Phenom II X4 960T multiplier overclocking

Spruce

Posts: 29   +0
Hi

I'm quite new to overclocking and been trying out som overclocking settings back and forth, also tried unlocking the 2 extra cores - but for gaming it's not too necessary afaik, now I only got the multiplier increased and disabled Turbo Core, my goal is not to push it to breaking point, been running at 4 GHz, right now 3.6 GHz. Use aftermarket cooler, nothing fancy, Hyper TX3 and two 2000RPM 120mm fans, one at front and one at back. 4 GHz rased the CPU temp to about 52-55 when playing Battlefield 3. My question is; Do I make a big mistake increasing only the multiplier and leaving the other settings on Auto?
 
It's fine to just leave everything at auto if you change the multiplier :) then again if/when you change the BUS speed you will also have to change the mem.speed (lower it a bit) because when you increase the BUS speed then the mem.speed also goes up = bluescreen / no boot. So use the BUS to finalize the overclock and the Multiplier (and vCore voltage) to do the main overclock with even tho you will need a better cooler for that.

Also a good thing to do is to make a "baseline" and note all default values (vCore, mem.voltage, bus, multiplier, mem.speed), to do that you can use (for ex.) CPU-Z...when that is done change everything manually so that all the values are the same as when they are on auto...then you can go and overclock from there.

Don't forget to have good airflow in and out from your case when you overclock! Here is a small "guide" that you could maybe find something interesting in.
 
So a good baseline is simply using the voltages set when you run on auto with stock settings and then work your way up by increasing multiplier until prime95 starts failing or you get bsod, and then increase voltages until it's stable?
Which voltages should be set to manual and how much should I increase voltages at a time before retest?
I'm not planning to increase the bus speed atm when I got a Black Edition CPU.
 
yeah even tho you need to be really careful when u increase the vCore, your CPU runs by default at 1.40v and it's not recommended to go so much higher from there...even tho some processors can handle it like the one that I have, Phenom II 555, it's default max is also 1.4v but I have also had it up and running with as high as 1.7v (max on my motherboard) but you shouldn't really try to find the max for your CPU because when you find the CPUs upper limit it mostly also fries. Also don't increase the voltages unless it's really needed. Increase the multiplier one step at the time...when you then find a spot where it the system becomes unstable (but where the boot works) you can try to increase the voltage from 1.4v to something like ~1.425v (you can change the vCore with 0.00625v increments) and if the system becomes more stable after the next boot you can try ti increase it to 1.45v and so on until the CPU temp hits the roof...or then if the system doesn't become stabler by increasing the vCore then take the multiplier down by one step and then you can try to fine tune by changing the BUS speed (200 by default)...but don't make any big changes, you can increase it to something like 205-215 for starters (depending on the multiplier) and then if that works then you can start ti increase it with 2-5/reboot and try/test and see where the system starts to fail.
Note that if you get the bus speed to more/higher than 220-225 then you will most probably have to lower the memory speed which is difficult to "understand" in the beginning...I don't remember exact values now but I also have 1333MHz DDR3 memory as you do but in the bios it says something like 666 or 800 or some random number like that so you will have to test and see (when you make a baseline) where/what is the default value...trail and error, the best way to learn about overclocking :D

But keep in mind the cooling and the temps at all times so that the CPU doesn't die.


Oh almost forgot, AMD disables/locks faulty cores so core unlocking doesn't always work.
 
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