Need help/advice on first time overclocking of pc

Realistically you won't need to overclock because you already have a really strong set up, but if you want to dabble a little in overclocking, this is my suggestion.

Well the best way to start is by getting Heaven and Cinebench so that you can do some benchmarks and stress tests when you overclock. You want to make sure that your computer doesn't crash. Also you might want to pick up CPU-Z and HWMonitor from CPUID which will tell you temperature readouts of the CPU/Motherboard.

ASUS AMD ROG OC Guide

Check this link out, ASUS posted an overclocking guide when the FX-8150 arrived for their ROG boards. I know it's a different board, but the options it offers are very similar to any AMD FX oriented boards. The FX-8350 is just an upgrade to 8150 without changing any major protocols, so it will work well.

So my personal point of view in OCing is to have an energy efficient OC. So i keep all my power saving features enabled. Some people will agree and probably many will disagree, but my point i want to have high performance without hindering efficiency in enrgy since AMD tend to be already kind of high on power consumption.


I know this doesn't work for everyone but it will give you an idea of how the process of overclocking works:
Aside from that, you want to start by overclocking the CPU without adding voltage and do simple increments like 100mhz at a time (half steps). Save and reset and go to windows and benchmark. I know that AMD FX-8350 out of the box can handle 4.2Ghz on all 8 cores without any voltage adjustments, MAKE SURE not to enable Turbo, it will add voltage and mess with the frequencies in a bad way, it's great for stock but not for OC. Once you have benchmarked, make sure that everything works properly, if the benchmarks work with great success, try adding another 100mhz to the CPU and repeat the process until you cannot have a successful boot and benchmark run. Don't be afraid of the blue screen, when you hit the limits you'll start seeing it. Once the blue screen occurred you've encountered that you're not receiving enough power. Then i suggest adding 1 step of the CPU VID, i believe most are .015V every time. Try booting and running with the extra power. (try to be careful, i know your CPU cooler is great, but it's not an insane one, most likely i would suggest try to be @ around 4.4-4.7Ghz, the heat generated from a clock that high will be hard to dissipate and your cooler will be working pretty hard).

I know this isn't the best tutorial on Overclocking, but it's a start, also check out the overclocking tutorial that Tom's Hardware has made for AMD, it's quite thorough.