Overclocking Athlon X4 640

[Pepie]

I was just trying to play BF3.
After an hour the game crashed, and also Google Chrome stopped working.. even after restarting Google Chrome it immediatly stopped working so I had to reboot.
Before I rebooted I saw on hwmonitor (look below for the screen) that it reached 2,19V. How is that possible?

 

[trents]

Let's hope that 2.19 is not a real value. If I were you I'd run a Prime95 test again and keep a close watch on that max CPU vcore. If it spikes like that and then returns to a lower value, say 1.55 or lower then it's probably just a software anomaly and nothing to worry about. If it stays at 2.19 for any length of time, stop the test. You can also go to "View" and clear HWMonitor's values during the test and start with fresh ones as per the moment. At any rate, you appear to not be quite stable if you crashed while playing the game so I would suggest backing off the FSB about 5 mhz and doing a long Prime95 stress test. I'm not sure what you were expecting out of that CPU but having owned one of those and having helped many people overclock them on the forum I can tell you they top out at somewhere between 3.6 and 3.8 ghz.

 

[Pepie]

Okay thanks.
Having around 3,7GHz is good enough for me.
The main problem was that playing bf3 on normal settings (3,0 GHz) he can't handle all the rendering in the game at high settings.
With stress test HWmonitor doesn't show more than 1,36V.. So I also hope it was just a software mistake.
I'll let the stress test continue for some hours, if it crashes I will turn it 5 MHz down.

Thanks for helping

 

[trents]

The Athlon II X4's are not that well-suited for gaming because they have no L3 cache. They're great general computing CPUs, however. Have you checked the Windows resource meter to see whether the video card or the CPU is the bottleneck?

 

[Pepie]

Yes, I already spent plenty of time to see what the problem was.
The GPU is not really the problem, on benchmark test he had a good score. Also 7,8 windows score.
Also I put it in my brothers PC, he has an older i5 750. He overclocked it from 2,66GHz to 3,7.
He could play on ultra settings with it.
Anyway, if I had the money I would have bought a new CPU. But as 16 years old boy, I don't really have any to buy a new one.
So overclocking was the best option for me to get the most fps out of the game.

Anyway, thanks for helping again.

 

[trents]

Did you see any noticeable improvement in the game play after overclocking?

 

[Pepie]

Yes, there was a lot of improvement.
FPS went from 28-40 to 40-50.
When you look towards an open field without buildings its around 60 fps because there isn't so much the CPU needs to render.
But when you are between all the buildings the fps is now around 40-50.
On the standard clock settings it used to be 28-40

 

[Pepie]

I did a 2 hours test and when it was about 1hour and 30 minuts of the test one core failed.
So I expected I had too low Vcore so I added 0,025V like you said.
Now I hope its fully stable, I did a 2 hour prime95 test and everything went good.

 

[Pepie]

I bet these temperatures are not good at all.
I saw it when I was done playing bf3
What should i do?
I can place some fans on the side of my case, so it will blow cool air at the motherboard.
But I guess that will not really cool down those temperatures
EDIT:
Nevermind, I guess those temperatures weren't real but a system fault.

 

[trents]

If I were you I would try to position a spot fan to blow on the are between the CPU and the I/O ports at the back of the motherboard, the "VRM" area I circled in red on the pic of your motherboard I attached in a post yesterday. Those 101c temps may be bogus but putting a spot fan in that area is good insurance, especially with no heat sink. It would be best to have the fan close to the components rather than in the side panel if you could fasten it somehow.

 

[trents]

Hey, I had an idea. This would just be an experiment and not something you would want to do all the time but it would help you to know if more fans would help or if the temp readings are bogus when they are real high.

Take the side panel off the case and set a household fan (like a box fan) to blow into the open case. Play your game for awhile with HWMonitor open in the background and then check temps.

 

[trents]

Along with that, how's your cable and wire management inside the case? It can really help with board temps when cables and wires are bundled up and tucked out of the way so they don't disrupt air flow through the case. Cables and wires can be routed under the motherboard and/or behind the motherboard tray or into unused drive bays. Could you take a digital camera pic of the interior of your case and attach it with a post?

Here are pics of my case and cable management. Note how wires and cables in the first pic are out of the way of the front panel fans, being tucked low against the motherboard tray or the bottom panel. Note how I have removed the middle drive bay that was blocking the upper fan in the front panel. I didn't need it for drives and it was obstructing air flow. The second pic shows the other side of the case where you can see how most of the wires and cables are behind the motherboard tray. I have about 3/4" of space between the right side panel and the motherboard tray.

 

[trents]

This closeup from my other desktop build shows how I have used two 50mm spot fans to augment the cooling of the VRM and North Nridge heatsinks. I stick them to the heat sinks with a double-sided adhesive strips. You can get a roll of double-sided adhesive material for a few bucks at any hardware store.

 

[Pepie]

Okay, I'll see if the temperatures get lower when I take the side panel off and put a fan blowing towards the VRM on the motherboard.
Cables are good, so there is not much I can do about that.