trouble overclocking phenom 1100t

[zoomerzrewl]

This is the first cpu I've ever done any overclocking with and so far I'm very discouraged. It's a black edition so I thought it would be extremely easy to get an overclock by bumping the multiplier and voltage but I can't get it stable at 4 no matter what I do.

System specs:
asus Crosshair V formula
phenom ii x6 1100t BE
8 gigs (2x4) DDR3
1000 watt psu

I've decided from looking online that the ht should be pretty much left alone but the cpu-nb frequency and voltage should be increased to help make the memory stable. I've also turned the frequency of my ram way down as low as 800 to try and get it stable.

Most recently, I had my ram at 800mhz, my cpu-nb at 2400 (1.35v) and my cpu at 4000mhz with 1.49375v. large ffts in prime95 went up to 47c almost instantly and stayed there til about 15 minutes in... Then they started going up towards 60 and I counted the attempt as a failure. Please can someone help me out in my early overclocking adventures?

I'm new to this forum so please go easy on me too

 

[trents]

1. Disable Cool N Quiet, C1E and Turbo. Go into Windows Control Panel Power Options and configure to High Performance. That should turn off all the green stuff that messes with overclockng.
2. Please download and install CPU-z, HWMonitor and Prime95
3. We need more info. You haven't even told us anything about your CPU cooler or your case. We have no idea what your core temps and CPU temps are. Do you? Excessive temps are a major cause of overclocking failure.
4. Please run CPU-z and attach pics of these tabs from the program interface: "CPU", "Memory" and "SPD". That will give us loads of information. To attach pics, click on the Go Advanced button at the bottom of any new post window. When the Advanced post window pops up, click on the little paperclip icon at the top to bring up the file browserr/uploader. The rest is obvious. You can upload up to 3 pics at a time. If you want to add more just edit the ost and add more.

 

[zoomerzrewl]

All the cool and quiet and power saving stuff is taken care of. I have the noctua nh-c14 and my case is an nzxt phantom; lots of ventilation and 3 120mm fans exhausting out the top and back. With half fan speed, my cpu idles between 22 and 24c and I had it stable at 3.7 with 47c in prime95 stable.

Everywhere I look online I see people getting 4 out of this chip with only 1.45 volts stable. I can't manage stable even with 1.5v.

Here's my cpu z screens:

 

[trents]

Why is your ram frequency so low? It is 1333 mhz ram and your are only running it at 1070 mhz. Are you using an bios automatic overclocking tool (an overclocking "genie") or software to overclock or are you doing it manually?

 

[zoomerzrewl]

I've been using a mixture of bios and ai suite to do a little bit of trial and error.

My ram is so low cause I've read that when your ram is faster, it puts more strain on the memory controller and the cpu-nb and makes it much harder to achieve higher overclocks. Is that correct? I've learned most of what I know from the internet so I'm sure it's not all completely true but it's the only source I have for learning how to oc.

I would like to get my chip to 4 with only 1.45 vcore if I can. It seems like many people online don't have a problem doing it so how much tweaking does it actually take?


I just did a prime95 large fft and core 5 failed about 4 minutes in. But it does the same thing all the way up to 1.49 volts. I don't want to go to 1.5 cause my temps get out of control and I have to stop the test. Could some other tweaking be needed instead of vcore maybe?

 

[RGone]

You probably have enough posts now to allow for a signature. Make the information precise and to the point, please.

Sigs are pretty easy. Signatures follow you in every post in the forum so your system information follows you and people know what is in the box.

Be logged in to the forum.

Across the top of the forum is a button shown as 'user cp'. Click that button.

On the page that loads are a list of options down the left side of the page.

Under the Settings & Options menu area is a Edit Signature listing. Click on that listing.

Clicking Edit Signature opens another page. In the middle of that page is where you Edit YOUR signature.

Enter your information there and at bottom of the window you are entering your signature is button for either Preview Signature or Save Signature. Do save and you will have your signature incorporated into the forum in each of your posts. Of course Preview Signature will let you see 'how' your signature would appear in the forum. But in the end the Save Signature must be clicked to save it to the forum.

You can look at my signature for a template of some good stuffz to put in one's own signature when seeking help.

Good luck man.

 

[trents]

We will be glad to help you overclock if you'll commit to doing it strictly through manual settings in bios. If you want to mix in AI Suite you will be frustrated in your overclock as well as confused and the experienced overclockers around this forum will probably pass in helping you.

One more question; what are you cooling the CPU with?

 

[csimon]

Which bios are you using?

Here are good bios settings to start with.
After setting bios back to optimal:

From the Extreme Tweaker tab apply only the following settings:
Ai Overclock Tuner - Manual
CPU Ratio - 19.0
AMD Tubo CORE technology - Disabled
CPU Bus/PEG Frequency - 200
Memory Frequency - DDR3-1600MHz
CPU/NB Frequency - 2600Mhz
HT Link Speed - 2000Mhz
CPU Spread Spectrum - Disabled
PCIe Spread Spectrum - Disabled
EPU Power Saving Mode - Disabled
CPU & CPU/NB Voltage Mode - Manual Mode
CPU Manual Voltage - 1.35
CPU/NB Manual Voltage - 1.25

Under the advanced tab you can turn off Asmedia if you need to and set up your boot drives ...other than this don't mess with anything else in the Tweaker tab and see if this runs stable for you. When it does get back to us.

 

[zoomerzrewl]

One more question; what are you cooling the CPU with?

noctua NH-C14 with a single 140mm fan pushing

Which bios are you using?

Here are good bios settings to start with.
After setting bios back to optimal:

From the Extreme Tweaker tab apply only the following settings:
Ai Overclock Tuner - Manual
CPU Ratio - 19.0
AMD Tubo CORE technology - Disabled
CPU Bus/PEG Frequency - 200
Memory Frequency - DDR3-1600MHz
CPU/NB Frequency - 2600Mhz
HT Link Speed - 2000Mhz
CPU Spread Spectrum - Disabled
PCIe Spread Spectrum - Disabled
EPU Power Saving Mode - Disabled
CPU & CPU/NB Voltage Mode - Manual Mode
CPU Manual Voltage - 1.35
CPU/NB Manual Voltage - 1.25

Under the advanced tab you can turn off Asmedia if you need to and set up your boot drives ...other than this don't mess with anything else in the Tweaker tab and see if this runs stable for you. When it does get back to us.

I use the advanced bios.

I'll dial in those settings and run a stability test tomorrow. I don't have enough time to run a decent length test tonight.

I have one more question; what's the best prime95 torture test to get an idea of general stability? I have been using large ffts mostly but if either of the other ones bring out instability quicker, I would give those a try.

 

[trents]

IMO, the Prime95 blend test is the most balanced because it also stresses the memory a good amount.

 

[gutlessVADER]

Took me a while to dial in the settings for 4.0GHz, but still BSOD'd every once in a while (I blame the mobo.) Because of all the tweaking it took to get there 3.9GHz runs flawlessly. Tell me if you would like some CPU-Z screens or pictures of my BIOS settings (although our boards are very different.) Also, I've heard that every CPU monitoring utility underestimates the core temp of Phenom II's by 10 degrees, which held true for me (39C in BIOS, 29C in CPUID HWMonitor), so 47C may actually be 57C, which is 2C over the recommended max temp.

 

[trents]

Bios doesn't give core temps, it gives CPU (socket temps) and with good aftermarket cooling CPU temps are generally higher than core temps, commonly about 10 C. higher. It isn't that the software necessarily gives false interpretations of the core temp its most likely the core temp sensor is poorly calibrated. But it does seem to me the Thuban core PII sensors give artificially cool core temps often times.

 

[zoomerzrewl]

I ran the stability test on the settings csimon gave me and I blue screened instantly. 1.35 is just stock voltage so I figured that probably wouldn't work.

Bios doesn't give core temps, it gives CPU (socket temps) and with good aftermarket cooling CPU temps are generally higher than core temps, commonly about 10 C. higher. It isn't that the software necessarily gives false interpretations of the core temp its most likely the core temp sensor is poorly calibrated. But it does seem to me the Thuban core PII sensors give artificially cool core temps often times.

thanks it's good to know. but that means my temps are crazy high even with mild overclocks. is this cpu just plain bad for overclocking?

Took me a while to dial in the settings for 4.0GHz, but still BSOD'd every once in a while (I blame the mobo.) Because of all the tweaking it took to get there 3.9GHz runs flawlessly. Tell me if you would like some CPU-Z screens or pictures of my BIOS settings (although our boards are very different.) Also, I've heard that every CPU monitoring utility underestimates the core temp of Phenom II's by 10 degrees, which held true for me (39C in BIOS, 29C in CPUID HWMonitor), so 47C may actually be 57C, which is 2C over the recommended max temp.

if you want to share, thanks, it could help me out a bit. i always thought black edition or extreme edition cpus were easy to overclock but this seems to take just as much tweaking as anything else... does it take a very dedicated tweaker to get a simple 4 out of this thing?

 

[gutlessVADER]

I wouldn't think it would be that hard with your mobo, but maybe this chip has a mortal fear of 4. There's a guy on these forums known as Frakk. Try and contact him, he has a 1090T at 4GHz and may be able to lend you some help.

EDIT: Almost forgot, I bought some XMP RAM thinking it wouldn't matter, but didn't play friendly with my CPU. Now it's sitting on my shelf until I buy an Ivy Bridge

 

[zoomerzrewl]

Almost forgot, I bought some XMP RAM thinking it wouldn't matter, but didn't play friendly with my CPU. Now it's sitting on my shelf until I buy an Ivy Bridge

i originally had 16 gigs of ram installed but i took two out cause people online were saying that having that much ram makes it harder to get a stable overclock. however, i haven't actually noticed any difference and i'm starting to think i took them out for no reason

 

[csimon]

What is your ram rated for? Is it DDR3-1600 or DDR3-1333 or less?

If DDR3-1333 then try the following much like before:

After setting bios back to optimal -

From the Extreme Tweaker tab apply only the following settings:
Ai Overclock Tuner - Manual
CPU Ratio - 19.0
AMD Tubo CORE technology - Disabled
CPU Bus/PEG Frequency - 200
Memory Frequency - DDR3-1333MHz
CPU/NB Frequency - 2000Mhz
HT Link Speed - 2000Mhz
CPU Spread Spectrum - Disabled
PCIe Spread Spectrum - Disabled
EPU Power Saving Mode - Disabled
CPU & CPU/NB Voltage Mode - Manual Mode
CPU Manual Voltage - 1.35
CPU/NB Manual Voltage - auto

 

[trents]

It would be very helpful if your would give us screen shots of not only the "CPU" tab of CPU-z but also the "Memory" and "SPD" tabs.

 

[zoomerzrewl]

What is your ram rated for? Is it DDR3-1600 or DDR3-1333 or less?

If DDR3-1333 then try the following much like before:

After setting bios back to optimal -

From the Extreme Tweaker tab apply only the following settings:
Ai Overclock Tuner - Manual
CPU Ratio - 19.0
AMD Tubo CORE technology - Disabled
CPU Bus/PEG Frequency - 200
Memory Frequency - DDR3-1333MHz
CPU/NB Frequency - 2000Mhz
HT Link Speed - 2000Mhz
CPU Spread Spectrum - Disabled
PCIe Spread Spectrum - Disabled
EPU Power Saving Mode - Disabled
CPU & CPU/NB Voltage Mode - Manual Mode
CPU Manual Voltage - 1.35
CPU/NB Manual Voltage - auto

3.5 is the most i can get out of stock voltage. maybe an experienced overclocker could squeeze more but that's definitely not me

 

[csimon]

3.5 is the most i can get out of stock voltage. maybe an experienced overclocker could squeeze more but that's definitely not me

Even after setting everything to optimized defaults? I still don't know what speed your memory is rated for.

 

[trents]

Well then you need to start increasing the CPU core voltage if your core temps will allow. You haven't given us any information about your temps. Are you monitoring them while stress testing?