Hell All!
First time on OCF, but the majority of my research leads me back here so I figured its a good place to be. Shout out to all the pros! Rgone & Johan45 post in just about everything i read lol. I appreciate all the info I've gleaned from everyone here. Story to come, but the What Have I Killed thread was really helpful! Finally got my rig stable at 4.5 - Screen shots later, and I'll have to do the Sig thing after the post - but the struggle was real! I figured you all would enjoy a good story, and the new comers like me can definately learn from my mistakes
First things first, I've never overclocked before in my life, but i've always been a gamer. PC as a wee lad and was distracted by the console
generation for a while but have always built or tinkered with my computers. Over the last 5 i've started building more, and just love the puzzle of a custom rig for a specific purpose. Long story short, I upgrade my PC to the 8350 and loved the preformance it gave me. My buddy was having issues gaming with his rig, and after seeing the bump I got, he started looking to upgrade. He settled on a 4960k, and I've been way behind ever since lol. Anyway, I wanted to learn how to overclock and see how much I could close the gap. Not expecting miracles, I've done the research and know what to shoot for. I started this battle summer 2016..
Originally I was rocking this setup:
FX-8350 - Started at stock clocks, then settled for 4.2 but without adequate testing. After learning a little ended at 4.3 with 1.43v or something crazy like that.
Arctic Freezer Extreme rev. 2.0 Air Cooler
MB: GA-78LMT USB3 (rev. 6.0) - *I know(now)... that is not the board for an 8core, let alone to OC*
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB @ 1600 - Didnt realize at the time but they were mis matched. 2x 4GB sticks with 9-9-9-24, and an 8 GB stick with 10-10-10-27 timings.
GPU: XFX R9 280x Double Dissapation Edition
PSU: Raidmax RX-735AP 735W - 80 Plus Bronze
Case: CM MasterCase Pro 5
It was crazy to try to learn to OC on this mobo. Not only are the controls very limited - LLC only has Reg/Extreme settings - All values are selected from drop down lists, not typed in, with no option to undervolt(which was needed!) - almost non existent VRM heatsink.. - Just a terrible board lol. I had some issues with the vcore settings - I distictly remember that the voltage drop down started 1.32 or 1.35 as the minimum voltage you could set. suddenly, after a reboot, my minimum vcore setting jumped! the lowest I could set it at was 1.43. Still dont know what happened, but I have a new board now (yay). Anyway, took a while to get this thing stable @ 4.3 - to pass p95 Blend for 2 hours and small FFT for 1 Hour it was crazy hot. Core temps at 55C on max load (dont recall the blend temps). But it did great for a while! Ill see if I can find a pic somewhere of these tests. Ran this way for 6 months or more, played all the games I wanted, and even took out the damn annoying stutter in Total War: Attilla.
Check out the crazy Vdroop with LLC @ Regular! At the time I thought I was golden! lol
View attachment 191744
This is going well (so I thought) - Lets get a new Mobo and see what we can really do! Settled on the Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura mobo. Its Awesome! Love how it looks, the RGB stuff is cool, but the Bios differences were staggering. I basically had to re learn everything on this new board, but thats also why I was doing all this. Got the chip in to the new Mobo, and fired it up - Posted just fine the first few times, but as soon as I started to disable the power saving options (c1e, c6, etc..) it stopped Posting. This is when I checked my RAM sticks and realized they did not have the same timing. I left the 8 GB stick in there and that solved that problem.
Little did I know, by this time I had created 2 fatal problems for myself....
1st Mistake - When installing the Mobo, I had to take off the Exhaust Fan - Not a big deal, until i put it back on backwards
2nd Mistake -
WAAAAAAAY TOO MUCH THERMAL PASTE 
So without realizing these things at the time, I'm thinking sweet, It was just the RAM that was keeping me from POSTing i'll be just fine. I continue to set my settings to try and get back to that 4.3.
vcore -1.39, This was the stock voltage asked for, but I didnt realize that the voltage changed down to 1.33 once you turn off Turbo Boost. So it got 1.39 manual input, and I went along manually typing in all the stock values. Get down to LLC, and the only experience I had was with Reg, so thats where i left it. Multiplyer was set to 21.5 to get to 4.3, and let her rip! Get into Windows just fine, and I start my Small FFT test. Instantly too hot... Core temps shot up to 65-70C. WTF!!! I didnt understand what was going on... but i knew that was way too hot. I rebooted and restored the Optimized defaults.. I decided to do another test with everything stock. Still way too hot!! cranking in at 60C with no OC at all... Something was way wrong. At this point I'm thinking that my Last Mobo, and that stupid voltage jump thing, caused my chip to ask for more volts than normal, but I wasn't convinced. I re watched the videos on how to OC, and noticed that the only thing I didnt do was change LLC to Ultra High. So I go back in, change my settings to run at 4.0, but with LLC on Ultra High. So here's what I learned... 200 Bus x 20 Multi @ 1.39v with Ultra High LLC = ZAP! (Not to mention No Exhaust Fan + Blanket of TP)
Didn't POST. Couldnt get it to post for anything. Tried clearing CMOS a bunch of times, still nothing
So by this time I'm a littel frantic. Fearing I just Zapped my chip for good. So I bust open the case (Get a nice smell of UltraHigh Heat) Freak out even more. Pop off my air cooler to see my thermal pasty mess of goo. Without thinking, I pulled the chip out before wiping all of the Thermal Paste off... Started my inspection.. Is anything burnt, are the pins bent, What Happened!? Ended up getting Thermal Paste on the Pins!!!

CRAAAAP! Okay, time for an alcohol bath...
Got my fancy container out, filled it up, and let the chip soak for a bit. 10 min soak, didnt take enough of the TP off... so now what. I used paper towels, toilet paper, microfiber towells, anything i could try to get the paste off with no avail. Then I tried whisking the chip around in the alcohol, trying to get things to loosen up. CLUNK! Banged the pins against the container
By this point, I'm feeling a bit like Alice falling down the rabit hole...
Okay, time to bust out the razor blade/tiniest screw driver i could find. Found 3 pins that were just out of alignment. Fixed those - and did a last inspectoin for lingering thermal paste. There were 2 pins, that seemed to have some paste around the base, and with the razor blade, scratched as much off as I could. Here goes nothing..... Slapped it all back together (Pea Method for thermal paste now
)
POST!! Believe it or not, after all that bull ****, It posted!!!! I was amazed. So of course I tried to keep going! lol
I changed the bios settings again to disabled c1e, c6 and all that. POST! woohoo! But I get into Windows, and noticed CPU-Z showed my voltage @ 0.9, and then jumping around like it was being throttled...
I'm not testing at this time either, its just at idle. So thats weird... Went back into BIOS, reaffirmed all my settings and tried again. This time the settings stuck. vcore showing at 1.36 or something like that, not jumping around or throttling. So what do i do of course... p95 small fft for an hour lol. And it PASSED! I couldnt believe it, but i was "Stable" and not hitting the thermal wall either.
Thought, "This is Great!" After all that, I managed to save my chip
Lets see how it handles 4.1 ghz........ ZAP. No POST. Couldnt even get to BIOS to undo the 4.1 change lol. Cleared CMOS and tried to get it to POST for hours, but it was finally gone.
So I picked up another 8350 - Had I known I was gonna zap my first one, I would've just saved a few more bucks and picked up a new core set for the Ryzen 1700x - since I had just spent $100 on the new mobo, and I didnt feel like reselling it so quickly, here I am with another 8350. I did this one right tho!!! Been working on my OC all week long, and I'm Finally stable at 4.5
So here's my current set up:
8350 @ 4.5 - 209 BUS X 21.5 w 1.36v and LLC on High (Will have to add BIOS Shots after post)
Arctic Freezer Extreme rev 2.0
Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura
Corsair Vengeance 8GB @ 1640mhz with 10-10-10-27 timing
XFX R9 280x Double Dissapation Edition
Raidmax RX-735AP 735W - 80 Plus Bronze
CM MasterCase Pro 5
These were the shots after my 2 Hour Prime95 Blend Test.
View attachment 191752
View attachment 191753
View attachment 191754
View attachment 191755
I'm guessing someone will notice the temps here may be a tad high for Blend. You're Right! Cuz on my next round of Small FFT tests, I was stable, but hit the Thermal Wall after 20 Min
So, I busted open my case and rearranged my Fans. On that last test I did have a fan blowing on the VRM, but as my case doesnt have a side vent I dont think it had enough juice to have much of an effect. So I put that thing on top as a 3rd intake fan. Blows right over my RAM. I Finally found the sliver lining of zapping my first chip... My replacement came with the stock fan! lol. The tiny sucker was perfect to be rigged up with an old coat hanger and got it to blow directly accross the VRM. From that position its getting cold air from the TOP(hopefully) and from the FRONT and sending that air over the VRM. Should also help exhaust some of the Heat Soak from the GPU.
View attachment 191756
View attachment 191757
Here are the 1 Hour Prime95 Small FFT tests. Nifty little fan lowered my temps by 8-10C! Didnt hit the wall once. Very Happy with these results.
View attachment 191759
View attachment 191758
The monitoring tools i'm using here are: Asus CPU-Z, HWinfo64 (love the graphs), Speed Fan 4.52 - One thing I have yet to do is confirm my temps with amdOD, but I figured that can wait, as I'm at the speed I hoped for, and i'm not being throttled. I'm just curious to see how this affects my game play, and a few of the benchmarks I've done so far.
Tried my best to get all the info you guys like to ask for. Screen shots are all taken while the tests are active, except for 2 shots that were taken after to show idle info, 1 for each test. I will definately add some screen shots from my BIOS and update the sig. Frankly, I'm just glad I can get this story out knowing that someone here is gonna get it. Kinda tired of looking
to the rest of society, family and friends, who don't want to open up a computer case and figure out whats going on. Grateful for any insight, recomendations - this is a 24/7 rig so i wasnt trying to go for broke, but... If anyone thinks I can go higher let me know! lol
Thanks,
Roshi
First time on OCF, but the majority of my research leads me back here so I figured its a good place to be. Shout out to all the pros! Rgone & Johan45 post in just about everything i read lol. I appreciate all the info I've gleaned from everyone here. Story to come, but the What Have I Killed thread was really helpful! Finally got my rig stable at 4.5 - Screen shots later, and I'll have to do the Sig thing after the post - but the struggle was real! I figured you all would enjoy a good story, and the new comers like me can definately learn from my mistakes
First things first, I've never overclocked before in my life, but i've always been a gamer. PC as a wee lad and was distracted by the console

Originally I was rocking this setup:
FX-8350 - Started at stock clocks, then settled for 4.2 but without adequate testing. After learning a little ended at 4.3 with 1.43v or something crazy like that.
Arctic Freezer Extreme rev. 2.0 Air Cooler
MB: GA-78LMT USB3 (rev. 6.0) - *I know(now)... that is not the board for an 8core, let alone to OC*
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB @ 1600 - Didnt realize at the time but they were mis matched. 2x 4GB sticks with 9-9-9-24, and an 8 GB stick with 10-10-10-27 timings.
GPU: XFX R9 280x Double Dissapation Edition
PSU: Raidmax RX-735AP 735W - 80 Plus Bronze
Case: CM MasterCase Pro 5
It was crazy to try to learn to OC on this mobo. Not only are the controls very limited - LLC only has Reg/Extreme settings - All values are selected from drop down lists, not typed in, with no option to undervolt(which was needed!) - almost non existent VRM heatsink.. - Just a terrible board lol. I had some issues with the vcore settings - I distictly remember that the voltage drop down started 1.32 or 1.35 as the minimum voltage you could set. suddenly, after a reboot, my minimum vcore setting jumped! the lowest I could set it at was 1.43. Still dont know what happened, but I have a new board now (yay). Anyway, took a while to get this thing stable @ 4.3 - to pass p95 Blend for 2 hours and small FFT for 1 Hour it was crazy hot. Core temps at 55C on max load (dont recall the blend temps). But it did great for a while! Ill see if I can find a pic somewhere of these tests. Ran this way for 6 months or more, played all the games I wanted, and even took out the damn annoying stutter in Total War: Attilla.
Check out the crazy Vdroop with LLC @ Regular! At the time I thought I was golden! lol
View attachment 191744
This is going well (so I thought) - Lets get a new Mobo and see what we can really do! Settled on the Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura mobo. Its Awesome! Love how it looks, the RGB stuff is cool, but the Bios differences were staggering. I basically had to re learn everything on this new board, but thats also why I was doing all this. Got the chip in to the new Mobo, and fired it up - Posted just fine the first few times, but as soon as I started to disable the power saving options (c1e, c6, etc..) it stopped Posting. This is when I checked my RAM sticks and realized they did not have the same timing. I left the 8 GB stick in there and that solved that problem.
Little did I know, by this time I had created 2 fatal problems for myself....
1st Mistake - When installing the Mobo, I had to take off the Exhaust Fan - Not a big deal, until i put it back on backwards

2nd Mistake -


So without realizing these things at the time, I'm thinking sweet, It was just the RAM that was keeping me from POSTing i'll be just fine. I continue to set my settings to try and get back to that 4.3.
vcore -1.39, This was the stock voltage asked for, but I didnt realize that the voltage changed down to 1.33 once you turn off Turbo Boost. So it got 1.39 manual input, and I went along manually typing in all the stock values. Get down to LLC, and the only experience I had was with Reg, so thats where i left it. Multiplyer was set to 21.5 to get to 4.3, and let her rip! Get into Windows just fine, and I start my Small FFT test. Instantly too hot... Core temps shot up to 65-70C. WTF!!! I didnt understand what was going on... but i knew that was way too hot. I rebooted and restored the Optimized defaults.. I decided to do another test with everything stock. Still way too hot!! cranking in at 60C with no OC at all... Something was way wrong. At this point I'm thinking that my Last Mobo, and that stupid voltage jump thing, caused my chip to ask for more volts than normal, but I wasn't convinced. I re watched the videos on how to OC, and noticed that the only thing I didnt do was change LLC to Ultra High. So I go back in, change my settings to run at 4.0, but with LLC on Ultra High. So here's what I learned... 200 Bus x 20 Multi @ 1.39v with Ultra High LLC = ZAP! (Not to mention No Exhaust Fan + Blanket of TP)
Didn't POST. Couldnt get it to post for anything. Tried clearing CMOS a bunch of times, still nothing
So by this time I'm a littel frantic. Fearing I just Zapped my chip for good. So I bust open the case (Get a nice smell of UltraHigh Heat) Freak out even more. Pop off my air cooler to see my thermal pasty mess of goo. Without thinking, I pulled the chip out before wiping all of the Thermal Paste off... Started my inspection.. Is anything burnt, are the pins bent, What Happened!? Ended up getting Thermal Paste on the Pins!!!



Got my fancy container out, filled it up, and let the chip soak for a bit. 10 min soak, didnt take enough of the TP off... so now what. I used paper towels, toilet paper, microfiber towells, anything i could try to get the paste off with no avail. Then I tried whisking the chip around in the alcohol, trying to get things to loosen up. CLUNK! Banged the pins against the container
Okay, time to bust out the razor blade/tiniest screw driver i could find. Found 3 pins that were just out of alignment. Fixed those - and did a last inspectoin for lingering thermal paste. There were 2 pins, that seemed to have some paste around the base, and with the razor blade, scratched as much off as I could. Here goes nothing..... Slapped it all back together (Pea Method for thermal paste now

POST!! Believe it or not, after all that bull ****, It posted!!!! I was amazed. So of course I tried to keep going! lol
I changed the bios settings again to disabled c1e, c6 and all that. POST! woohoo! But I get into Windows, and noticed CPU-Z showed my voltage @ 0.9, and then jumping around like it was being throttled...
I'm not testing at this time either, its just at idle. So thats weird... Went back into BIOS, reaffirmed all my settings and tried again. This time the settings stuck. vcore showing at 1.36 or something like that, not jumping around or throttling. So what do i do of course... p95 small fft for an hour lol. And it PASSED! I couldnt believe it, but i was "Stable" and not hitting the thermal wall either.
Thought, "This is Great!" After all that, I managed to save my chip
So I picked up another 8350 - Had I known I was gonna zap my first one, I would've just saved a few more bucks and picked up a new core set for the Ryzen 1700x - since I had just spent $100 on the new mobo, and I didnt feel like reselling it so quickly, here I am with another 8350. I did this one right tho!!! Been working on my OC all week long, and I'm Finally stable at 4.5
So here's my current set up:
8350 @ 4.5 - 209 BUS X 21.5 w 1.36v and LLC on High (Will have to add BIOS Shots after post)
Arctic Freezer Extreme rev 2.0
Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura
Corsair Vengeance 8GB @ 1640mhz with 10-10-10-27 timing
XFX R9 280x Double Dissapation Edition
Raidmax RX-735AP 735W - 80 Plus Bronze
CM MasterCase Pro 5
These were the shots after my 2 Hour Prime95 Blend Test.
View attachment 191752
View attachment 191753
View attachment 191754
View attachment 191755
I'm guessing someone will notice the temps here may be a tad high for Blend. You're Right! Cuz on my next round of Small FFT tests, I was stable, but hit the Thermal Wall after 20 Min

So, I busted open my case and rearranged my Fans. On that last test I did have a fan blowing on the VRM, but as my case doesnt have a side vent I dont think it had enough juice to have much of an effect. So I put that thing on top as a 3rd intake fan. Blows right over my RAM. I Finally found the sliver lining of zapping my first chip... My replacement came with the stock fan! lol. The tiny sucker was perfect to be rigged up with an old coat hanger and got it to blow directly accross the VRM. From that position its getting cold air from the TOP(hopefully) and from the FRONT and sending that air over the VRM. Should also help exhaust some of the Heat Soak from the GPU.
View attachment 191756
View attachment 191757
Here are the 1 Hour Prime95 Small FFT tests. Nifty little fan lowered my temps by 8-10C! Didnt hit the wall once. Very Happy with these results.
View attachment 191759
View attachment 191758
The monitoring tools i'm using here are: Asus CPU-Z, HWinfo64 (love the graphs), Speed Fan 4.52 - One thing I have yet to do is confirm my temps with amdOD, but I figured that can wait, as I'm at the speed I hoped for, and i'm not being throttled. I'm just curious to see how this affects my game play, and a few of the benchmarks I've done so far.
Tried my best to get all the info you guys like to ask for. Screen shots are all taken while the tests are active, except for 2 shots that were taken after to show idle info, 1 for each test. I will definately add some screen shots from my BIOS and update the sig. Frankly, I'm just glad I can get this story out knowing that someone here is gonna get it. Kinda tired of looking


Thanks,
Roshi