AMD Athlon II X2 270 overclock wanting to reach 4 GHz off stock cooling

[Johnhenry]

Hi there I am trying to reach 4 GHz with stock cooling with a AMD Athlon II X2 270
My current setup is rather old but it is all I have at the moment
I don't know to much when it comes to overclocking and need some help with bios settings, voltage settings, ram timings, and fan issues I am having
I have read online that my motherboard Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Rev 6.0 is horrible and has very little room when it comes to overclocking but I thought I would give it a go
I have managed to get 3.7 GHz stable in prime95 blend test for 1 hour 20 minutes
The last image is of idol temps and the rest of the images are under load of prime95 blend test

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 270
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 RV 6.0
Cooler: OEM AMD Athlon fan & heat sink & x2 12cm case fans
RAM: 2x4 gb Crucial DDR3L PC3-1600
GPU: EVGA Nvidia Geforce 9400 GT
Case: Segotep Polar Light Mini ATX
PSU: ZALMAN ZM750-EBT
Storage: Segate 7200 320 gb
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit SP1

My questions are

Are the temps I got under load of prime95 blend test fine?
What should manually set the ram timings to?
Can I get 4 GHz with stock cooling?
Why is the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 RV 6.0 so bad for overclocking?
What should I manually set my voltages to to push further or have at my current settings?
Is 1 hour 20 minutes enough to prove stable overclock?
Is TMPIN2 my north bridge heat sink and is it meant to be rather hot when I touch it?
Will I even notice any performance increase seeming my current rig setup is rather bad anyway?

And on another note I am having fan issues my cpu fan and systems fan some times (more often then not) either one of them or both don't start spinning upon power on of my tower and require manual spinning to get going and sometimes when pc goes into sleep mode they stop spinning it happened once and I came back to find my cpu very hot I haven't let it happen since

current fan setup

My cpu fan is connected to my cpu fan 4 pin out put on my motherboard
A small old 6-8 cm case fan secured to the bottom of my gpu heat sink because its fan was broken and that is connected to the system fan 4 pin out put on my motherboard but only takes up 3 of those 4 pins and I am unsure of its voltage
I have 12cm 12v blue led rear and front case fans connected directly to my psu 4 pin cord both fans connected to the one cord

Surely my 750 watt psu is enough for this? maybe the old small case fan going 3 pin receiver into 4 pin system fan motherboard out put is the issue? either way it was already happening prior to overclocking

 

[Johan45]

Looks to me like you still have some room. 55-60°C is the ceiling on those chips where they start to get unstable.
For now drop the HT link by one multi and the NB by one. get your max overclock figured out then work on the NB and memory. In the end you'll want to keep the hT around 2000, NB 2600 should be easy enough and when it comes time the memory should run 1600 CL9. It looks like low voltag stuff so you should be able to run the "685" profile at 800 with 1.5 - 1.55V

 

[Johnhenry]

Thanks for the reply I will try find my max core clock and drop the HT and NB by one, when you say 1600 CL9 is that 9-9-9-24 ? I have 2 other 12cm 12v case fans I could try set them up over and round the cpu and nb heat sink to get temps down cause the nb heat sink feels alot hotter then it reads in hwmonitor is that normal? should i try some manual voltage settings to lower nb temp or leave it auto? I just need to fix my cpu/sys motherboard fan issue its really confusing me as to why either of them don't work some times it cant be a voltage issue and my motherboard shouldn't be faulty its only like 5 months old.

 

[Johan45]

That's what I meant about the RAM. An extra fan can't hurt to cool the NB chip and VRM. The fan issue could just be a loose connection or bad wire in the fan connector. I get that a lot with older fans

 

[Johnhenry]

I tried 9-9-9-24 timings with auto voltage at x8.00 - 1760 MHz and got the overclock error post screen I then tried again with the DDR3 voltage manual and put it up one from 1.5 to 1.51 v and still the same error, also why is my DDR3 voltage set to 1.50 by auto when the info in the link below says 1.35v?

this is my ram here

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct51264bd160b

looks like its CL11 can that still run at tighter 9-9-9-24 timings?

I also rearranged my fan set up and got my temps down all round about 3-4 C and fixed my cpu/sys fan issue doesn't look the greatest and is ever so slightly louder but I am not worried about that

New idol temps


Pin/voltage miss match that may have been causing the fan issue


GPU cooling lols that was the old smaller case fan that was plugged into systm fan motherboard out put that I have now removed to fix fan issue


I took the stock oem amd cpu fan and secured to my gpu to replace the above smaller case fan


I replaced the oem amd cpu fan with a secured 12cm 12v fan that covers some of the nb heat sink to help keep temps down will this be fine? temps on idol are down all round with it setup like this and I will post temps under prime95 soon

 

[Johan45]

Back the ram down to 1600 ish by dropping the divider that should work

 

[Johnhenry]

Fan issue still not sorted must by my stock amd cpu fan is faulty, but I have got 4GHz stable ran prime95 for 1 hour no problems with low temps

Got it using these settings memory clock manually set to x6.66 DRAM configuration left on auto all systems voltages left on normal



These are my temps under prime95 load cpuz cpu/memory/spd tab







I then tried to manually input my ram timings like so and I get the post overclock error on restart, really struggling understanding the ram timings i'm sure my ram is 1600mhz CL11 but if i reset my bios restart and load optimized defaults it sets my ram to 1333mhz, I have tried the following manual imputs and allways either get post overclock error or crash during stability testing..



9-9-9-24-33 - x6.66 1666mhz
9-9-9-25-34 - x6.66 1666mhz

Can someone please help me get my ram timings correct and as good as they can be the exact ram and motherboard I have is in the post

On another note with those temps lowish I should be able to push further?

 

[Johnhenry]

Just seen this in my motherboard specs

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-78LMT-USB3-rev-60#sp

Under the memory part could this be my problem?


4 x DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 32 GB of system memory (Note 1)
Dual channel memory architecture
Support for 1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 MHz memory modules

 

[Mr.Scott]

You have a couple things going on that you're not going to like to hear.
1) Temp is your main issue. You need more vcore but you are already on the edge temp wise. You need a better cooling solution.
2) Your ram is garbage. You will be lucky to see 9-9-9-x @ 1600 using those.
3) Your motherboard isn't exactly a super overclocking board.
It is almost impossible to achieve an above average overclock with under average components.

 

[Johnhenry]

Well that is good and bad to know at the same time but I already knew it wasn't good hardware I think I only paid like $150 for the whole setup so it was cheap, I think the PSU is at least decent?

How do you mean i'm on the edge temp wise is that from the TMPIN2 is that not allowed to exceed 55C what are my temp limits?

I want to get this stable

cpu clock ratio x17 @ 4250Mhz
cpu northbridge freq x10 @ 2500Mhz
cpu frequency 250
ht link frenquency x8 @ 2000Mhz
memory clock x6.66 @ 1666Mhz
memory timings 10-10-10-?-?

what manual voltages should I try