Recent AMD FX 4100 Build questions. ^^;

[Aale]

Hello all, been stalking around here for tips for a few days, but this is my first post. Nice community you have here and lots of great information so thanks for that! On to my question, Using MB M.I.T on my Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 -- AMD 970 MOBO I've upped my FX 4100 to 4.2ghz and the Vcore automatically set itself to 1.47. The following screen cap is @ 20 hours on blend torture testing in prime95. This seems to be pretty stable, and the max CPU temps are @46/47c, which seems pretty low, even for a liquid cooled system. This is my first custom built PC and I wanna squeeze as much out of it as I possibly can without sacrificing MOBO/chipset life expectancy too much. So my question is, does anyone else around here have this same chipset/MOBO that has safely pushed it farther? If so what settings are optimal, and finally, is there any more risk/benefit to upping the FSB instead of just CPU Freq/Vcore? Thanks in advance.

As for the crazy high temps in the second set of figures there I had a second Radeon HD 6870 in there previously that has a locked up cooling fan and it was removed prior to this testing run. I don't know if the MAX column reflects all time for the program's logs or if it only reflects the most recent powering up of the system but I hope to god that it's a lifetime log ;;

 

[BeepBeep2]

Add 20c to temperature readings.

6c idle in a likely 20+c room, is impossible with a hunk of metal and some air flowing across it.

So you are around 65c, I would call it quits pretty soon. These can usually take 70-75c without issue, though I have seen some CPUs crap out right around 70c. (You'll realize that it won't OC further, no matter what you do...voltage won't help because of heat-related instability)

If you are stable at 1.47v vcore, then set it manually. Auto vcore can jump around sometimes, depending on the day. Not really, but I wouldn't trust it. I have seen boards set absolutely crazy voltages...enough to kill CPUs, so those should be set manually unless the CPU is at stock, in which case the board will follow the CPU VIDs.

If you set 1.47v manually, try pushing a little more to see what you can get at that voltage, assuming you can keep your temperatures in check.

 

[Bubba-Hotepp]

To answer your question, YES.

First, your Voltages are really high. What are your BIOS settings? What are you overclocking to?

Second, with a max voltage of 1.5V if you're using the stock cooler than no wonder you're seeing crazy temps like that.

 

[Aale]

@BeepBeep2 I guess I wasn't clear in the OP, those are not idle temps, it's under prime95 blend torture atm and is @ the 20 hour mark.
Edit: NVM I see what you are saying.
@Bubba-Hotepp Yes what exactly? I asked several questions -.-; Also it's not stock cooling, has Asetek 550 liquid cooling.

 

[Bubba-Hotepp]

Did you actually see the temps climb up to over 120C?? or is that a glitch?

 

[BeepBeep2]

Edit: NVM I see what your are saying.

:

May I ask, what revision is your motherboard, and do you see any mention of "CPU Load Line Control" in your manual or in your BIOS? The revision number should be near the lower-left corner of your motherboard when facing upwards.

Also, does your vcore change when you apply a load like Prime95? Does it go down, or up?

I know for a fact that these GB boards either have massive vdroop or massive vgain Gigabyte is a rather messy company.

Did you actually see the temps climb up to over 120C?? or is that a glitch?

That is a glitch.

 

[Bubba-Hotepp]

:

May I ask, what revision is your motherboard, and do you see any mention of "CPU Load Line Control" in your manual or in your BIOS? The revision number should be near the lower-left corner of your motherboard when facing upwards.

Also, does your vcore change when you apply a load like Prime95? Does it go down, or up?

I know for a fact that these GB boards either have massive vdroop or massive vgain Gigabyte is a rather messy company.


That is a glitch.

I was about to say either that's a golden chip of epic proportions or it's a miracle that it didn't burn up by then

 

[Aale]

@Bubba-Hotepp - I never saw those temp spikes during the most recent battery of testing but it's been going for 20 hours and I've been away for much of that time. As I stated in the op I think those are MAX temps for the lifetime of the HWmonitor's logs on my system, and at one point I had a GPU fan fail and overheat but it has since been removed. Vcore fluctuates between 1.38 and 1.47 while prime95 is running.

@BeepBeep - I'm unsure of the rev. number of my board, or the Load Line Control, I'll have to look it up later as I just got called in to work ; ;

 

[BeepBeep2]

Alright.
You told me all I needed to know with the vcore fluctuation between 1.38 and 1.47.

That rather massive vdroop makes overclocking extremely hard...and if your board has the Load Line Control option available, (which means it is not a 1st revision board,) you will want to lower voltage a bit before enabling it. It will likely do the same thing in opposite, thanks to Gigabyte's (not-so) genius engineers.

 

[Aldakoopa]

With my voltage set to Auto, my Vcore got up to 1.42V (no overclock, turbo disabled). Never again will I let the mobo demons control my voltage.

However, manually setting my voltage has allowed me to set it to 1.25, LLC seems to only add 0.02V at load, and I've been running 4.2GHz on my processor for months now without even a hiccup in stability. I haven't tried any lower voltage, but it may or may not be at it's limit, I just found a happy place and stuck with it. Yours may require more or less voltage than mine at 4.2GHz to remain stable because all chips and boards are different.

 

[Aale]

Ok so, when I go to change my voltage control from auto to manual I get a large list of options:

CPU PLL Voltage Control
DRAM Voltage Control
DDR VTT Voltage Control
NB Voltage Control
HT Link Voltage Control
NB/PCIe/PLL Voltage Control
CPU NB VID Control
CPU Voltage Control

which is a bit more than I anticipated. Will I be able to eliminate that massive vdroop under load by altering these? Also, for LLC my choices are Auto, Regular, or Extreme.
I guess my question is how can I use these to stabilize my current OC, which again is only 4.2, not all that ambitious even for this chipset, or, barring that, stabilize it even @ stock configuration so I get a bit more longevity out of the chip.

 

[trents]

Try "Regular" to start with for the LLC and see what effect it has on voltages. LLC works to enable you to get away with lower voltages at idle and light tasks but supplements the vcore under load when you need it for stability.

 

[Tyerker]

Default on FX-4100 should be close to 1.2V. So start at stock (RAM at 1333 and 1.5V) at 1.2V and work up FSB slowly. Once you hit 240-260 and find one that's stable, you can start raising the Multi .5x at a time.

Then you can try to hit 1866 with the RAM if possible.

Best of luck, and feel free to keep asking questions.

 

[caddi daddi]

looks to me that he needs more airflow to the cpu socket area to cool the vrm section.
those socket temps are scary high.

 

[Aale]

I believe those 119c+ temps were a glitch, pretty sure my board would be fried if it wasn't. Just took a snapshot of regular operation, web browsing/playing music and it looks like this:

Default on FX-4100 should be close to 1.2V. So start at stock (RAM at 1333 and 1.5V) at 1.2V and work up FSB slowly. Once you hit 240-260 and find one that's stable, you can start raising the Multi .5x at a time.

MB M.I.T default settings for my system set the FSB@200 Multi @18.0 Vcore @1.4125 RAM @1600mhz and not sure about the RAM voltage.

 

[caddi daddi]

looking at the two screenshots i agree with trent that you need to cut the llc back.

I think i'll just shut up,watch and learn. you have some really good folks helping in here.

very good on the llc change.

one question for the older folks in here, do i have to post in a thread to get the email updates or just visit the thread?

 

[Aale]

looking at the two screenshots i agree with trent that you need to cut the llc back.

At the time of Trent's post my LLC was set @ Auto, it's on Regular atm.

My biggest problem seems to be the vdroop I'm getting when the system isn't idle and I'm not sure how to adjust my voltages to make it go away (see the list of options I posted above when I change my voltage control to manual.) Idling my Vcore sits @0.99v but under a load it fluctuates between 1.15v and 1.44.

 

[BeepBeep2]

Disable all power saving options (C1E, C6, APM, C&Q) and reboot. Keep LLC on "Regular".

Stress test again, what voltage range are you getting? vdroop or vgain?

 

[Aale]

Disable all power saving options (C1E, C6, APM, C&Q) and reboot. Keep LLC on "Regular".

Stress test again, what voltage range are you getting? vdroop or vgain?

OK so after disabling C1E, C6, and C&Q, (didn't see APM,) and stress testing again I still see vdroop, from 1.39 to 1.33 and back up to 1.39, no real stepping between, just those 2 #'s

 

[trents]

Do you have Turbo Boost disabled yet? And go into Windows Control Panel Power Options and configure it to High Performance.