Working on FX-6300 OC

[Dr.Feelgood]

Hey all,

Been trolling here for awhile and now I'm seriously working on an OC on my tower just for fun.

I thought I had a good OC at 4.5 ghz using the AMD OD stability test (all changes are made in the bios, I was using this tool to monitor and test).
Then I decided to try out this prime 95 thing and it destroyed my OC. Temps shot up to 60 right away.

So, back to the drawing board. Original OC was only with multiplier and voltage (voltage wasn't that high, maybe 1.475 in bios). Now, I've lowered the multiplier and the voltage and upped the FSB to try to equal things out. 4.5ghz seemed to evade me so I'm shooting for 4.4ghz now.

Any tips for how to achieve this? I'm not sure what other voltages I may need to adjust?

Also, I've followed the other directions in the bulldozer guide to the T.

Last attempt was the following settings:

FSB-210
Multi-21
CPU Voltage-1.44
Cpu/NB V- 1.25

Other voltages are auto.

Temps got to 61ish in Prime95 within a couple minutes. What can I try to improve this OC?

 

[Priller]

With an air cooler your temps will still be on the higher side. It takes something like an H100 to start to reach higher OCs and custom water in order to really push them.

If temp is your concern then 60 is fine. I run my 8350 to 65C.

What I would do is:

Uninstall AOD

FSB: 200
Multi:22
CPU Voltage: 1.475 under load
CPU/NB: 1.22 or close to it.
VDDA/CPU PLL: 2.6

I always try to find the highest multi that is stable for me then add a tad of FSB to gain that last little bit of clock speed. Others prefer OCing with a bit of FSB and less multi. CPUs will vary of course.

What is your CPU voltage under load?
What is your LLC?
Do you have APM, C1E, & Cool N' Quiet disabled?

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

No longer using AOD for anything.

Last test, the CPU hovered right at 61 for a few minutes, but I thought I read that 60 was considered the high end of stable on this forum...

Just lowered voltage in bios again to try to lower temps, under load it's only 1.440V up to 1.452V.
Seems like temps should be lower for such low volts, do you think maybe I should reinstall CPU cooler? Was my first time installing cooler and I went with the pea method.

LLC on this board has only enable/disable or auto. LLC is enabled right now.

yes I have cool n quiet disabled and c1e disabled and not sure what APM is but I probably disabled it if it says to do so in the guide.

Current test CPU is now hovering at 59 degrees under load in PRIME 95 with Vcore at 1.452. MB temp btw has never gotten high on me. Currently is only 22 degrees C.

 

[Priller]

I would check to see if your board has a BIOs update available. How well your MB holds voltage under load will affect your OC.

22C is most likely your MB reporting air temp.

Your CPU may require you to OC with a bit of FSB or mainly with multi, you have to experiment with it in order to squeeze everything you can out of it.

Case in point, my 8350 will do 4.8 on 1.472 volts, prime stable and I beat the crap out of it. At 4.9 with multi at that voltage it will fail prime. However, with a touch of FSB I am able to reach 4.92 Ghz on the same voltage.

So now it's going to be you trying different things one step at a time and testing it with prime to see how stable it is. Try to only make small adjustments at a time and keep an excel spreadsheet if you can on what the settings are and if it fails or not. It will help you fine tune it until you get everything you can out of it.

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

BTW, CPU voltage in bios is set to 1.4125. AT 10 minutes of prime testing, temps seemed stable right at 60 degrees. Maybe I'll test this one overnight tonight. I'm wondering though what I could try to get up to 4.5ghz.

My initial OC was very similar to what you suggest, but it got hot fast, anyone else have suggestion on temps? I'm not trying to fry anything.

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

BIOS is most recent update (2103).

I"m happy to keep adjusting the settings to tune this thing up, but I'm afraid to try upping the vcore again because it seemed to get hot with higher voltages previously...

 

[Priller]

You could try

FSB: 205
Multi: 22

With a bump on the CPU NB to 1.28 or so.

Also, are you overclocking the ram by bumping the FSB? Some ram don't like to be OCed at all.

EDIT: Yes with every step in voltage you will naturally get a rise in temp, but if you let it run for a while it may not climb through the roof. I know that mine will spike sometimes to 61 or 64C then fall back down but it takes hours and hours before it will climb from 58-62 to 65C.

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

Ram is up in clockspeed a bit with the bump on the FSB, but not much (1680mhz).

I'm testing your proposed settings now...

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

Vcore is 1.452 with these settings under load and temps are up at 63, stopping test...

Seems like this CPU doesn't like high multipliers to me, but I don't know much about this.

I'm gonna try to up the FSB a bit more and see what happens. Settings now are:

Ratio-21
Bus- 215
Memory goes up to 1720mhz now, think that may be an issue- I was having trouble getting it to post earlier.
NB-2365
HTlink-2365
CPUVoltage-1.4125
NB Voltage 1.25625
other voltages -auto

 

[Priller]

I would let 63C ride but that is me.

You may not be able to reach your goal without a more aggressive cooler. 1.45-1.50 volts on an FX is normal OC voltage and some of the 9370s and 9590s ship with 1.525 or close to it in voltage out of the box.

You could try to back down the voltage one step and leave everything else the same.

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

Well, if 63 degrees is safe to run at then I'm OK with it, but I've seen that you don't really want to run the FX series over 60 so unless another source says it's safe than I'm gonna try to stay at 60 and under for cpu temps.

Last test failed prime and got up to 62 degrees.

It's possible that I've reached the end of the road on my cooler, but I feel like I should be able to handle greater voltages than it is. I'm wondering if I need to reinstall it to make sure the paste is on their well.

 

[trents]

The biggest part of your problem is that the motherboard is inadequate to overclock the FX-6300FX. It only has 4+2 power phase components. I'm running the FX-6300 on the MA599x evo. Certainly not the top end board that Asus makes but has a 6+2 power phase rating and I can get my CPU to 4.5 Prime95 stable without a problem. I also have the Noctua DH14 and some auxillary fans on the NB HS as well as on the backside of the board to cool the socket/VRM area.

 

[RGone]

Okay Doc F_G, let us try and get on the same page. We have been doing this for years and there is a way that works best for keeping up with what is what. Not just print that is so mysteriously mis-interpreted. Makes answering about overclocking an AMD cpu easier.

CPU Tab in CPUz from CPUID com

Memory Tab in CPUz from CPUID com

SPD Tab in CPUz from CPUID com

And this is screen capture of HWMonitor (free version) from CPUID com
HWMonitor has been scrolled enough and large enough to show Min/Max of Voltages and includes the CPU Core Temps; which are n0w called Package Temps, fully visible.

This capture is made of HWMonitor after it has been open on the desktop logging Min/Max temps and voltages while Prime 95 was running Blend Mode test on all cores for at least 20 mins and then the capture of HWMonitor was made and it shows the Min/Max temps and voltages before P95 Blend was started and while running P95 Blend mode and gives much greater insight into how the system is performing without guessing.

In order to attach screenshots of INDIVIDUAL images as suggested, first crop and capture the images with Snipping Tool found in Windows Accessories or equivalent. Then click on Go Advanced, a button at the bottom of every new post window. Then click on the little paperclip tool at the top of the Advanced post window when it opens. Clicking on the paperclip tool brings up the file browser/upload tool and the rest is fairly obvious.

How to actually attach images to the forum and not use a link to some outside location where image is stored. Store the image within the forum.

You can attach more than 3 pics at one time by going back up to browse another file and uploading it.

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

Alright, thanks for jumping in guys. I understand this isn't the greatest mb for OCing, but I'm not shooting for the moon here. It has a decent heatsink on the mosfets and my case has good airflow with two fans blowing over that part of the MB and one fan taking air out from there.

Here are some pics for your joy. These settings are not that good, obviously based off my temps here after a few minutes of prime95.

 

[RGone]

IF the settings above would pass 2 hours of P95 Blend mode testing, you could run it since few things except some heavy duty gaming with BF4 or video editting, ripping software would stress it like P95 Blend mode. Provided P95 blend did not raise the either the CPU or Package temps by more than 6 or 7 degrees above what is seen now in your HWMonitor capture.
RGone...

 

[Mandrake4565]

Dr.Feelgood, I read through the posts above and this is what I'm thinking. First off I agree with the statement Trents stated, trying to push these Fx chips on low end motherboards is usually a tough task. Inadequate, power sections usually require more Cpu V for X Mhz which in turn causes a lower end board to throttle the Vrm section to save it's own life. Second, you used AMD overdrive to test for stability which isn't a good program to test for stability. I feel your best bet would be to start from square one again using Prime 95 blend to test. Trying to overclock to a certain mhz target and just plugging in numbers can be a very frustrating way to overclock, one can easily get lost trying to find a stable overclock.

What I would do is go back to default settings then set your Cpu V manually to 1.40 and your Cpu Nb Voltage to 1.2, then start bumping the multiplier .5 and run prime 20 minutes until it fails prime, ie BSOD, Freeze or a lost worker. At that point I would test for true stability, passing 2 hours of prime, by doing the following. Back the multiplier down .5 and run prime, if it fails then raise the Cpu V until it either passes or you reach 70c on the Cpu or 62 c on the package.

 

[Dr.Feelgood]

Thanks for all the good advice guys! I got thrown back into the mess of medical school and haven't been oc'ing my machine at all lately because turning up the juice on the CPU somehow doesn't make me learn any faster.

I'll play with it some more another time. It stays cool and stable (prime95) at 4.4 ghz and I think that's fair for the cooler and MB I have. Might try to push it over 4.5 sometime for fun though.

 

[Mandrake4565]

If you're just looking to play around and yes 4.4 on that board with an air heatsink is a decent overclock. A few things to remember socket temps below 72 package temps 62. Stress test if you're planning on running something important if clocking higher. If it's just for fun then just use benchmarks to see what your overclock has gained you in performance.