phenom 965 OC (reaching the sweetspot)

[caddi daddi]

just to make it clear your running 1.25 on the cpu/nb with the cpu/nb at 2400
your not talking about the nb.

 

[ToeTacTics]

what do you mean im not talking about the NB?

NB stock voltage is set at 1.1something at stock, so i increased it to support it on 2600.
x12 =2400 x13=2600

am im missing something here?

 

[caddi daddi]

i just wanted to make sure your adjusting the cpu/nb voltage, that is on the cpu.
and not the n/b voltage, that is on the motherboard.

 

[ToeTacTics]

OH, ofc i adjusted both. NB accordingly and the mobo's one by a notch.

it worked, torture 3,9ghz and everything stayed stable.

i realized that my motherboard is not a good Overclocker. i have no heatsinks on some of the mosfets.

http://www.gigabyte.com/fileupload/product/2/3295/1332.jpg

i ordered some aluminum heatsinks from ebay to fix that, bummer tough, that still wont lower my hot CPU.

im also considering adding a 120 slim profile scythe fan on the side panel, to blow directly on the cpu heatsink and partially on those VRM's.

 

[caddi daddi]

in post #57 your showing a package temp of 56c, this is close to where the cpu becomes unstable.addind cpu/nb voltage or speed adds to this temp.

 

[ToeTacTics]

correct

thats why i want to add aluminum heatsinks and a fan that will blow air on the CPU heatsink + VRMs, thus keeping temps lower.

 

[caddi daddi]

and that is a good thing, cooler is allways faster.
what i was saying was that the cpu has issues somewhere around 55c, so if you got unstable you would know why.

 

[ToeTacTics]

One last thing..

for all you phenom II users , can you guys remember your ambient temps while OCing your chips?

mine is around 27-30*C and i think thats the main reason i cant go further atm.

 

[caddi daddi]

23c-25c

 

[azanimefan]

One last thing..

for all you phenom II users , can you guys remember your ambient temps while OCing your chips?

mine is around 27-30*C and i think thats the main reason i cant go further atm.

yeah. part of the reason i stopped at 3.7 is because my ambient can be higher then 40C... that gives me almost no room under the AMD thermal cap. When i've got AC it's 27C, when i don't it's over 40C... once i get up around 40C, i usually downclock to stock... as it dances too close to a blue screen otherwise (and will bluescreen/shut down under protracted load).

 

[tikithorsen]

You should probably stay on 3.8GHz, since the is sweetspot for this CPU's, IMHO.

 

[GilbertC06]

I recently Oce'd my 965 to delay an upgrade.

I'm finding the same thing where anything past 3.8 is just unstable, not even overheating.

 

[azanimefan]

I recently Oce'd my 965 to delay an upgrade.

I'm finding the same thing where anything past 3.8 is just unstable, not even overheating.

i've found you need to boost your nb speeds up to 2400-2600, the nb voltages, and the VDDA a bit to stabilize up over 3.8 (you might need to downclock your ram too... generally most of my issues over 3.8 are ram related, not voltage or heat, though both of those can get crazy too)... i've had mine prime95 stable at 4.0... and windows stable up to 4.2... but the voltages and temps make me nervous... and oddly i can't seem to get it stable no matter what the settings at 3.9

 

[GilbertC06]

i've found you need to boost your nb speeds up to 2400-2600, the nb voltages, and the VDDA a bit to stabilize up over 3.8 (you might need to downclock your ram too... generally most of my issues over 3.8 are ram related, not voltage or heat, though both of those can get crazy too)... i've had mine prime95 stable at 4.0... and windows stable up to 4.2... but the voltages and temps make me nervous... and oddly i can't seem to get it stable no matter what the settings at 3.9

I'm actually not so nervous as long as I don't go past 1.4 on the cpu. I'm determined to run this thing into the ground. I can afford an 6300 and I got a 3 year warranty at Frys on this board. The only thing I'm actually worried about is the ram.

 

[caddi daddi]

why run this into the ground just to get a worse rig?
a 6300 is not what i would consider an upgrade.
I have both and I'll take my 965 over any 6300 that i have seen results posted for.
If your looking to upgrade that will take a better board and an 8350 with water.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Just for reference, my 24/7 OC on my daily driver for roughly the last 3 years.

 

[caddi daddi]

Mr. scott, that is a sweet clock.
If I run mine above 3.8 the fans on my little cooler can get a little noisy to sit and get work done but when i fire one up 9 times out of 10 it's my 965 rig.
my 6300 rig sits shut down most of the time because when i need more cores I just fire up the 8350 and turn off the cores I don't need, running it as a six core it out performs my 6300.

 

[GilbertC06]

Just for reference, my 24/7 OC on my daily driver for roughly the last 3 years.

Can you possibly share your settings in the bios with us?

 

[GilbertC06]

why run this into the ground just to get a worse rig?
a 6300 is not what i would consider an upgrade.
I have both and I'll take my 965 over any 6300 that i have seen results posted for.
If your looking to upgrade that will take a better board and an 8350 with water.

I was under the impression that each core is faster.

 

[azanimefan]

I was under the impression that each core is faster.

no.... clock for clock the 965 and most of the high end Thuban PhIIs are faster then piledriver (all piledriver, not just the 43xx or 63xx, but the 83xx too).

The trick is the PhII cpus don't have much overclocking headroom in comparison to a piledriver, and when properly overclocked a piledriver core will beat an overclocked PhII core in most tasks

The claim that a 83xx with 2 cores disabled is faster than a 63xx is a bit unbelievable though. Every bench out there shows the core speeds are identical across all piledriver chips... so clock for clock the chips are completely identical. About the only way his claim could be true is if he was getting a higher overclock on his 83xx -2 cores then he was getting on his native 63xx cpu.

Generally though, most piledriver chips should be getting a 4.5-4.9 overclock. A buddy of mine caught a lucky break with his 6300... he hit 5.0ghz on stock voltages. Blew my mind. He called me up asking me if he should push his overclock over 4.5, I asked him about temps, and he was sitting nice and cool, i asked him about voltages and he told me he was at stock voltage. i told him i was coming over and we'd push it as far as we could. Got that thing up to 5.0 on stock voltage, pushed it up to 5.6ghz before temps and voltage got a little wild... (he went from 1.45 Vcore at 5.6 and 62C after 1 hour of prime, to 1.6V core at 5.7 and 67C plus blue screen after 3 minutes of prime...) he was even booting windows at 5.9ghz course it was SLOW... and blue screened pretty soon thereafter).

we ended up backing his overclock down to 5.5 and lowered the vcore down to 1.4.

seriously though that is one silly good chip.