help an idiot being an idiot that increased cpu voltage!

[linglingjr]

My hardware is:
AMD athlon iix3 3.3ghz (didn't unlock 4th core)
Sapphire 6850
Ocz 550w power supply
760gm gs3 as rock mobo
WD blue caviar 500gb hard drive
Kingston 4gb single stick of ddr3

I have done all the overclocking with the asrock program. I also have a giant after market cooler master CPU cooler. For a very long time i had my cpu at a stable oc from 3.3 to 3.5 with out incresing voltage. So like a complete ****** I decided to increase the voltage of my CPU 0.5v and increase the over clock to 3.75ghz. The second I hit apply nothing happened so a minute later I shut down, turned it back on and nothing came up on screen but the CPU cooler fans were LOUD. The mobo speaker beeped twice with a big gap in between and nothing ever happened. So then in an attempt to reset the BIOS I took out the cmos battery put it back in, nothing happened same two beeps. So I'm guessing I murdered my CPU? Thank you for any help and yes I know I'm an idiot.

 

[trents]

You added 0.5v? You're kidding, right? Why so much? That likely jacked up your CPU core voltage to over 1.8. You should have been thinking adding no more than 0.025 at one time. Yep, you're right. That was an idiot move. How long did you leave the CMOS battery out? Take it out for 2-3 hrs before putting it back in and if that doesn't work, go buy another CPU.

By the way, to reset the CMOS it's usually not necessary to take the battery out. There should be a jumper for this near the battery.

 

[bburrill2012]

Yeah im sure something went wrong when you added half a volt of vcore. No telling what really, going to be a guessing game from here.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Taking out the CMOS battery and putting it back in doesn't reset CMOS (unless left out for an extended period to allow remnant power to dissipate). First thing I would do is follow the mobo procedures for resetting CMOS - there is a jumper that you can short.

Did you increase voltage .5V or .05V? If you increased .5V your CPU could be toast.

 

[linglingjr]

Yes it was an extremely stupid thing I did. I usually don't do anything that dumb. I only took out the cmos battery for less then 15 seconds. I took it out again and its been out for close to an hour now. I'll look at the reading for a BIOS reset. It was half a volt 0_________________O. I womt be surprised if the CPU is toast. At least that was the bottle neck of my system. well I guess it was my mobo but the next upgrade session wasn't too far away... thanks for the help guys I'll let you know in an hour or when i find the cmos jumper. Oh and when i do find the jumper and try to turn it on again if the CPU I toast what will happen?

 

[Dlaw]

Likely the same thing will happen. Good luck with that chip man, your gonna need it.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

While you have the manual out, also look at the guide to beep codes. If the chips dead, you'll get a beep code that indicates problems in the first stages of initializing the CPU.

You can short the CMOS jumper with a screwdriver if you are in a pinch, just keep it there for a while and make sure its making good contact. Beats sitting around for hours waiting to not be certain in the end if CMOS actually cleared or not.

 

[linglingjr]

Looks like I got lucky! It loaded and is starting windows....

 

[linglingjr]

Wow yup I'm back in windows and its back to stock speeds. Wow! Also I was wrong about increasing it half a volt, the CPU voltage went from 1.4 to 1.5. So I only changed .10v so how much should I increase voltages by to get to 3.75 to 4 ghz or whatever most people increase it to w/o the fourth core? I'm going to do a lot of research before I try upping the voltage again. I don't know why it would freeze with a .1 volt increase though.

 

[trents]

You should slow down and do your overclocking in small increments while monitoring core temps after each voltage increase. Start with no voltage increase and see how far you can overclock on the stock voltage. Test for stability after each 5 mhz increase in fsb by running the Prime95 blend test for 20 minutes. Don't add any voltage until you cannot pass the 20 minute stress test, then add .025 and retest.

Before you start, lower your ram speed to 1066 mhz, lower your CPUNB and your HT Link frequencies to 1600 mhz or 8x, however your bios expresses it.

Monitor core temps with HWMonitor and stop adding CPU vcore (core voltage) when your core temps are reaching 55c under load in Prime95. Don't let your CPU vcore exceed 1.5 under load.

Tedious? Yes. But also safe. It's the non-idiot approach.

 

[Jagged_Steel]

Trent is giving you the right approach to safe OC exploration. The error beep code you got was most likely a memory issue. If you were increasing the fsb (bus) speed and leaving your memory locked in a certain multi it will also increase the speed of the memory (it uses the same clock as the bus) and if the memory can not function at the increased speed it will fail and give you the beeps. When you are exploring your OC potential it is best to either put the memory speed low and timings loose(higher) or set the memory at "Auto" (usually better) while you explore CPU overclocks. Once you have the CPU at the speed of choice, then you tighten the memory as far as you can. This process will most likely mean testing until failure, which will result in the memory beep codes and probably resetting the CMOS again, so it is wise to write down or save your BIOS settings if your motherboard supports BIOS profiles.

Good Luck with your OC Lingling.

 

[linglingjr]

okay so I've OCed to 3.78 ghz and increased the cpu voltage to 1.45 with the same configuration trents said increasing it by 5mhz and only increasing voltage when the test failed. the highest temp it reached was 53 c for a few seconds and was usually around 48-50. But in game there has been absolutely no fps increase. Is the cpu not the bottleneck? I havent oced my graphics card at all but windows rates my cpu 7.1 (it used to be 6.9 stock) and my 6850 7.7.

 

[BeepBeep2]

okay so I've OCed to 3.78 ghz and increased the cpu voltage to 1.45 with the same configuration trents said increasing it by 5mhz and only increasing voltage when the test failed. the highest temp it reached was 53 c for a few seconds and was usually around 48-50. But in game there has been absolutely no fps increase. Is the cpu not the bottleneck? I havent oced my graphics card at all but windows rates my cpu 7.1 (it used to be 6.9 stock) and my 6850 7.7.

Chances are there has been an FPS increase but it has been a small one.

Don't pay any attention to WEI...

 

[bburrill2012]

WEI is kinda useless. You will probably see a higher minimum and maximum fps but the average fps will only increase a little.

 

[trents]

At 3.78 you have a pretty decent overclock for that CPU model, especially with that lower end motherboard. But you really need to Prime95 stress test the CPU for at least a couple of hours to have confidence that those overclock settings are stable. 20 minutes only gets you tentative stability and I use that length of test at the front end of the overclock process because it's time efficient. Once you begin to zero in on the max overclock then you need to do longer testing.

Okay, linglingjr we need more info from you. First of all, it's a common forum courtesy to put your system info in a "Sig" so that we have ready access to your system info as the thread gets longer. So please put the info from your first post (and add something about your case make and model, please) in a Sig. To do this, click on Quick Links at the top of the page then Edit Signature.

We also need to get you on board with the forum image attachment tool because we need you to attach pics of CPU-z tabs: CPU, Memory and SPD. This will give us load of information about your system and bios settings. First, crop the images and save them to disk with Windows Accessories Snipping Tool. Then click on Go Advanced at the bottom of any new post window. When the Advanced post window appears, click on the little paperclip tool at the top. This will load the file browser and upload tool and you will no what to do from there.

 

[linglingjr]

yeah right now i have it at 3.5ghz with no voltage increase ill let it test for several hours before i leave it at 3.7 or higher. Thanks for all the help I"'ll have my specs up soon