Need help overclocking my AMD FX-8320? -New Here-

[Daniel Rekkins]

First thing's first, I'm a total noob when it comes to overclocking and fairly novice in PC building as well, so be gentle lol.

I have an older build that I've been using since 2012 that I'm finally getting around to upgrading,

Just picked up an EVGA GeForce 1070 SC gpu but didn't realize until after I bought it that my CPU is causing some bottlenecking.

I currently have an FX-8320, but plan to upgrade to an 8370 (open to other suggestions) in a few weeks and possibly a new MOBO - idk which one to go with yet, haven't looked very hard - anyway, in the time being I'd like to overclock my current CPU to get my feet wet in this ocean of overclocking and also use my new 1070 to more of its potential.

MOBO isn't great (ASRock 990FX Extreme4) but I have a Corsair H100i cooler so hopefully that means I can OC my CPU safely.

I'm hoping to take it from 3.5Ghz up to 3.8 or even 4.0 if possible.

A couple weeks ago I was messing around in my BIOS after watching some YouTube videos and I managed to sorta accidentally boost it up to 3.9Ghz, and then I blue screened after doing a small test on Apex Legends.

So I lowered it down to 3.8ghz and it was stable until I installed my new GPU yesterday, which made it go back down to 3.5, presumably after resetting my CMOS battery because I was having some issues.

I tried to OC it back up to 3.8 but it actually went DOWN to 3.4 instead?? Not sure what that was all about.

I'm really not too sure what I'm doing lol, but I don't want to just start messing around with it before getting help from some people who know what they're doing/talking about.

I'm not even sure where to start with all this, it all seems pretty overwhelming just from what I've been reading in other forums and in some threads here lol.

So if anyone could give me some advice or tips to help me safely overclock my FX-8320 up to *potentially* 4.0ghz, or even if you can just point me to some solid resources that'll get me on the right track, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance, glad I found this place.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Daniel, welcome to the forum.

1. Don't worry about being a "noob" I/we were once also.
2. The motherboard you have should be fine for a mild overclock.
3. I do not feel upgrading to another Fx 8/9xxx chip is going to net you any gains. You will likely be able to oc the 8320 to around what the 8370 clocks will be.
4. The Fx while capable is not a very good gaming chip. If one is looking for an upgrade I would suggest, if you have the means, go with something newer. The Amd Ryzen chips are much more competitive with Intel chips of late. That would be what I'd be upgrading and recently had upgraded from my Fx 8350 to my 1800x Ryzen in my signature.

Furthermore, I suggest creating a signature at the bottom of your page that has the specifics of your system in it. This is helpful for us because we do not have to scroll up to the top of the thread to see what the parts in the system are.

That all said, download Hwmonitor or Hwinfo and Cpu-Z. Set the system to default and the open Cpu-Z and whatever monitoring software you chose. Give us a screen shot of Hwmonitor under load and the following tabs in Cpu-Z, Cpu, Spd and memory. This will give us a peek under the hood so to speak.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Your board is a little sub standard for a large overclock on FX, but the speeds you're asking for should not be an issue with the cooling you have.
Quick, dirty overclock = set your CPU multi to 20x and set your CPU voltage to 1.4v.
That will give you 4.0. Try it and see if it boots.

 

[Daniel Rekkins]

Thanks for the reply and warm welcome!

What would you define as a "mild overclock"?
Okay cool, that's good to hear. I plan to eventually put around $5k into a whole new system, and just max this one out in the mean time as long as it's around $500 or so, so I think a new mobo and CPU are in the budget for that.
I put that Ryzen chip in with my current mobo on PcPartPicker and it said they weren't compatible Is there a certain mobo you'd recommend to pair that with? I'm clueless when it comes to motherboards.
I use my pc primarily for high-res video editing for my job, so lots of Premiere Pro, After Effects and a few 3D programs. Gaming comes second but is definitely still important for me to have the best experience possible - within reason.

Also, what's the difference between the newer Ryzen chips and the older Fx ones? I see that the 1800x is 3.6ghz but the Fx is 4.0. What makes the 1800x better if the ghz speed is slower?

Thanks for the download suggestions, will post the screenshots when I get home in an hour or so.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Ryzen vs FX?

Ryzen single core power is probably 50% faster and has the SMT feature. Simultaneous Multi-Threading making 16 total threads if you Purchase Ryzen 7 2700x for example.

Mild overclock = a few hundred Mhz sometimes without the need to increase voltage.
Medium OC = several hundred Mhz with additional voltage
Max OC = extreme cooling and crazy amounts of voltage compared to daily use.

Asus Crosshair VII is a good board for Ryzen 2700x.

July Ryzen 3000 series chips will be released. And a new chipset 500 series for AM4 platform. I'd suggest a wait to buy Ryzen processor unless you need it now.

 

[Daniel Rekkins]

That all said, download Hwmonitor or Hwinfo and Cpu-Z. Set the system to default and the open Cpu-Z and whatever monitoring software you chose. Give us a screen shot of Hwmonitor under load and the following tabs in Cpu-Z, Cpu, Spd and memory. This will give us a peek under the hood so to speak.

Here are those screenshots. Took em after playing GTA V for 15-20 minutes. Not sure if that's a good enough stress test, I can do it again if not. CPU is currently at 3.49GHz

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

Ohh alright, I think that makes more sense. Thanks for the input and board suggestion!

 

[ShrimpBrime]

You're very welcome!

You can stress test by fully loading the processor. Try a program called Prime95. The longer you run it the better. 2 hours would be a decent stress test. Longer gives reassurance. You could do 20 minutes just to get a feel where the heat tops out at.

Stress testing is not quite as fun as gaming, while the game only utilizes a couple of cores, the stress test will load some memory and fully load the cpu. It's also known as a burn in, which some thermal pastes require for a setup.

We can give a ball park guesstimate of max OC with your set up just by seeing the temps. FX responds best to lower temperatures.

 

[Daniel Rekkins]

Shoot lol, alright givin it a go with Prime95 now.

Do I run a blend of the tests or is one in particular better? Smallest FFTs, Small FFTs, Large FFTs?

Also, all the videos I've seen about how to overclock have multipliers in their bios, while mine just has MHz and a number that I can adjust between 150 - 500MHz, so I don't really understand what that means.
I've tried bumping that number up from 200 - which is the default that it's at - to 350, and when I exit the bios my monitor goes black and I get no display until I reboot my pc.

The weird thing is that I did this a few weeks ago and it successfully overclocked to 3.8GHz and I didn't have this issue.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Ah yes well the reference clock raises the frequency of Memory, north-bridge chipset and processor all at the same time. A leap from 200 to 350 would require a lot of settings that would need to be changed off from auto.

So in your bios, the multiplier will be worded CPU Ratio. Stock setting is 17.5x.

 

[Daniel Rekkins]

Dude thank you lol. I couldn't find CPU Ratio in my BIOS for the longest time but finally stumbled across some foreign video of a dude overclocking in the same bios and ended up finding it and saw the 17.5x and knew that's where I needed to be.

Did what this guy said:

Quick, dirty overclock = set your CPU multi to 20x and set your CPU voltage to 1.4v.
That will give you 4.0. Try it and see if it boots.

And it just booted up, 4.0Ghz, 1.4v.

Haven't stress tested yet, but so far it's working and running at 19c while I'm sittin here typing this.

Thanks again. Will post screenshots of the stress test in a little bit. Gonna see if my fps is better in some games real fast, hopefully that's okay to do before stress testing lol.

Also ran Prime95 for an hour and a half earlier with the Balanced test. The numbers look almost identical to the screenshots I posted above while playing GTA, idk what that means but I thought it was interesting. It didn't go above 33c which I didn't expect. Thought it'd go higher for some reason.

 

[Ozz1]

dont worry about your motherboard, itll do just fine with it, i have a asrock 970pro 3 rev 2.0 with a fx 4130 cpu at 5200 mhz , blaylock can verify that as he beat me with his in the fx 4130 validation list of overclocks for the fx 4130, and have got 5+ gig from fx processors, (fx 4130, 8350, 8370) also a gig 990 fx ud3, basic boards, had a crosshair v-z too, the gig board out does the crosshair in cpu mhz on my cooling, iced water, but not adjustable functions in the bios

keep the fsb (front side bus) at 200, multiplier at 20 will give you 4 gig cpu speed, cpu volts 1.45 with your h100 will be fine, of course the lower the volts you shove in it the less the heat for cpu and board, other hardware , fx cpus can be hot little suckers, my daily is a phenom 980BE on air, @ 4gig, @ 1.47v asrock 870 deluxe 3 antec case with 9 fans in it
you dont say what sort of case cooling fans you have but looking at your hw monitor temps seems adequate and doing the job, usually its the vrms that will fail from overheating if too much volts, theyre rated at 100c + anyway from memory,
up your multi from 20 to 21, 22, and see if it boots, if not lower your ram speed to the next one down, youre at 1866mhz now, then see if it boots, your ram will handle 1.7v no probs, think theyre 1.65v stock anyway, so no dramas i would think , latencies at 12. 12. 12 if it doesnt boot try that instead of the 11s,
as you go up in multi the ram speeds will change themselves to accommodate the new speed, cpus have inbuilt shutdown architecture in them too for overheating, go slow at it, nice and steady, ive killed heaps by going to hard too quick
you might just get a surprise what your cpu and board, ram can do

 

[trents]

dont worry about your motherboard, itll do just fine with it, i have a asrock 970pro 3 rev 2.0 with a fx 4130 cpu at 5200 mhz , blaylock can verify that as he beat me with his in the fx 4130 validation list of overclocks for the fx 4130, and have got 5+ gig from fx processors, (fx 4130, 8350, 8370) also a gig 990 fx ud3, basic boards, had a crosshair v-z too, the gig board out does the crosshair in cpu mhz on my cooling, iced water, but not adjustable functions in the bios

keep the fsb (front side bus) at 200, multiplier at 20 will give you 4 gig cpu speed, cpu volts 1.45 with your h100 will be fine, of course the lower the volts you shove in it the less the heat for cpu and board, other hardware , fx cpus can be hot little suckers, my daily is a phenom 980BE on air, @ 4gig, @ 1.47v asrock 870 deluxe 3 antec case with 9 fans in it
you dont say what sort of case cooling fans you have but looking at your hw monitor temps seems adequate and doing the job, usually its the vrms that will fail from overheating if too much volts, theyre rated at 100c + anyway from memory,
up your multi from 20 to 21, 22, and see if it boots, if not lower your ram speed to the next one down, youre at 1866mhz now, then see if it boots, your ram will handle 1.7v no probs, think theyre 1.65v stock anyway, so no dramas i would think , latencies at 12. 12. 12 if it doesnt boot try that instead of the 11s,
as you go up in multi the ram speeds will change themselves to accommodate the new speed, cpus have inbuilt shutdown architecture in them too for overheating, go slow at it, nice and steady, ive killed heaps by going to hard too quick
you might just get a surprise what your cpu and board, ram can do

Not sure what you mean here when you say not to worry about the motherboard. In fact, his motherboard is not a good choice for a robust overclock of an 8 core FX but he should be able to get a mild overclock. Getting a good high overclock on a mediocre board with a four core FX CPU certainly does not suggest it will do well with an eight core FX. They may both have the same rated TDP at stock frequencies and voltages but once you start to overclock them that goes out the window.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Did what this guy said:


And it just booted up, 4.0Ghz, 1.4v.

Haven't stress tested yet, but so far it's working and running at 19c while I'm sittin here typing this.

You can do better.
Up the CPU multi again. Most FX's will do 4.5 on 1.4-1.45v.

 

[Daniel Rekkins]

I'm gonna try to go past 4.0 a little bit, does anybody know the max voltage it can handle? Can't seem to find anything online about it. I think it's 1.55v but I'm not 100% on that.

Fps in games isn't as good as I thought it'd be after overclocking, but definitely still better than before. Before OC I was getting like 40-50fps in GTA V on high settings, after OC it went up to 60-80fps with same settings.

Hoping my cpu is causing a bottleneck on my 1070 SC and the new GPU isn't faulty or something.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Cpu bottle neck for sure. Gpu is fine.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Max voltage for FX is irrelevant. You will reach max temps way before that. Rule of thumb is 1.55v for 24/7 if you can keep it cool.

 

[Daniel Rekkins]

Cpu bottle neck for sure. Gpu is fine.

Alright dope, good to hear that lol. Do you think it’s possible to get my current cpu to a place where it’s not causing a bottle neck??

Max voltage for FX is irrelevant. You will reach max temps way before that. Rule of thumb is 1.55v for 24/7 if you can keep it cool.

Does that apply to the motherboard as well? Like I won’t even hit the max voltage on the mobo?

If that’s the case, then what exactly makes my mobo not the best choice for a robust overclock?

Sorry again if all these questions are super basic or stupid, I’m illiterate when it comes to this world lol.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Alright dope, good to hear that lol. Do you think it’s possible to get my current cpu to a place where it’s not causing a bottle neck??

That processor will never get to a place where it's not bottle necking that Gpu.

When you upgrade to a Ryzen (or Intel equivalent or faster), you will see tremendous gains with everything.

 

[Ozz1]

Not sure what you mean here when you say not to worry about the motherboard. In fact, his motherboard is not a good choice for a robust overclock of an 8 core FX but he should be able to get a mild overclock. Getting a good high overclock on a mediocre board with a four core FX CPU certainly does not suggest it will do well with an eight core FX. They may both have the same rated TDP at stock frequencies and voltages but once you start to overclock them that goes out the window.

yes trent im well aware of that, his board and this board are of a similar class, low end really, but it did pretty well i think and it did it consistently, of course if he could get hold of a crosshair v or a v-z, they are they claimed and proven ultimate in the 990 chipset range of boards, except my crosshair v-z just wasnt good enough to beat this old cheapy clunker board, as we all know its the silicone lottery with any hardware

https://hwbot.org/submission/3293855_ozzie_cpu_frequency_fx_8370_5572_mhz

 

[Mr.Scott]

Does that apply to the motherboard as well? Like I won’t even hit the max voltage on the mobo?

If that’s the case, then what exactly makes my mobo not the best choice for a robust overclock?

No, it doesn't apply to the board. You are at the boards limit on temp where you are now.
Your board does not qualify as a robust clocking board due to the lack of power phases it has.
FX draws big power and more phases is better. When your overclock goes up, so does the power draw. Your board has half the phases of a good board.
When you overdraw on a board, it blows up the VRM. Then board is no more. FX is good at that.