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Overclocking an FX-4150: Where to Start?

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  • Overclocking
  • Water Cooling
  • CPUs
  • AMD
  • Cooling
  • Systems
  • Corsair
  • Graphics Cards
Last response: in Overclocking
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September 6, 2014 8:27:19 PM

Hello,
I'm new to overclocking. I've only OC'd an old GPU, and that was just a slider. Anyway, I bought a new cooler for my FX-4150 because the old one was like a leafblower, and this new cooler allows me to OC if I want, and boy do I want. I was wondering:
a) If I could eke out some more performance by OCing
b) How I would OC
Any tips or links to helpful articles/videos are much appreciated. System specs are in my profile.

More about : overclocking 4150 start

a b K Overclocking
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September 7, 2014 2:18:54 AM

Silibant said:
Hello,
I'm new to overclocking. I've only OC'd an old GPU, and that was just a slider. Anyway, I bought a new cooler for my FX-4150 because the old one was like a leafblower, and this new cooler allows me to OC if I want, and boy do I want. I was wondering:
a) If I could eke out some more performance by OCing
b) How I would OC
Any tips or links to helpful articles/videos are much appreciated. System specs are in my profile.


You can get more performance IF your cpu is bottlenecking your GPU or if you're doing rendering, if your GPU isn't being held back by your cpu the fps increase will be minimal 2-5fps or in some cases you wont even see any increase, But if your cpu is bottlenecking sometimes you can see a 10 or even 15fps increase and better average fps with less and smaller drops.

Now OCing is done in your motherboard BIOS, you can do it with a software called AMD OverDrive it wont probably kill you but its just not the proper way of doing things.
You will need a few programs for this.
OCCT - stress testing program that will stress your cpu to 100% ( Run a linpack 90% stress test for atleast 15minutes between overclocks and atleast 2 hours after you're done to make sure that your CPU is stable)
HWMonitor - monitoring temps
CPU Z - monitoring Voltage and clock speed.

Now I would strongly advise you to read the overlcoking guides in the forums because I will try and keep it short.
First of all run OCCT and monitor your Core Voltage using cpu z and write down the numbers for ex 1.356V, you'll need that later.
Overcloking is done by entering the advanced BIOS.
When you enter the advanced bios first of all change your Voltage to Override and set it to whatever you saw in cpu z but add 0.010V so if cpu z said 1.35V put in 1.36V this will give you a starting point after that is done increase the multiplier by 0.5 in your case that will add 100mhz and boot into windows run the stress test and if its stable add another 0.5 (or a 100mhz) now when your crash it means you need to add more voltage, so just bump it up by 0.05 or 0.1 and see if it works after that.
Safe temps for the cpu are 65C and 70C for the socket.
Also make sure your motherboard has heatsinks on the vram or else you might damage them if you oc to much.

Overcloking is time consuming thing so be ready to play in the bios for atleast a few hours.

And remember to choose the solution which helped you so another people can find it!
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September 7, 2014 5:49:03 AM

tomkis90 said:
You can get more performance IF your cpu is bottlenecking your GPU


That's exactly what's happening. Thanks for all the help. I'll leave this thread open for a bit in case someone else has something to add, but I'll choose your answer if nothing happens for the rest of the day. Also, I have HWinfo64, and that tells me everything, so can I leave out CPU-Z and HWMonitor? Other than that, thanks. Any idea how I would go about removing my old (stock) cooler? The thermal paste seems to have stuck itself quite firmly to the CPU and I don't wanna bend pins by just yanking it out.
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September 7, 2014 6:01:08 AM

Also, how much OCing can I expect out of what I've got? Could I get it to 4.5 gHz, or is that a little too unrealistic?
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a b K Overclocking
a b à CPUs
September 7, 2014 6:32:30 AM

Silibant said:
Also, how much OCing can I expect out of what I've got? Could I get it to 4.5 gHz, or is that a little too unrealistic?


I heard people going as far as 4.8ghz with a CM 212 Evo cooler but again it all depends on your cpu and your motherbaord.
If you can' remove the heatsink try using a hair dryer to heat the heatsink surface and loosen the bond that should help.
Also I'm not fimiliar with HWinfo64 so I can't tell if its good.
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September 7, 2014 6:50:58 AM

tomkis90 said:
Silibant said:
Also, how much OCing can I expect out of what I've got? Could I get it to 4.5 gHz, or is that a little too unrealistic?


I heard people going as far as 4.8ghz with a CM 212 Evo cooler but again it all depends on your cpu and your motherbaord.
If you can' remove the heatsink try using a hair dryer to heat the heatsink surface and loosen the bond that should help.
Also I'm not fimiliar with HWinfo64 so I can't tell if its good.


I'm getting a Corsair H60, so I may be able to push it to 5, if my motherboard can handle it. It's a Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3; not very feature-rich but it's got some good protective mechanisms built in (power failure/flux, electrostatic shock, humidity all protected against), so I dunno how much it can handle. We'll find out a little at a time, I guess. Also, I read a PCMag article where they used OverDrive and experienced no issues a BIOS overclocker wouldn't get. Do you have any personal experience with OverDrive?

Edit: Yay! Just read a few threads where some motherboard experts said my board is "an excellent overclocker", so things are looking up.
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a b K Overclocking
a b à CPUs
September 7, 2014 7:03:27 AM

Silibant said:
tomkis90 said:
Silibant said:
Also, how much OCing can I expect out of what I've got? Could I get it to 4.5 gHz, or is that a little too unrealistic?


I heard people going as far as 4.8ghz with a CM 212 Evo cooler but again it all depends on your cpu and your motherbaord.
If you can' remove the heatsink try using a hair dryer to heat the heatsink surface and loosen the bond that should help.
Also I'm not fimiliar with HWinfo64 so I can't tell if its good.


I'm getting a Corsair H60, so I may be able to push it to 5, if my motherboard can handle it. It's a Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3; not very feature-rich but it's got some good protective mechanisms built in (power failure/flux, electrostatic shock, humidity all protected against), so I dunno how much it can handle. We'll find out a little at a time, I guess. Also, I read a PCMag article where they used OverDrive and experienced no issues a BIOS overclocker wouldn't get. Do you have any personal experience with OverDrive?

Edit: Yay! Just read a few threads where some motherboard experts said my board is "an excellent overclocker", so things are looking up.


No I dont have any experience with it because I use Intel most of the time.
Motherboard is ok for overcloking and dont get the H60 it performs almost the same as 212 evo and its overpriced.

EDIT : A be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced, would perform better than the H60 and is cheaper, ofcourse the h60 wont be a bad option too.
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a c 163 K Overclocking
a c 98 à CPUs
a b U Graphics card
September 9, 2014 1:05:30 PM

tomkis90 said:
Silibant said:
Hello,
I'm new to overclocking. I've only OC'd an old GPU, and that was just a slider. Anyway, I bought a new cooler for my FX-4150 because the old one was like a leafblower, and this new cooler allows me to OC if I want, and boy do I want. I was wondering:
a) If I could eke out some more performance by OCing
b) How I would OC
Any tips or links to helpful articles/videos are much appreciated. System specs are in my profile.


You can get more performance IF your cpu is bottlenecking your GPU or if you're doing rendering, if your GPU isn't being held back by your cpu the fps increase will be minimal 2-5fps or in some cases you wont even see any increase, But if your cpu is bottlenecking sometimes you can see a 10 or even 15fps increase and better average fps with less and smaller drops.

Now OCing is done in your motherboard BIOS, you can do it with a software called AMD OverDrive it wont probably kill you but its just not the proper way of doing things.
You will need a few programs for this.
OCCT - stress testing program that will stress your cpu to 100% ( Run a linpack 90% stress test for atleast 15minutes between overclocks and atleast 2 hours after you're done to make sure that your CPU is stable)
HWMonitor - monitoring temps
CPU Z - monitoring Voltage and clock speed.

Now I would strongly advise you to read the overlcoking guides in the forums because I will try and keep it short.
First of all run OCCT and monitor your Core Voltage using cpu z and write down the numbers for ex 1.356V, you'll need that later.
Overcloking is done by entering the advanced BIOS.
When you enter the advanced bios first of all change your Voltage to Override and set it to whatever you saw in cpu z but add 0.10V so if cpu z said 1.35V put in 1.36V this will give you a starting point after that is done increase the multiplier by 0.5 in your case that will add 100mhz and boot into windows run the stress test and if its stable add another 0.5 (or a 100mhz) now when your crash it means you need to add more voltage, so just bump it up by 0.05 or 0.1 and see if it works after that.
Safe temps for the cpu are 65C and 70C for the socket.
Also make sure your motherboard has heatsinks on the vram or else you might damage them if you oc to much.

Overcloking is time consuming thing so be ready to play in the bios for atleast a few hours.

And remember to choose the solution which helped you so another people can find it!


Very good explanation!

One minor correction, and this is prolly just a typo. I have bolded and underlined the text in question above: " but add 0.10V so if cpu z said 1.35V put in 1.36V"
I think that you wanted to say "But add 0.010V." Because in your example you increased from 1.35 v. to 1.36 v. which is correct. Adding voltage in steps of 0.10 v. would definitely be a bit much!

Otherwise, nice job!

Yogi

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a b K Overclocking
a b à CPUs
September 10, 2014 2:07:46 AM

Thank you Yogi and yes that was a typo, I updated it now.
Silibant Let us know how it went when you're done!
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September 10, 2014 3:29:39 PM

tomkis90 said:
Thank you Yogi and yes that was a typo, I updated it now.
Silibant Let us know how it went when you're done!


I certainly will. I'm so hype, the cooler is coming tomorrow and I got all my schoolwork out of the way for installing/testing/OC'ing!
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September 12, 2014 6:26:25 PM

Ok, wow, that was harder than I thought. Installing the rad and fan wouldn't allow the side panel to close, so I ended up having to screw it to the roof of the case with the fan as an intake (obviously). Here's my current situation: I know that all intake is horrible for airflow, and that's currently what I've got going on. I have 2 fans to do with as I please. Both are 120mm and I have them installed as front intake. Because of the rad, I can't install a top fan, but I think I could manage a rear exhaust and a side exhaust. I have an extra fan, but no port for it (anyone wanna send me a molex adapter, lol?) so it's basically useless. Thanks for all the help, guys.
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September 14, 2014 12:25:31 PM

4.3 gigahertz stable (so far) overclock woot woot
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a b K Overclocking
a b à CPUs
September 14, 2014 10:13:46 PM

Silibant said:
4.3 gigahertz stable (so far) overclock woot woot


If the temps are still fine try pushing it to 4.6 or 4.7ghz.
I don't have alot of expierence with Fx series cpu but I'm pretty sure that 1.475v or 1.5v is the max safe vCore.
Good luck in the fields of OC!
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September 15, 2014 3:40:42 PM

tomkis90 said:
Silibant said:
4.3 gigahertz stable (so far) overclock woot woot


If the temps are still fine try pushing it to 4.6 or 4.7ghz.
I don't have alot of expierence with Fx series cpu but I'm pretty sure that 1.475v or 1.5v is the max safe vCore.
Good luck in the fields of OC!


Thanks. I'm getting around 54F or so, which is rather impressive in my opinion. I will certainly raise it to 4.5 soon, because it handled a few hours of Watch_Dogs with no trouble. I bring this up only because before CPU usage would max and then it would throttle the GPU, so to see this happening with less frequency is certainly satisfying. I may get a 6300 later on and OC that, but for now things are looking up :^)
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