all this. Got the chip in to the new Mobo, and fired it up - Posted just fine the first few times, but as soon as I started to disable the power saving options (c1e, c6, etc..) it stopped Posting. This is when I checked my RAM sticks and realized they did not have the same timing. I left the 8 GB stick in there and that solved that problem.

Little did I know, by this time I had created 2 fatal problems for myself....
1st Mistake - When installing the Mobo, I had to take off the Exhaust Fan - Not a big deal, until i put it back on backwards
2nd Mistake - WAAAAAAAY TOO MUCH THERMAL PASTE

So without realizing these things at the time, I'm thinking sweet, It was just the RAM that was keeping me from POSTing i'll be just fine. I continue to set my settings to try and get back to that 4.3.
vcore -1.39, This was the stock voltage asked for, but I didnt realize that the voltage changed down to 1.33 once you turn off Turbo Boost. So it got 1.39 manual input, and I went along manually typing in all the stock values. Get down to LLC, and the only experience I had was with Reg, so thats where i left it. Multiplyer was set to 21.5 to get to 4.3, and let her rip! Get into Windows just fine, and I start my Small FFT test. Instantly too hot... Core temps shot up to 65-70C. WTF!!! I didnt understand what was going on... but i knew that was way too hot. I rebooted and restored the Optimized defaults.. I decided to do another test with everything stock. Still way too hot!! cranking in at 60C with no OC at all... Something was way wrong. At this point I'm thinking that my Last Mobo, and that stupid voltage jump thing, caused my chip to ask for more volts than normal, but I wasn't convinced. I re watched the videos on how to OC, and noticed that the only thing I didnt do was change LLC to Ultra High. So I go back in, change my settings to run at 4.0, but with LLC on Ultra High. So here's what I learned... 200 Bus x 20 Multi @ 1.39v with Ultra High LLC = ZAP! (Not to mention No Exhaust Fan + Blanket of TP)
Didn't POST. Couldnt get it to post for anything. Tried clearing CMOS a bunch of times, still nothing

So by this time I'm a littel frantic. Fearing I just Zapped my chip for good. So I bust open the case (Get a nice smell of UltraHigh Heat) Freak out even more. Pop off my air cooler to see my thermal pasty mess of goo. Without thinking, I pulled the chip out before wiping all of the Thermal Paste off... Started my inspection.. Is anything burnt, are the pins bent, What Happened!? Ended up getting Thermal Paste on the Pins!!! CRAAAAP! Okay, time for an alcohol bath...
Got my fancy container out, filled it up, and let the chip soak for a bit. 10 min soak, didnt take enough of the TP off... so now what. I used paper towels, toilet paper, microfiber towells, anything i could try to get the paste off with no avail. Then I tried whisking the chip around in the alcohol, trying to get things to loosen up. CLUNK! Banged the pins against the container By this point, I'm feeling a bit like Alice falling down the rabit hole...
Okay, time to bust out the razor blade/tiniest screw driver i could find. Found 3 pins that were just out of alignment. Fixed those - and did a last inspectoin for lingering thermal paste. There were 2 pins, that seemed to have some paste around the base, and with the razor blade, scratched as much off as I could. Here goes nothing..... Slapped it all back together (Pea Method for thermal paste now )

POST!! Believe it or not, after all that bull ****, It posted!!!! I was amazed. So of course I tried to keep going! lol

I changed the bios settings again to disabled c1e, c6 and all that. POST! woohoo! But I get into Windows, and noticed CPU-Z showed my voltage @ 0.9, and then jumping around like it was being throttled...
I'm not testing at this time either, its just at idle. So thats weird... Went back into BIOS, reaffirmed all my settings and tried again. This time the settings stuck. vcore showing at 1.36 or something like that, not jumping around or throttling. So what do i do of course... p95 small fft for an hour lol. And it PASSED! I couldnt believe it, but i was "Stable" and not hitting the thermal wall either.

Thought, "This is Great!" After all that, I managed to save my chip Lets see how it handles 4.1 ghz........ ZAP. No POST. Couldnt even get to BIOS to undo the 4.1 change lol. Cleared CMOS and tried to get it to POST for hours, but it was finally gone.
So I picked up another 8350 - Had I known I was gonna zap my first one, I would've just saved a few more bucks and picked up a new core set for the Ryzen 1700x - since I had just spent $100 on the new mobo, and I didnt feel like reselling it so quickly, here I am with another 8350. I did this one right tho!!! Been working on my OC all week long, and I'm Finally stable at 4.5

So here's my current set up:

8350 @ 4.5 - 209 BUS X 21.5 w 1.36v and LLC on High (Will have to add BIOS Shots after post)
Arctic Freezer Extreme rev 2.0
Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura
Corsair Vengeance 8GB @ 1640mhz with 10-10-10-27 timing
XFX R9 280x Double Dissapation Edition
Raidmax RX-735AP 735W - 80 Plus Bronze
CM MasterCase Pro 5

These were the shots after my 2 Hour Prime95 Blend Test.

View attachment 191752
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View attachment 191755

I'm guessing someone will notice the temps here may be a tad high for Blend. You're Right! Cuz on my next round of Small FFT tests, I was stable, but hit the Thermal Wall after 20 Min

So, I busted open my case and rearranged my Fans. On that last test I did have a fan blowing on the VRM, but as my case doesnt have a side vent I dont think it had enough juice to have much of an effect. So I put that thing on top as a 3rd intake fan. Blows right over my RAM. I Finally found the sliver lining of zapping my first chip... My replacement came with the stock fan! lol. The tiny sucker was perfect to be rigged up with an old coat hanger and got it to blow directly accross the VRM. From that position its getting cold air from the TOP(hopefully) and from the FRONT and sending that air over the VRM. Should also help exhaust some of the Heat Soak from the GPU.

View attachment 191756
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Here are the 1 Hour Prime95 Small FFT tests. Nifty little fan lowered my temps by 8-10C! Didnt hit the wall once. Very Happy with these results.

View attachment 191759
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The monitoring tools i'm using here are: Asus CPU-Z, HWinfo64 (love the graphs), Speed Fan 4.52 - One thing I have yet to do is confirm my temps with amdOD, but I figured that can wait, as I'm at the speed I hoped for, and i'm not being throttled. I'm just curious to see how this affects my game play, and a few of the benchmarks I've done so far.

Tried my best to get all the info you guys like to ask for. Screen shots are all taken while the tests are active, except for 2 shots that were taken after to show idle info, 1 for each test. I will definately add some screen shots from my BIOS and update the sig. Frankly, I'm just glad I can get this story out knowing that someone here is gonna get it. Kinda tired of looking to the rest of society, family and friends, who don't want to open up a computer case and figure out whats going on. Grateful for any insight, recomendations - this is a 24/7 rig so i wasnt trying to go for broke, but... If anyone thinks I can go higher let me know! lol

Thanks,
Roshi

 

[MstrRoshi]

Those attachments didnt really work... I'll try this:

Original 4.3


2HR Blend





New Fan Layout



1HR Small FFT

 

[Johan45]

Looks good Roshi, one of the last pics your socket is getting up to ~ max at 70° so I'd say you're about done. You could try upping the NB frequency a bit, it does help. I'd try for 2500 with CPI_NB voltage at 1.25V

 

[MstrRoshi]

Looks good Roshi, one of the last pics your socket is getting up to ~ max at 70° so I'd say you're about done. You could try upping the NB frequency a bit, it does help. I'd try for 2500 with CPI_NB voltage at 1.25V

Thank You! I'll for sure give that a shot.
If I understand that correctly, that frequency should generate less heat because it is more syncronized with the HT, and will use the voltage more effeciently?

I'll do a few more tests and post up the results

 

[Johan45]

It'll add a bit more heat but it's worth it. Helps with ram performance

 

[Kenrou]

You're getting roughly the same core temp/voltage as my old 8370 (I only used multiplier but had 1866mhz CL9 ram and HTLink+CPU/NB at 2600mhz), I say stick a 80mm fan over the VRM and crank it to 4.6ghz 1.4v or 4.7ghz 1.44v

 

[MstrRoshi]

I'd try for 2500 with CPI_NB voltage at 1.25V

Alright, so I have been tinkering here with your suggestion. First off, i noticed a significant improvement in my start up times when i bumped up the NB to 2500, anything under 30sec with my 7200rpm HDD is amazing, so I can definitely see the performance gains. Passed an Hour SmallFFT, but as you expected Socket temps were really high. 75C at Max... Figured I could add another fan somewhere to help with that. But I haven't been able to pass the Blend. It'll have a core fail or Illegal Sum Out error after about 30 minutes. I backed the NB down to 2300 @ 1.2v... got past 30 minutes and then I fell asleep lol. When I awoke, the system had rebooted.

Went through the Event Log, expecting to find an unexpected shut down/reboot code of 600x but it looks like something initiated the reboot - User32 Event ID 1074, Reason Code: 0x500ff
Did some googling on the 0x500ff, and it doesn't seem to have a solution. If this is something that's interrupting my stress test, rather that the rig restarting due to instability/heat, then ideally I'd like to fix that and re test. I haven't ruled out a corrupt OS yet. Using Win7 Ultimate 64-bit, SP1. If all else fails I can reinstall at the stable settings from the other night, but if there's an easier fix I'm all ears.

Log Name: System
Source: USER32
Date: 6/26/2017 11:41:11 PM
Event ID: 1074
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: Roshi-PC\Roshi
Computer: Roshi-PC
Description:
The process C:\Windows\system32\winlogon.exe (ROSHI-PC) has initiated the restart of computer ROSHI-PC on behalf of user Roshi-PC\Roshi for the following reason: No title for this reason could be found
Reason Code: 0x500ff
Shutdown Type: restart
Comment:
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="USER32" />
<EventID Qualifiers="32768">1074</EventID>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2017-06-27T05:41:11.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>16979</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Roshi-PC</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-21-1798370818-1661004307-1007036151-1000" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>C:\Windows\system32\winlogon.exe (ROSHI-PC)</Data>
<Data>ROSHI-PC</Data>
<Data>No title for this reason could be found</Data>
<Data>0x500ff</Data>
<Data>restart</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>Roshi-PC\Roshi</Data>
<Binary>FF000500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

 

[MstrRoshi]

You're getting roughly the same core temp/voltage as my old 8370 (I only used multiplier but had 1866mhz CL9 ram and HTLink+CPU/NB at 2600mhz), I say stick a 80mm fan over the VRM and crank it to 4.6ghz 1.4v or 4.7ghz 1.44v

Wow that's Awesome! Was it a 24/7 OC and were you on Air cooling too? I'm a bit nervous to try pushing my voltage that high. Maybe when i upgrade to either Ryzen or Threadripper I will try to milk this guy for all its worth.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

 

[Kenrou]

24/7 on air with a Noctua NH-D15, 55c blend and 60c small fft. As it is your overclock is already good, but you have 2 problems: motherboard is holding you back as you should be using chipset 990 and you need more cooling. Neither are worth spending $$$ on if you're planing on moving to Ryzen unless you're really interested in OC just for the sake of OC, I would sell these parts to grab myself a better GPU for example. But there's plenty here that are more then happy to help if you decide to go for it after Ryzen

 

[MstrRoshi]

24/7 on air with a Noctua NH-D15, 55c blend and 60c small fft. As it is your overclock is already good, but you have 2 problems: motherboard is holding you back as you should be using chipset 990 and you need more cooling. Neither are worth spending $$$ on if you're planing on moving to Ryzen unless you're really interested in OC just for the sake of OC, I would sell these parts to grab myself a better GPU for example. But there's plenty here that are more then happy to help if you decide to go for it after Ryzen

I 100% agree. I knew the 970 Chipset wasn't the best, but its as you said - Why spend all that $$ and not get a Ryzen build. Be that as it may I still plan on picking up that Noctua NH-D15 (Costs as much as my 970 Mobo lol), you can't disagree with those temps you mentioned. I'd be much more comfortable bumping it up to 4.6~4.7 if I could get to those temps! After looking up the NH-D15, Its pretty clear why the Arctic Freezer Extreme isn't up to the task, but for $30 I am not disappointed at all!

GPU is next for sure! My buddy has his eye on Vega, so I may get a steal on his 390x

I did end up getting it stable! I bumped the NB up to 2500 @ 1.25v - with that I just needed to bump my vcore to 1.375 and I passed a 3 hour Blend, plus and hour small fft. Socket temps got higher than I liked so I put in another exhaust fan right above that heatsink - I'll post some screen shots when I get home from work. But the Core/Package Temp max was 58c and Socket Temp Maxed at 75c, but averaged at 71c. No throttling either so I think I'm content until I get some better cooling. Since Im only a gamer, and not doing any video editing/rendering, I'm certain that I won't be coming anywhere near these temps during daily use.

 

[Johan45]

Honestly there's nothing wrong with that board or the 970 chipset, with good cooling that board is just as good(almost) as it's big brothers. My only concern was the NB chipset which would get hot when really pushing the system. If you get a decent fan behind the board on the socket and the improved CPU cooling you'll be fine. The Aura actually has a great VRM section. This is with my cold loop but it's a good example what it "can" do. 5.7GHz with 2600 memory CL10. It was the mem that hit the chipset hard.

 

[Kenrou]

Nothing wrong with the hardware per se, but it's not allowing the CPU/mem to reach it's full potencial or i have it wrong ? always heard 990fx are much better for OC, otherwise everyone would stick with the cheaper 970 mobos.

 

[Johan45]

That was usually because most of the 970 boards( just like the 990FX ) were severely under powered even worse than their 990 counterparts. It would be like saying all 990 boards were terrible. Most were, It's almost true but too general.
There were some really good ASUS M5A 970 boards as well

 

[MstrRoshi]

I did read in my research that the 970 and 990 Asus boards were virtually the same silicon... I've got no basis or backing for that, but if that were true, I didn't see the point in paying for "Features."
Very happy with the board tho.

Here are some shots of my passed tests from earlier. Better cooling is definately needed, but while gaming I don't think it'll become an issue.

This was the first smFFT run that got way too hot..


I added the extra exhaust fan to get here, and I'm thinking with a little better placement and I can drop it some more.


Finally the passed Blend - Fell asleep again, went for almost 3 hours lol.

 

[Kenrou]

Look at how those temps dropped, good work there i got my best temps with 3 intake and 2 exhaust, obviously YMMV depending on case/fans/setup. At the start i had 9 fans on a Fractal Define r5 (fun to install and still surprisingly quiet) but i got quickly slapped upside the head and told "no! bad!", so i dropped them one by one till i got my optimal temps for that case.

 

[Johan45]

Those temps do look better still a bit of a gap between package and socket but better. I bet you could squeeze another 100 MHz out of it now. I also wouldn't bother with the Small FFT test. Just use blend custom set with at least %50 of your available ram 4-6000 MB

 

[MstrRoshi]

Look at how those temps dropped, good work there i got my best temps with 3 intake and 2 exhaust, obviously YMMV depending on case/fans/setup. At the start i had 9 fans on a Fractal Define r5 (fun to install and still surprisingly quiet) but i got quickly slapped upside the head and told "no! bad!", so i dropped them one by one till i got my optimal temps for that case.

Thanks! 9 Fans, haha my friend thinks my 5 is getting excessive. I've had a lot of fun figuring out the optimal air flow for this case, I guess every case has its sweet spot. YMMV? I can't place the acronym.. is that the brand?

Those temps do look better still a bit of a gap between package and socket but better. I bet you could squeeze another 100 MHz out of it now. I also wouldn't bother with the Small FFT test. Just use blend custom set with at least %50 of your available ram 4-6000 MB

Oh cool, I hadn't seen anyone run a custom test yet, so I wasn't exactly sure what settings to use. I'll give that a shot tonight, same 2 hour standard?

I'll be honest... I kept looking at those temps and thought I could do better, lol. I dropped my vcore to 1.36825, then stepped my NB and the CPU_NB voltages up together from stock until stable. Worked like a charm. I can't remember what all the voltages ended at so i'll post a bios shot later tonight. Since I did change the volts I wanted to do one last smFFT so I could compare the 2. Much happier now



I haven't decided if i want to push it faster or not.. If I do, I'll definitely want to use this as a standard for falling back to. Does anyone know how to save bios profiles with this board? I haven't quite figured that out yet. Thanks for all the help!

 

[MstrRoshi]

Alright - Figured out how to save the BIOS Profile so no worreis there. Went in and snapped some shots of my BIOS. Gonna start a Custom Blend, using 50% of RAM but I just wanted to post these first:

 

[Kenrou]

Thanks! 9 Fans, haha my friend thinks my 5 is getting excessive. I've had a lot of fun figuring out the optimal air flow for this case, I guess every case has its sweet spot. YMMV? I can't place the acronym.. is that the brand?

YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary

 

[Mr.Scott]

Bios settings look good.