phenom II 1100T first OC help/advice.

[shards]

hey all! I've been lurking for a while i thought it was time to get some advice on my new system,as I have recently assembled this machine:

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
Asus M4A87TD/USB3
Hitachi 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s Hard Drive
cpu fan is Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2
Casecom KB-7720BK Black ATX Midi Tower Case
Xenta 600W 12cm Fan PSU
Ati radeon HD4870 1GB.

3x4GB kingston DDR3 1600MHZ (khx1600c9d3k3/12Gx)
and another 1x4GB kingston DDR3 1600mhz (khx1600c9d3x2k2)


reason i got so much ram is mainly because pc will be used for handling very high resolution photoshop files, but also some 3d and some gaming.

anyway back to the point: this is my first OC so i'm a bit of a newbie. i've been reading this board fow a while now trying to get my head around it, i went through dolk's guide to phenom II a few times now and i guess i got a basic idea but I feel in my case something is not quite right in terms of temperature.

all I did in the bios is: I disabled turbo mode, cool and quiet and C1E.
set the multiplier to 15x to take it easy at first, ram was set to 1333mhz AUTO,
everything else is on auto.
on windows set power options to high performance.

this is what it looks like at startup after some time running (pretty much idle):



this is what it looks like after a 2/3 minutes of prime:



this is where i stopped because mobo cpu temp reading is getting towards the 60c and it will reach it if I let it.
which seems a little weird to me since its not a huge overclock, Im not using the stock cooler and as far as I understand temps should stay much lower within this parameters??
cores usually stay a little cooler than the cpu reading of the mobo, which one should I consider and is it correct that mobo shouldnt go beyond 55 or is it just the cores?

fans atm are only from cpu, video card and psu, I'll be getting a few more soon but readings are taken with the case open so there should be plenty of air. its 18C outside so I'm guessing it fairly close to that inside.

any help/info/advice would be very appreciated!!
thank you!!

 

[trents]

Your temps look appropriate to me. Realize the core temp, not CPU temp (which is really the CPU socket area temp from the motherboard, not the temp of the processor itself) is the critical one. With the CPU cooler your are using, 52 C core temp about as good as you can expect. The Freezer Pro 7 is not going to be adequate for overclocking a 6 core CPU. Mid 50s C core temp is considered to the stability "wall" temp for AMD CPUs so you can see you're almost there. You might have a little overclocking room if you just increase the CPU multiplier but not the core voltage.

 

[shards]

thanks a lot trents!
and that was only after like 3 minutes of stresstest. it would have gone a lot higher if I let it run!

out of curiosity I mounted the stock one and its a lot better!! was running stable at around 46C on the cores for something like half an hour..so yeah looks like I'll have to look into a better cooler and ill stay with the stock one for now.

any recommendations for this mobo? this one went over the ram slots and I almost had no room for one stick, I see many that look quite bulky and im concerned it might not let me have space for the ram?

regarding the ram: how comes the timings are all slightly different? should I set them manually to manufacturer values? atm works well and they seem slightly tighter. can I set the Dram frequency to 1600mhz in the bios?

also I have 3 identical sticks (khx1600c9d3k3/12Gx) and a slightly different one (khx1600c9d3x2k2) for which I have a spare..should I go 2 and 2 instead? I notice that in cpu-z one is running at 800 while the others are around 600..

thanks again mate!

 

[trents]

Okay, I realize I'm going to avoid direct answers to some of your ram questions but I want you to see the big picture. Mixing and matching ram of different makes, speeds, timing and amounts is not advisable.
1. You risk forfeiting dual channel operation which is a big performance hit.
2. You risk creating unstable system.
3. At best, the motherboard will downclock the faster ram modules so as to run at the speeds and timings that are compatible with the slower modules.

 

[eSZee]

I've never heard of that PSU maker and the vcore seems to fluctuate a bit a idle as well as load.
See if you can change the PLL/LLC % in the bios somewhere to 22-25%.

 

[shards]

thanks guys..I'm aware that different types of ram arent recommended although these two are the same make and same speed/timings, just a slightly different model. I tried going 2 and 2 and ran maxxmem to see if there was any difference and there's hardly any. also tried setting a profile for the dram in the bios to 1600mhz DOCP and again seen hardly any difference from just setting it to 1600mhz and auto voltage.
are there any particular setting that would make the ram faster rather than just increase the cpu multiplier? would increasing the cpu-nb frequency do?

vcore is set to auto I think that's why its fluctuating a bit, atm I have an 18 multiplier for 3.6 ghz, I'm not sure I'll take it any higher with the stock cooler but ill be getting a better one in a couple of weeks and get on with a proper OC.
anyway with full speed fan at load is running at around 45C for the cores which isn't that bad..

thanks again for any info!!

 

[shards]

so.. time to resurrect this thread! I finially got a proper cooler (noctua nhd 14) and its doing a great job.

im leaving everything to auto and only changing the vcore and multiplier. dram is also manually set to 1.65 and timings to 9.9.9.27 as recommended by kingston.

so far the only stable oc i managed to get is a 19x with 1.366 vcore.
when i try to get 4ghz I run into all sorts of instability.

i was running prime95 for something like 30 mins and i thought I finally had it with 20x and 1.43vcore but then windows froze/crashed and rebooted. so i kept increasing and getting the same results.. last one that crashed was had 1.482 vcore and i thought i'd increase the cpu/nb as well to 1.2 still no luck. monitor goes black and pc reboots after several prime95 tests (blend)

now i'm trying 1.487 and cpu/nb to auto, temps are pretty good with 45C tops on load.
the problem is that i'm reaching a vcore roof? I was reading that you dont want to go over

1.45 for a 24/7? its not going to be a 24/7 but on weekends its can happen and i wouldnt

want to have trouble with that or lose work in those occasions.
maybe I should start changing something else instead of leaving everything else to auto? from 19x to 20x the vcore jumped up so much and its still not stable..is it normal?

oh there you go prime just detected a hardware failure.
here's the screens:

thanks for any help!!

 

[trents]

. . . I notice that in cpu-z one is running at 800 while the others are around 600. . .

What? Is this really the case? If so, not good. You need to go into bios and make sure they are all running at the same speed, the speed of the lowest rated module.

If I were you I'd run only two identical sticks.

Increasing the CPUNB does have a favorable impact on ram performance but you will also need to increase the voltage to the CPUNB to support higher frequencies. Guys with those Thuban chips seem to be able to find a sweet spot CPUNB of around 2800 mhz with about 1.25-1.3 volts.

I would also try running your ram at 1333 instead of the XMP 1600 mhz speed. The AMD integrated memory controller is only rated for 1333 mhz.

 

[shards]

oops sorry I think I got confused in the jedec timings table under the SPD tab, what do they actually represent?
all modules are kingston rated at 1600mhz and have the exact same recommended timings. essentially they are all identical.

but the ram is indeed what's causing the instability I tried 1333 and its much better,
I also tried 1600 with looser timings (10,10,10,27)yesterday and it seemed a little more stable but ended up crashing anyway a bit later on.

anyway I'll be pushing with the ram at 1333 for now I even managed to lower the vcore to 1.48 and I've been running prime for more than 15 mins and seems fine.

does that mean I lost that extra ram speed though? cant people use 1.6 or 2ghz ram with the phenom?
another question: should I do the cpu oc first and then up the cpu-nb?

thanks for the help!

 

[trents]

Some people can run their ram at 1600 mhz on the Phemon IIs and the Thubans but many cannot. It depends a lot on the individual CPU (even within the same model CPU) and the quality of the surrounding components. Currently, the Intel CPUs seem to have stronger integrated memory controllers. AMD fans are hoping this will change with Bulldozer. What you can generally do, however, is tighten down the memory timings when 1600 mhz ram is run at 1333 mhz. This makes up for a lot of the performance lost from moving down from 1600 to 1333.

I also note that you are trying to run 16 gb of ram. That is another reason you can't get stable at 1600 mhz. Larger amounts of ram increase the strain on the integrated memory controller. Even moving from 4 gb to 8 gb makes a difference.

Yes, I would find the max overclock on the CPU before turning to the CPUNB but it is also true with the Thubans that speeding up the CPUNB can actually improve the stability of the larger overclock of the CPU itself. Thubans seem to like the CPUNB (and the HT Link) to be up around 2800 mhz. What's different between the Thubans and the Phenoms that the Phenoms don't like increases over stock in the HT Link but Thubans do.

 

[shards]

thanks a lot trents that's very informative as usual!!
is there any particular trick to improve performance on builds with higher ram?

at the moment I'm on 4,1 Ghz vcore is around 1.52v, I tried scaling up the cpu nb to 2600 at 1.25v and that seems to have improved stability. however I got a few mixed results with prime, I ran a medium size test and one of the cores failed after a minute..then ran it again and was going for 30 mins ok..switched to blend for another 30 mins and that was fine as well, ill have to do some more stressing today but that was a little odd..its probably getting there on the cpu side, looking at cpuz and hw monitor vcore voltage while stressing, it never really reaches 1.5? this makes me think cpu might have enough vcore already but the ram is messing with it..not really sure how to improve that aspect as you say I should even be able to tighten the timings at 1333
temps are still very good with 45C on load and 23C idle.

 

[shards]

so I did more testing ond those settings turned out to be good..
now i'm stuck at 4.2 ghz, I couldn't get it stable with 1,57v.
not sure if I should go any higher tbh but I have space in my temperature range.

also I tried enabling LLC and seems a little weird..
i ran prime and it was jumping to 1.6v and stopped..so I go back to the bios and set vcore to 1.50 and again its about 0.5v higher on idle, and max vcore while running prime was 1.60 although it oscillating a bit.
I thought LLc was supposed to stabilize the vcore rather than vary it even more?
anyway now i set the vcore all the way down to 1.45v running prime and top vcore reaches 1.52 which would crash with LLc disabled. also every now and then it lowers the multiplier to 4x.
on the plus side it does make the system a lot more stable.

 

[trents]

LLC does not dynamically add voltage to even out voltage fluctuations. It just compensates a by a given static amount under load. Its normal for CPU voltage to drop under load just like a car's engine rpms may drop down a bit when you turn on the AC or the alternator kicks in to cover the headlight draw.