Help! OC AMD Athlon II x4 640 with Biostar TA880GU3+

[keny]

I love playing with these chips, they are the best chips to learn the ropes on as its all reference clocking and almost everything needs changing as you go, i think you will be limited by your'e board and cooler, as the proc will most likely do more but as trents said "top draw cooling" is needed to tame the heat. If you just want to see how far it will go then clock it back for daily running,take the case sides off or even better take it out the case all together (sorry! its a benching thing lol) and see how you're temps are after that! But as it stands 62 is too high for your'e temps and not being able to lower your'e your'e vcore is not helping you,although your'e not far of what it would need to run those clocks anyway.

 

[Mitukczuk]

If I were you, I'd lower the overclock/your expectations to 3,3Ghz+- ,on a reasonable vcore with acceptable temps, test the stability and save up for a bit better cooler as trents suggested.
I can recommend the cooler I have (check my sig), which is easy to instal and great performer for the price. Also, some additional fans can help and most importantly, try to find the PSU manufacturer as having a good quality PSU is vital for overclocking and 'healthy' pc.

As keny said, these chips are great for learning the ways of the force...I mean..overclocking. (speaking from my own experience)

 

[WoodenKiwi]

But I already hit 3.35Ghz with a setup that seemed stable? Or at least on a 20 minute test, guess it's pending a longer one. It wasn't until 3.4Ghz that I started going over 55C.

 

[Mitukczuk]

The thing is this, 20 minutes of prime is just a test if there is some MAJOR flaw and it's there for checking the initial stability. You can get an error after an hour of primeing...or after two...you never know, thats why it's recommended to prime for 2+ hours to get the most acurrate results and temps.

For example, yesterday I was overclocking my Phenom to 3,6Ghz (from 3,4Ghz stock) on 1.3vcore....I passed half an hour of Prime testing with flying colors and got an error + blue screen of death after another 20 minutes. After I bumped the vcore to 1.325 I was stable...

 

[Archer0915]

Let me dig but I have gotten 3.9 benching on air out of a 620. 3.6-3.7 should be doable for 24/7

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Awesome, right now I'm priming a 3.5Ghz setup and it seems to be doing ok, been going for 15 minutes so far and haven't gone over 57C.

 

[Archer0915]

This is what I had for the 3.9 run:

I did not OC with AOD but used it foe seeing the settings.

Get that NB speed up and keep the HT as close to stock as you can. If you can tighten your memory timings that will also increase speeds.

 

[keny]

Just to show these chips are definately clockable, I manages to get this x3 stable at these clocks, but it takes time to get it right, and a lot of tweaking.



Edit : @ archer, I like that theme for you're windows, not seen that before, looks nice

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Hey everyone!

Sorry I disappeared for awhile, been a bit crazy recently, but I have news as far as my OCing is going.

So for awhile I had everything running stable at 3.36Ghz, but any higher and everything sorta went pear-shaped, so I decided to bite the bullet and drop some more $$$ on my cooling.

Today I went over to FrozenCPU.com(I'm lucky enough to live by their warehouse and storefront, so I don't have to order online) and picked up a Titan FENRIR and two NZXT performance 120mm fans.

Here are my results!







Things are still running a little hot so I think I'll keep it here pending a 2 hour priming. Next upgrade will be a new mobo, as I think the overly cramped nature of my micro-ATX board is what's throwing a monkey wrench in my cooling.

What do you think?

 

[Mitukczuk]

Those temps are definitely a bit high. Plus 20 minutes of Prime is not enough so post your results after the 2 hour testing you plan on doing.

Strange to see that a better cooler didn't help you to keep those temps at least under 60C.

 

[WoodenKiwi]

As I said I'm fairly sure it's the mobo at fault here, there's only about 3.5 inches between the FENRIR's intake fan and my GPU so I think it's all just too cramped for air to flow properly.

I'll do a 2hr prime run later tonight when I can afford to go 2 hours without using my computer.

 

[keny]

As I said I'm fairly sure it's the mobo at fault here, there's only about 3.5 inches between the FENRIR's intake fan and my GPU.

I think this is where you're problem is, it sounds as though you need to rotate you're cooler to have the fans blowing through you're cooler and out to the back of you're case if that's possible, I know some coolers won't alow this but I don't know about you're particular model, as you are sucking in a ton of heat from you're gpu as it is now

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Unfortunately my cooler will only face the top exhaust fan, or the gpu. I'm gonna mess with my fan configuration later to try and get some cool air into the cooler, either by turning the top fan from an exhaust to an intake and flipping the cooler around, or by moving one of my two front fans to be a side intake, which would pull cool air right into the GPU/CPU cooler area.

 

[trents]

But be careful that you don't disrupt air flow over your motherboard components just to cool down the CPU. Boards fry easier than CPUs.

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Problem Solved!

I moved one of my two front fans to the side position and got some fresh air onto the GPU and into the cooler, idle temp immediately dropped about 10C.

Motherboard should still be sufficiently cooled with the front intake, top exhaust, and rear exhaust. Not to mention the side intake should also help with mobo cooling.

I'll be back with some prime results.

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Here is a quick prime after using the side fan. I may try and clock further now that my heat is back in line.

 

[Mitukczuk]

Now that's what I call an improvement. Nice to see you helping yourself out. The crucial part now is to Prime for as long as you can. Preferably during night....

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Ok here are the final numbers, it's at a nice 3.6Ghz. Sadly any higher and I start getting errors in Prime95. Anyways here are the screens after 2hrs and 36mins of priming. The cores topped out at only 53C, but even better spent most of the testing at 47C!

 

[Mitukczuk]

That's a very nice overclock you got going on there. Not too many people squeeze more than 3,4Ghz out of that CPU (myself included). Now, to be absolutely sure you should run Prime over night for like 6 hours. Like I said before, you can get errors after 4 hours of testing.
But this looks really promising.

Just get a new mobo ;-)

 

[WoodenKiwi]

Haha well it wasn't exactly easy, even if I don't count all the trials and mistakes that came with learning how to OC. As a fair warning to anyone who wants to OC this CPU to such a degree, prepare to spend more on cooling than you spent on the CPU itself

Eventually I'll upgrade the mobo, but for now it's doing alright with the current fan setup. First I need to get a new PSU as I finally figured out that mine is a garbage bargain bin Suntec 680W