Help with my Phenom II x6 1055T

[Danphos]

Hey there,

I am still quite new to the whole overclocking and have been trying to overclock my computer a bit but somehow messed up pretty bad to the point that I dont know what I can do to fix it.

I'm hoping any of you can help point out what I did wrong/is broken. Whenever I try to boot my computer when it's set to its default settings it gives me a black screen and immediatly reboots almost right after the windows icon shows up. I've read that this has to do with the Vcore but as it shows up at bus speeds and multipliers way below the designed speed I dont know what's wrong about it. I haven't been able to get it to be stable above 2 GHz.

MOBO > MSI 770-G45 Bios ver.: 10.8
CPU & Cooler > Phenom II x6 1055T with a Scythe Slip Stream SY1225SL12LM-P, 120mm
MEMORY > 4x 2GB GEIL DDR3 GAMING EVO ONE DUAL CHANNEL
POWER SUPPLY > OCZ Fatal1ty 750W
VIDEO CARD > Single ATI Radeon HD 5850
HDDs > 1x WDC WD3200AAKS 320GB and 1x Hitachi HDDeskstar 7K1000C 0F10383
BURNERS > CD/DVD Samsung SH-S223
SOUND DEVICE > Onboard
USB > Logitech mouse and keyboard
O/S > Windows 7 Ultimate

 

[trents]

Try resetting the CMOS with the jumper near the little round battery. It's a three pin jumper. First, power the machine down and disconnect the PSU power cord from the wall socket. Move the jumper from pins 1-2 to pins 2-3. Leave it for 30 seconds before moving it back to pins 1-2. Then plug the PSU back into the wall and power back up. Go into bios and reset time, date, etc.

 

[trents]

One thing that can cause instability is high CPU core temps. Have you checked temps with the free program HWMonitor? Even in bios if you check the PC Health section it should give you an idle temp. Idle temps are not generally helpful unless they are way higher than they should be. This can happen for a number reasons such as the CPU cooler not being seated properly or the thermal paste (TIM) not being applied properly or even poor case ventilation.

Are you using the stock CPU cooler that came boxed with the CPU? If so, you shouldn't try to overclock with that thing. It's barely adequate for cooling the CPU at stock speeds and voltages, assuming TIM is applied well, case has adequate ventilation, cooler is seated properly, etc.

 

[Danphos]

Thanks for the quick reply. I have been monitoring the temperature and it has never been even close to 50 degrees celsius which I think is the max temperature. I'll try resetting the CMOS, should've thought of that before.

I am using the stock fan but since the temperatures never really got that high I thought it'd be fine. I'll look into buying a better cpu cooler. Would you by any chance know of a good not too expensive one?

 

[trents]

What part of the world do you live in? Product availability and costs (especially shipping) vary tremendously. There are some very good coolers available in the US for about $35 US dollars. Also, what make and model of case do you have? The case has to be wide enough to accommodate the height of the cooler.

 

[Danphos]

I'm from the Netherlands. My case is also something I kinda have to upgrade, it's an Aerocool which I dont straight up know the model of.

If you can could you give me a few names of some decent coolers so I have an idea of what I'll be looking for? Thanks for the great help, really appreciate it.

 

[trents]

Can you measure across the top panel of the case for me? Outside measurement (in inches?).

 

[Danphos]

That'd be exactly 8". A friend gave me his old CPU cooler today. It's a Scythe Mugen 2 CPU cooler, is that any good to overclock with?

Edit: I have reset the CMOS using the jumper and looked at the idle temperatures which were 20 degrees celsius on the CPU and 27 degrees on the system. It still refuses to boot at the default settings, it gets to the windows logo and as soon as the logo comes in it automatically reboots. Perhaps a part of my hardware is broken?

Edit2: I have increased the core voltage to 1,43V and it finally booted going at 14x 200 MHz. CPU-Z shows the core voltage only around 1,36V and sometimes goes up to 1,41V. Is this just inaccuracy of CPU-Z?

Edit3: Apparently as soon as I turn AMD Cool 'n Quiet off it won't start up at 1,43V. I'm really getting confused by all this..
It got through 40 minutes of a prime blend test with Cool 'n Quiet on but after playing Diablo 3 for a little more than over an hour it black screen'd and rebooted.

 

[trents]

The Scythe Mugen 2 cooler is a very good cooler and it sounds like your case is wide enough to accommodate those tall tower style coolers with the 120mm fans. That's good. What about case ventilation? Tell me about your case fans: Size, how many, placement and direction of how each blows with respect to being and exhaust fan or an intake fan. If the warm air inside the case is not being removed well and is building up you could still be having an overheating problem. I've attached a pic of good case ventilation. Air should be moving in one direction from front low to rear high.

Please do this: Open the free program HWMonitor on your desktop and leave it open while you run the Prime95 blend test for 20 minutes. Adjust the slider and the frame on the HWMonitor interface so you can see both core temps and CPU temps.Then do a screen capture of the HWMonitor interface. and upload the pic. To upload pics, use Snipping Tool in Windows Accessories to crop and save the image to disc. Then click on the Go Advanced button at the bottom of any new post window. When the Advanced post window appears, click on the little paper clip tool at the top. That will open the file browser and upload tool. The rest is obvious.

Also, please download and install the free program CPU-z. I'll have more to say about that later.

 

[Danphos]

I have 5 fans total in my case. One on the GPU, one on the processor cooler, a 120 mm intake at the bottom front, one in my PSU and a smaller one in the left panel blowing the air out. Here's a screenshot of it running for exactly 20 minutes. The core speed dropped to 800 MHz almost instantly because of AMD Cool 'n Quiet but without it enabled or on auto it will not even boot as it will give me a black screen and automatically reboot right after the windows logo.

 

[trents]

Cool N Quiet should only be active when the CPU is idling. Please make another screenshot of the CPU-z tab "CPU" when the processor is under load. As it is now, I can't tell much because the "green" power saving stuff is still active. It masks the bios settings for frequency and voltages because it down-throttles things. Also, when you attach the new screenshot of the CPU-z "CPU" tab, please include and image of the "SPD" tab which will show the memory manufacturer's recommendations for voltage and timings of your ram at various frequencies.

Doesn't look like temps are a problem, judging from the screenshot of HWmonitor.

 

[Danphos]

That's where my problem's at. I can not get it to run with AMD Cool 'n Quiet turned off. It acts as if there's something wrong with the core voltage and just keeps rebooting.

I am currently trying to see if it will boot at any voltage between the default 1,365V and 1,5V.

Edit: It will not boot at any of the voltages with Cool 'n Quiet disabled. All I can do to get it to be stable is by lowering my multiplier drastically..

 

[trents]

No, what I was trying to say was, leave Cool N Quiet enabled for the present but when you take a screenshot of the CPU-z "CPU" tab, have the processor under some kind of load so that Cool N Quiet is not engaged. Theoretically, it should "let go" was soon as the processor detects a load.

 

[Danphos]

I thought so too but in the screenshot I took prime95 was still running yet the processor was still going at only 800 MHz. I will try again and see if it'll actually go up to 2,8GHz.

 

[trents]

To turn off all the "Advanced P ("Power") states ("green" stuff) you also need to disable C1E and Turbo in bios and configure the Power Option in Windows Control Panel to High Performance. Please try that.

 

[Danphos]

I cannot get it to boot without Turbo and Cool 'n Quiet enabled. It just black screens and reboots.

 

[trents]

Something is wrong with that picture. I suspect your bios has bugs. Do you have the latest bios installed? If not, I would suggest updating it. I hate to trash other people's hardware but we get more of this kind of thing with MSI motherboards than any of the major brands. MSI used to be a top notch technology company but their quality has declined in recent years.

 

[Danphos]

It's at the latest version. Would reflashing it maybe fix it? It hasnt done this all the time so maybe it bugged out recently? Or an older version?

 

[trents]

Yeah, if the older bios version worked fine I would flash it back to that version. You know the old saying, "If it ain't broke don't fix it."

 

[Danphos]

All this happened on the exact same bios version. I didnt recently update it causing all this to happen, but I'll flash it back to an older version to see if that fixes it.

I flashed it back to v10.7. It did not fix the problem. It still will not be stable above 1920 GHz without all the green stuff.

Could it possibly be a bad motherboard or something?