BlackRosePhoeni
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2016
Hello folks, first time posting, been going through the forums and found some information that has gotten me started with overclocking my CPU. Yet I really don't know much and just had some really good luck I believe. This is kind of a long post but it should help you help me and i appreciate you taking your time to help out. Anyway lets start out with my system specs
Motherboard: 990XA-GD55
CPU: AMD FX-6100
Memory: DDR3 16GB Dual Channel
GPU: AMD Radeon R7 370 4GB
So to start this out I started on my overclocking journey because I recently upgraded my GPU, it wasn't a huge upgrade but a moderate one. Well I put it in the new GPU and got it running, saw a slight increase and was slightly disappointed yet wasn't expecting too much with how little I paid for it. Few months later now playing The Division and I'm getting 25-40 FPS on low more on the low side most of the time. Decided to pull up CPUID hardware monitor and started paying attention to my computer. Noticed my CPU was running at 70-80% usage with small peaks of 95+% while my GPU was running at 50-60% usage with both running very cool. I have an aftermarket cooler I don't remember what it's called but had great reviews on new egg at the time of purchase a few years ago. Also the tower is packed with plenty of fans with great circulation. So I do some research and come to the conclusion my CPU is bottle necking my GPU, this leads me to starting my research into overclocking. I've tried to read as much as I can but keep on getting confused while reading guides due to missing the building blocks of the information being discussed. I used my powers of deduction and investigation to my best to figure out some basic concepts of overclocking.
With all that being said I rebooted my computer and started up my bios and started looking at the options I had to me. I did some googling of what different options mean and basic usage, lots of it was too complicated to really grasp without some other knowledge. Saw some suggestions on various forums that I just up my multiplier slowly and pay attention to my heat while doing a stress test. If it isn't over heating and not crashing I'm good at a basic level. Also saw some other people had some success with the FX 6100 at raising the multiplier from 16.5 to 18-22 depending on the person. So I went ahead and jumped a few notches and raised it to 18x going from 3.3ghz to 3.6 ghz. Rebooted and began stress testing the CPU with prime95, I allowed it to run for about 40 mins and it hit a peak temperature of 52.8 C. Felt good about that so went back into bios and a friend suggested I just try the OC Genie II auto overclock feature my motherboard has. So I reverted my setting back to normal and then started up using OC Genie II. It set the CPU clock speed to 3.72 ghz or so. I ran a stress test again for a few mins it was staying in the same temp range as when I overclocked it before. I got impatient and decided to test out The Division with the overclocking. The game gets to main menu then I select my character and start to load into the game and it freezes while loading. Complete hold up of the machine unable to do anything. I shut it down and reboot into my BIOS and turn off the OC Genie II feature and begin reverting the settings to what they were at originally which was mostly AUTO.
I begin googling some more stuff about overclocking on my laptop while talking to some friends on Teamspeak about overclocking. They were mostly telling me I shouldn't and that I probably won't see very much of a increase in performance with what I got. At the same time they were trying to teach me things about it but they weren't all that knowledgeable. After some time I just think screw it someone else wrote they hit 24x with it and felt like they could push it farther and they didn't even have water cooling. With that in mind I set my multiplier to 20x pushing my clock to 4.0 ghz and left all the other settings on auto. Rebooted and begin my stress testing again, this time I help my patience and let it run for a good 30+ mins. The CPU heat started peaking at 56 C and still raising very very slowly. Everything else seemed fine including motherboard temp peaking at 60 C but holding more around 55 C. Not really sure on what temperature my motherboard is safe to operate in but I saw a few people online saying 60 C is fine, i'm hoping that's true. So I decided to try booting up The Division again and see if it freezes up on the load in again. This time it loads faster then ever before world opens up and everything looks beautiful.
Before overclocking I was getting 25 FPS average now I'm hitting 70+ in non action areas and 40-60 with some drops to 30ish here and there in high action areas. My CPU was running mostly at 70% usage with peaks of 88% and my GPU is running at 98% which is the first time I've seen it get past 67% without it being a GPU benchmark. Ended up jumping the Graphics to Medium and things ran pretty much the same but looking even better. I loss maybe 2-3 FPS average with the increase of quality. So I'm loving things right now, I'm getting close if not full use out of my GPU for the first time and even the most demanding new games are running at excellent quality considering the cost and age of my components. I've also seen huge increases in FPS in other games and have yet to see my temp get past 55.9 again which it only hit while I was stress testing it, I don't think it's gotten past 51 while gaming.
So here I am now looking for some advice on how I should proceed and to up my knowledge in the world of overclocking so I can do some fine tuning adjustments. I've been looking at this CPU to get to replace my current one as a budget replacement, but I'm trying to hold out until I can afford something better. I'm not too worried about damaging my CPU since I could always get free 1 day shipping with Amazon Prime for the new CPU I can afford. With that in mind I'm wondering if I should push my CPU farther and maybe even overclock my GPU also. If I do overclock my GPU it would be only a tiny bit as I really don't want to damage that since it's a fairly new purchase. I know some games will benefit from some more CPU power due to being processor hungry, but still not sure if it would really be worth the risk. I also really do not want to damage my motherboard as I do not want to have to shell out for a new motherboard and CPU. The motherboard could use an upgrade but I'm going to wait a bit longer for that. Oh random throw in my System Memory usage never gets past 64% and I have 16 GBs of RAM. Should I messing around with memory speeds when overclocking? or is that pointless because I'm barley using over half of it as is. Same thing with voltage for memory.
So some simple questions I couldn't really find any solid answer on are.......
How hot can my CPU get and be fairly safe? (I'm willing to risk it a bit if I'm getting awesome results)
How hot can my motherboard get and be safe?
How hot can my GPU get and be safe?
Can a CPU or GPU crash because of Overclocking despite not overheating and getting enough voltage? IE: are there negative effects from overclocking that I need to pay attention for to prevent serious damage...or at least know that it's begun getting damaged?
What does changing memory clock speed do?
How can I figure out the rated voltages for my motherboard, GPU, CPU, Memory...? I've seen someone talking on forums (don't remember which forums) about some master list for AMD processors with some vital info pertaining to voltages and other stuff but I can't seem to find it.
In addition
I'm very confused as to why the OC Genie II was causing my system to crash and I remember trying it out a couple years ago and I got tons of crashes from it. Same thing with pretty much any auto overclocking program I've ever used with this system has caused me to get lots of crashes while gaming so I've stayed away from them. I just don't get why they all have caused my system to crash. Yet I can manually set the clock speed to much higher then those programs have ever tried to set it to. With everything else set to auto and I have yet to have any problems while getting a great performance boost.
I've tried pushing my clock past 4.0ghz but it crashes at anything higher and has trouble booting at 4.1ghz. From what i've read I've guessed I need to provide more voltage to my CPU for it to stay stable at higher speeds. I see there are 3 voltages settings on my BIOS in the overclocking section which were VCore Voltage, NB Voltage, DRAM Voltage. So I need some serious help with understanding voltage and how to check what's safe to fool around with depending on what components I have. I'm using all auto settings for voltage while overclocking and I'm wondering how the AUTO settings work. What factors helps choose what settings the auto settings select. I notice my voltage fluctuates some depending on usage although not very much I wasn't taking note of it enough to really know. Just the min max values on CPUid were similar to what other people were saying as standard. Although I saw some mix things about whats the standard VCORE voltage for my CPU and it's set on Auto so I'm not sure where to start off from same thing with NBvoltage. I've included two pictures of CPUID info one while computer is at IDLE and one under a stress test from Prime95....wasn't ran very long but this is more so you can look at my voltages and help with that. I also don't understand much about the other settings in my overclock menu and would like some clarification on the other options available to me.
Well thanks again for taking to read this huge block of text, and I appreciate any help I receive from yall!
Motherboard: 990XA-GD55
CPU: AMD FX-6100
Memory: DDR3 16GB Dual Channel
GPU: AMD Radeon R7 370 4GB
So to start this out I started on my overclocking journey because I recently upgraded my GPU, it wasn't a huge upgrade but a moderate one. Well I put it in the new GPU and got it running, saw a slight increase and was slightly disappointed yet wasn't expecting too much with how little I paid for it. Few months later now playing The Division and I'm getting 25-40 FPS on low more on the low side most of the time. Decided to pull up CPUID hardware monitor and started paying attention to my computer. Noticed my CPU was running at 70-80% usage with small peaks of 95+% while my GPU was running at 50-60% usage with both running very cool. I have an aftermarket cooler I don't remember what it's called but had great reviews on new egg at the time of purchase a few years ago. Also the tower is packed with plenty of fans with great circulation. So I do some research and come to the conclusion my CPU is bottle necking my GPU, this leads me to starting my research into overclocking. I've tried to read as much as I can but keep on getting confused while reading guides due to missing the building blocks of the information being discussed. I used my powers of deduction and investigation to my best to figure out some basic concepts of overclocking.
With all that being said I rebooted my computer and started up my bios and started looking at the options I had to me. I did some googling of what different options mean and basic usage, lots of it was too complicated to really grasp without some other knowledge. Saw some suggestions on various forums that I just up my multiplier slowly and pay attention to my heat while doing a stress test. If it isn't over heating and not crashing I'm good at a basic level. Also saw some other people had some success with the FX 6100 at raising the multiplier from 16.5 to 18-22 depending on the person. So I went ahead and jumped a few notches and raised it to 18x going from 3.3ghz to 3.6 ghz. Rebooted and began stress testing the CPU with prime95, I allowed it to run for about 40 mins and it hit a peak temperature of 52.8 C. Felt good about that so went back into bios and a friend suggested I just try the OC Genie II auto overclock feature my motherboard has. So I reverted my setting back to normal and then started up using OC Genie II. It set the CPU clock speed to 3.72 ghz or so. I ran a stress test again for a few mins it was staying in the same temp range as when I overclocked it before. I got impatient and decided to test out The Division with the overclocking. The game gets to main menu then I select my character and start to load into the game and it freezes while loading. Complete hold up of the machine unable to do anything. I shut it down and reboot into my BIOS and turn off the OC Genie II feature and begin reverting the settings to what they were at originally which was mostly AUTO.
I begin googling some more stuff about overclocking on my laptop while talking to some friends on Teamspeak about overclocking. They were mostly telling me I shouldn't and that I probably won't see very much of a increase in performance with what I got. At the same time they were trying to teach me things about it but they weren't all that knowledgeable. After some time I just think screw it someone else wrote they hit 24x with it and felt like they could push it farther and they didn't even have water cooling. With that in mind I set my multiplier to 20x pushing my clock to 4.0 ghz and left all the other settings on auto. Rebooted and begin my stress testing again, this time I help my patience and let it run for a good 30+ mins. The CPU heat started peaking at 56 C and still raising very very slowly. Everything else seemed fine including motherboard temp peaking at 60 C but holding more around 55 C. Not really sure on what temperature my motherboard is safe to operate in but I saw a few people online saying 60 C is fine, i'm hoping that's true. So I decided to try booting up The Division again and see if it freezes up on the load in again. This time it loads faster then ever before world opens up and everything looks beautiful.
Before overclocking I was getting 25 FPS average now I'm hitting 70+ in non action areas and 40-60 with some drops to 30ish here and there in high action areas. My CPU was running mostly at 70% usage with peaks of 88% and my GPU is running at 98% which is the first time I've seen it get past 67% without it being a GPU benchmark. Ended up jumping the Graphics to Medium and things ran pretty much the same but looking even better. I loss maybe 2-3 FPS average with the increase of quality. So I'm loving things right now, I'm getting close if not full use out of my GPU for the first time and even the most demanding new games are running at excellent quality considering the cost and age of my components. I've also seen huge increases in FPS in other games and have yet to see my temp get past 55.9 again which it only hit while I was stress testing it, I don't think it's gotten past 51 while gaming.
So here I am now looking for some advice on how I should proceed and to up my knowledge in the world of overclocking so I can do some fine tuning adjustments. I've been looking at this CPU to get to replace my current one as a budget replacement, but I'm trying to hold out until I can afford something better. I'm not too worried about damaging my CPU since I could always get free 1 day shipping with Amazon Prime for the new CPU I can afford. With that in mind I'm wondering if I should push my CPU farther and maybe even overclock my GPU also. If I do overclock my GPU it would be only a tiny bit as I really don't want to damage that since it's a fairly new purchase. I know some games will benefit from some more CPU power due to being processor hungry, but still not sure if it would really be worth the risk. I also really do not want to damage my motherboard as I do not want to have to shell out for a new motherboard and CPU. The motherboard could use an upgrade but I'm going to wait a bit longer for that. Oh random throw in my System Memory usage never gets past 64% and I have 16 GBs of RAM. Should I messing around with memory speeds when overclocking? or is that pointless because I'm barley using over half of it as is. Same thing with voltage for memory.
So some simple questions I couldn't really find any solid answer on are.......
How hot can my CPU get and be fairly safe? (I'm willing to risk it a bit if I'm getting awesome results)
How hot can my motherboard get and be safe?
How hot can my GPU get and be safe?
Can a CPU or GPU crash because of Overclocking despite not overheating and getting enough voltage? IE: are there negative effects from overclocking that I need to pay attention for to prevent serious damage...or at least know that it's begun getting damaged?
What does changing memory clock speed do?
How can I figure out the rated voltages for my motherboard, GPU, CPU, Memory...? I've seen someone talking on forums (don't remember which forums) about some master list for AMD processors with some vital info pertaining to voltages and other stuff but I can't seem to find it.
In addition
I'm very confused as to why the OC Genie II was causing my system to crash and I remember trying it out a couple years ago and I got tons of crashes from it. Same thing with pretty much any auto overclocking program I've ever used with this system has caused me to get lots of crashes while gaming so I've stayed away from them. I just don't get why they all have caused my system to crash. Yet I can manually set the clock speed to much higher then those programs have ever tried to set it to. With everything else set to auto and I have yet to have any problems while getting a great performance boost.
I've tried pushing my clock past 4.0ghz but it crashes at anything higher and has trouble booting at 4.1ghz. From what i've read I've guessed I need to provide more voltage to my CPU for it to stay stable at higher speeds. I see there are 3 voltages settings on my BIOS in the overclocking section which were VCore Voltage, NB Voltage, DRAM Voltage. So I need some serious help with understanding voltage and how to check what's safe to fool around with depending on what components I have. I'm using all auto settings for voltage while overclocking and I'm wondering how the AUTO settings work. What factors helps choose what settings the auto settings select. I notice my voltage fluctuates some depending on usage although not very much I wasn't taking note of it enough to really know. Just the min max values on CPUid were similar to what other people were saying as standard. Although I saw some mix things about whats the standard VCORE voltage for my CPU and it's set on Auto so I'm not sure where to start off from same thing with NBvoltage. I've included two pictures of CPUID info one while computer is at IDLE and one under a stress test from Prime95....wasn't ran very long but this is more so you can look at my voltages and help with that. I also don't understand much about the other settings in my overclock menu and would like some clarification on the other options available to me.
Well thanks again for taking to read this huge block of text, and I appreciate any help I receive from yall!
. All my temps have been at good numbers with it at 4.0 ghz. Only had a question of is 60C safe for my motherboard and wondering could it be the temperature gauge for the motherboard stops at 60C cause it would fluctuate and hold at 60C sometimes for awhile but never got past even by .1.
