Looking for help with first CPU overclock (FX-4170).

[Obsidus]

Ok, tried messing around with 4.7 and it just won't stay stable, maybe if I feed it a ton of juice, but then I'd have too much heat, so screw it. 4.6 it is.

One last question before I declare this endeavor an success. Is there any point to overclocking the CPU Northbridge? I think I recall seeing people say that the FX CPU's really benefit from NB overclocking. If I'm better off not mucking with it then so be it.

 

[trents]

Overclocking the CPNB (or just "NB", not to be confused with the chipset NB) does improve memory performance. The Phenom II family, especially the Thuban core, seemed to really allow for a good amount of overclocking of the CPUNB but the sense I get from what others on the forum have reported is that the FX CPUNB isn't as overclockable as the Phenom II CPUNB. Most people seem to be able to get it up to about 2400 mhz.

In fact, now that you mention it, one thing you should try before you give up on getting a higher overclock is giving the CPUNB a little extra voltage. I have found, and so have others, that sometimes even at stock CPUNB frequencies this can help with stability when the CPU itself is being significantly overclocked. Sometimes it also helps with stability if you overvolt the ram a little, like from 1.5 ti 1.525 or 1.55. You might try these things just for the chance it might help. I'm not sure what the stock CPUNB voltage is on the FX CPUs but it should show if you take it off of Manual. If its 1.75 say, try 1.2v for instance.

 

[Obsidus]

Overclocking the CPNB (or just "NB", not to be confused with the chipset NB) does improve memory performance. The Phenom II family, especially the Thuban core, seemed to really allow for a good amount of overclocking of the CPUNB but the sense I get from what others on the forum have reported is that the FX CPUNB isn't as overclockable as the Phenom II CPUNB. Most people seem to be able to get it up to about 2400 mhz.

In fact, now that you mention it, one thing you should try before you give up on getting a higher overclock is giving the CPUNB a little extra voltage. I have found, and so have others, that sometimes even at stock CPUNB frequencies this can help with stability when the CPU itself is being significantly overclocked. Sometimes it also helps with stability if you overvolt the ram a little, like from 1.5 ti 1.525 or 1.55. You might try these things just for the chance it might help. I'm not sure what the stock CPUNB voltage is on the FX CPUs but it should show if you take it off of Manual. If its 1.75 say, try 1.2v for instance.

I over volted the ram yesterday to 1.525 and I think it helped. My CPU/NB is on auto right now, and it has no manual setting; just a drop down list of settings from auto to 1600-1800 all the way up to 3200. Kind of makes me wonder what it is right now if it doesn't support anything lower than 1600 and is set to auto. Maybe I'll try jumping right to 2400 and see if Prime95 crashes. The voltage itself is set to auto as well, so we'll see if changing the frequency frees that up.

 

[trents]

I was talking about giving the CPUNB some extra voltage, not some extra frequency, though you might try that too. There's no voltage adjustment?

 

[Jagged_Steel]

A couple of other forum participants have with both the Sabertooth and the CHV have said they were able to get higher OCs from the latter, manually, I presume. Thanks for helping out here, jagged. I was out of ideas. The Sabertooth has a lot more options than any boards I have ever owned and the FX CPUs present some advanced power mode technology complexties that you don't have to contend with on Denebs, AIIs and Thubans.

Just because I use and suggest to others to try the auto-OC options (especially beginners) does not mean that I don't manually tune things. In the case of this FX-4170 though, the best really stable OC I have found is the one given to me by the auto-oc (202(3)x24). I have tried all of the options on both the CHV and the Sabertooth I have right now and the Sabertooth is the winner, but just barely. Manually I can get this FX-4170 to run @ 5.1 Ghz on the Sabertooth (not truly stable), and I have not been able to get the CHV to boot over 5 Ghz. More importantly (to me anyways) I am seeing slightly more fps in games with exactly the same settings with the Sabertooth. All of the reviews comparing these two mobos show a slight advantage to the CHV(that's why I bought it), but it is not working out that way for me. I don't know if maybe I got a crap CHV and a golden Sabertooth, but I am thinking the CHV is going to go back at this point. There is also an issue with the fancy audio deal on the CHV, a couple of older games I play locked up or crashed due to this.

@ Obsidus: I think the instability problems at high OCs you are experiencing are RAM related. I know you just built your rig, but if you decide to try another set of memory you can't go wrong with Samsung 30 nm @ $47/8GB. This stuff is a dream come true for the OCr. It is really hard to get it to not boot , and I can get all 16 GB stable at above 2000 Mhz.

 

[Obsidus]

I was talking about giving the CPUNB some extra voltage, not some extra frequency, though you might try that too. There's no voltage adjustment?

There is, I wasn't thinking straight this morning (my son woke me up at 6:30 and I had two diphenhydramine in me so I was groggy as hell). It was set to auto at 1.40 volts, so I bumped it to 1.45. I also like I said tried 2400 on the frequency. I wasn't having stability issues prior to doing this, so I don't know if this will make things more/less stable or allow a higher overclock.

 

[Obsidus]

Just because I use and suggest to others to try the auto-OC options (especially beginners) does not mean that I don't manually tune things. In the case of this FX-4170 though, the best really stable OC I have found is the one given to me by the auto-oc (202(3)x24). I have tried all of the options on both the CHV and the Sabertooth I have right now and the Sabertooth is the winner, but just barely. Manually I can get this FX-4170 to run @ 5.1 Ghz on the Sabertooth (not truly stable), and I have not been able to get the CHV to boot over 5 Ghz. More importantly (to me anyways) I am seeing slightly more fps in games with exactly the same settings with the Sabertooth. All of the reviews comparing these two mobos show a slight advantage to the CHV(that's why I bought it), but it is not working out that way for me. I don't know if maybe I got a crap CHV and a golden Sabertooth, but I am thinking the CHV is going to go back at this point. There is also an issue with the fancy audio deal on the CHV, a couple of older games I play locked up or crashed due to this.

@ Obsidus: I think the instability problems at high OCs you are experiencing are RAM related. I know you just built your rig, but if you decide to try another set of memory you can't go wrong with Samsung 30 nm @ $47/8GB. This stuff is a dream come true for the OCr. It is really hard to get it to not boot , and I can get all 16 GB stable at above 2000 Mhz.

I'll for sure keep that in mind, RAM is so damned cheap it hardly matters.

 

[trents]

CPUNB 1.4v on auto? That sounds too high! I was thinking stock was more like 1.175 on those FX chips. Maybe I'm wrong. Can someone comment on this?

 

[Jagged_Steel]

CPUNB 1.4v on auto? That sounds too high! I was thinking stock was more like 1.175 on those FX chips. Maybe I'm wrong. Can someone comment on this?

Running that kind of CPUNB voltage will result in another thread like this one : PC Dead, Oc failure, help!

AGAIN: Randomly changing values in the BIOS with no knowledge of what you are doing is simply not wise. It never has been and this is not likely to change.

 

[Obsidus]

I just checked again and set it back to auto, and it took it down to 1.25 voltage on the NB. The problem I think was when I started to adjust it, the value went up a lot faster than I expected; so it went from auto to 1.45 so damned fast I just didn't think about it having opened up such a large gap so quickly. But it's back down to 1.25 now.

 

[trents]

Running that kind of CPUNB voltage will result in another thread like this one : PC Dead, Oc failure, help!

AGAIN: Randomly changing values in the BIOS with no knowledge of what you are doing is simply not wise. It never has been and this is not likely to change.

Yeah, but OP stated that 1.4v was the Auto value for the CPUNB. That was what I was reacting to.

 

[Obsidus]

I really shouldn't be doing this while I'm still groggy from sleeping meds. I don't THINK anything went wrong, as I'm sitting here using the same computer right now. In any case, it would have 100% been my own fault.

 

[Jagged_Steel]

Yeah, but OP stated that 1.4v was the Auto value for the CPUNB. That was what I was reacting to.

The CPUNB voltage is linked to the VCORE. When you adjust the VCore, the CPUNB on "auto" will adjust accordingly to try and keep up. This is simply one reason to not go randomly changing values in the BIOS, there are just too many variables and unforeseen consequences to consider. Why is it that I was able to get a faster and completely stable OC by using the AI Suite with this exact same setup than you were able to achieve by telling Obsidus to randomly change BIOS voltage values here and there ??

 

[Obsidus]

While I understand what you're saying Jagged, this near miss with a dead processor is my own fault. I didn't misunderstand trents or his wording or anything, it was just my own stupidity that made me go from auto right up to 1.45 volts. I do agree that if I could get a version of AI Suite that had the auto-tuning instead of the thermal radar, that I would use that; since as you said, Asus themselves know a hell of a lot more about our boards than anyone on this forum does. But barring that, I'm happy to learn the slow, long and dangerous way of doing this manually, even if it is sort of a risky novelty.

 

[Obsidus]

Also, since I have the vcore up to 1.750, and the NB is automatically adjusted alongside it, I'm not gonna touch the NB now, gonna leave it at 1.25 and not muck with it anymore. Although is it safe for me to keep the frequency at 2400?

 

[Jagged_Steel]

While I understand what you're saying Jagged, this near miss with a dead processor is my own fault. I didn't misunderstand trents or his wording or anything, it was just my own stupidity that made me go from auto right up to 1.45 volts. I do agree that if I could get a version of AI Suite that had the auto-tuning instead of the thermal radar, that I would use that; since as you said, Asus themselves know a hell of a lot more about our boards than anyone on this forum does. But barring that, I'm happy to learn the slow, long and dangerous way of doing this manually, even if it is sort of a risky novelty.

Lack of knowledge is not stupidity. Repeatedly following bad advice may very well be though. I am certain that Trents means well, but he does not know FX CPUs, and therefore the safe values for OCing them. I was cringing as I read the advice about upping various voltages that was handed out in this thread. If you were not under the impression that what you were doing was perfectly safe you would not be doing that.

 

[Obsidus]

Lack of knowledge is not stupidity. Repeatedly following bad advice may very well be though. I am certain that Trents means well, but he does not know FX CPUs, and therefore the safe values for OCing them. I was cringing as I read the advice about upping various voltages that was handed out in this thread. If you were not under the impression that what you were doing was perfectly safe you would not be doing that.

Yeah. There is a reason I never bothered with overclocking for years and years, that's why I said I was paranoid in my OP. It is intimidating to look at all the values in the bios, I always figured that setting something too high could fry the CPU right away, or would make it so that under load it gets too hot and gets cooked that way; so I've never touched it.

Near miss aside I think I'm done screwing around with this for now. It's at 4.6 with only a slight tweak to the ram voltage, and the vcore voltage at 1.475. I'll leave the CPU/NB frequency at 2400, but I won't touch the NB voltage, I'll leave it on auto. So far the highest temps I've seen are 56 on the cores during blend, but small and large FFT's never take the temps higher than 54. And when I ran Heaven 3 times back to back, it never got hotter than 46, so I'm assuming that Prime95 will run it hotter than any game, and am therefore safe.

Any other advice or warnings or anything for me? I'm guessing that if my little cockup with setting the NB voltage to 1.45 had done any damage, I'd know right away?

In any case, thanks to both of you for educating me on this. It feels good to go from knowing nothing about overclocking, to getting a good overclock on my GPU, and then learning to do it on the CPU. I really appreciate the efforts you two have put into this.

 

[trents]

Lack of knowledge is not stupidity. Repeatedly following bad advice may very well be though. I am certain that Trents means well, but he does not know FX CPUs, and therefore the safe values for OCing them. I was cringing as I read the advice about upping various voltages that was handed out in this thread. If you were not under the impression that what you were doing was perfectly safe you would not be doing that.

You are right, Jagged. I am not too familiar with FX CPUs. I wan't aware that the CPUNB climbed along with the vcore. I have never owned an FX but was just relying on the principles that seem to apply to Phenom IIs and Athlon IIs. That I know of, this is not true for those families of processors but to be honest I always put the CPUNB on manual and generally find that manually setting the CPUNB to 1.225-1.3 volts seems to help with stability at the upper end of overclocks for those CPUs even after I have raised the vcore well past that amount. So I assume the CPUNB voltage doesn't increase along with the vcore on other CPU lines.

 

[Lazarus]

This thread had helped me greatly in OCing my 4170. I couldn't figure it out at first until I came here. Now I'm OC'd @ 4.8 with manual voltage settings... Green across the board on Prime95. Thanks guys.