Can I OC Phenom II X4 965 on this motherboard.

You need huge cooling to overclock. I currently run about 12 fans attached to my system & I have noticed that there is now a discrete direction of vented warm air under a load which is the direction I set the fans to blow, from the rear to the front. At the front I have put 2 more fans to take this warm air and exhaust it.

I'm using an arctic freezer extreme but i do not believe it sufficient to attain a maximum extreme overclock even with 160w tdp cooling. The cpu is 125w tdp so I overspecced but not nearly enough.

My experience of trying to push to the max. which is what inevitably any overclocker will want to do, I would estimate nothing less than an Cooler Master v8 for several reasons.

1) in the future you will upgrade your cpu again to something with a higher tdp anyway
2)more cooling is never a bad thing
3)you will want to get the most extreme overclock you can.
4)It's got 8 heatpipes 3 towers and 2 fans.
5)You can add additional cooling to your chassis/backplate whatever

And you could put it all in a cheapish cooling case that has mesh vents and things with a spacious layout because that energy has to go somewhere and you need to exhaust it from the case to get a stable overclock because otherwise it will build up and eventually overheat you anyway. You will have to vent the heat out of an open window ultimately.

Otherwise you get a very slow uptick in ambient temperature (you're putting out more heat than a lightbulb or two) which might eventually just tip your cpu over the edge when you want to stay steady and cool at all times.

I have got my PC to a point where the package temp is about 4c. idle browsing the web etc. with a clock speed of 4.7ghz and a load of about 45c playing games, but that rises up to 60+ if I go for 4.9 to 5ghz. This is problematical because I want to keep the cpu temp even at around 40c at 5ghz.

So I'm just going to dabble with some stuff that will show up in the post eventually and see how uniform I can get the temperature. I don't want to keep expanding and contracting the cpu too much.

Anyway I've got some margin for error because I'm not using a really expensive cpu I can mess around a bit while I learn and it won't be a disaster if I eventually rek it. Not too hard to get another different cpu for this. I'm not aiming to trash it I just want to get the best overclock I can on it. And you can get good overclocks with the right set up.

So if you're buying new just save yourself the bother of messing about and get the most massive heatsink you can find. I'm finding it a pain to keep adjusting things and then re-testing it. Go large. I just don't want to buy another cooler right now for £50 when I just spend £15 on the arctic freezer and I dumped an arctic a11 and killed it for parts.

So don't mess about with half measures get the v8. Because if you buy an evo 212 you won't get your peak overclock and you won't be satisfied and then you will want to buy more stuff. Where if you get the big heatsink first, the coolermaster v8 it's going to last you through a couple of upgrades too.

I have my Phenom x6 @3.6ghz 24/7/365 85-100% load and temps never go above 54c. And that was with 2 GTX 460s at 100% load blowing most of their Hot air in the case. With GTX 650TI boost 50-51c.
My CPU cooler is the 212EVO.
The H7 is a few degrees better.
The Gammaxx 400 is similar.
According to CPUZ i'm at 160 watts on the CPU.

My son is still happily gaming on my old PC, which is a Phenom II x4
It is overclocked to 4GHz, northbridge is at 2.7Ghz and the memory is at 1.8Ghz
(AMD guidelines for Phenom II overclocking say 4.2Ghz maximum.)
Cooling is a Xigmatek Loki on the CPU, case has two 100mm fans at teh back extracting hot air plus the power supply mounted at the top also extracting hot air
He is using a 7790 GPU.

At 4.7ghz my fx 4350 doesn't go over 45c with a full load such as Elite Dangerous or any of the dx11-12 titles but if I stress it on prime95 at 4.8-.5,1ghz it climbs up to 64c + (package temp) even with a fan huffing on the backplate with a heatsink glued to it with thermal epoxy.

At stock voltage the whole thing runs at 0-20c. So if you want a cooler overclock get a bigger heatsink. 160watts is just at the edge of your heatsink's capacity. More heatsink means cooler temps of 40c at that high overclock for a phenom and if you change to an FX you could use it on that and if you got a 9xxx some day you could use it on that.

As I write & read my stats in open hardware monitor package temp on core 1-4 is currently 0-12c with a max of 34.6c just air cooled @4731mhz.

But if I crank up the juice and try to get 5ghz it exceeds recommended margins of 61.5c.

Trouble is, your 965 is already at 3.4Ghz, and many Phenom II CPU will not overclock as high as 4 Ghz. You could spend a lot of money on fans and cooler, and still only get a 10% performance increase......
Suggest you do an experiment. To find out if your CPU is good for overclocking, try temporarily overclocking your rig as it is.
Take the side off the case to help it stay cool, and set the CPU voltage to be fixed at whatever your stock voltage is. Watch the CPU temperature like a hawk. 65°C is the maximum.
If you can get a decent overclock to be stable for a few minutes on stock voltages, then it is worth investing in better cooling so you can crank the voltages up.
However, if you can't overclock your CPU or memory very much on stock voltages, you probably won't get a lot of benefit from more volts and more cooling.

If you torture your cpu in prime95 it will reveal any weaknesses in your hardware by simply freezing up.

It will tell you that when the load on your system gets higher say when a new game is released that gobbles up all your system resources, that your pc won't handle it.

I haven't quite figured out the fire triangle myself on my chip whether it's deformed, low binned or not enough voltage or too much temperature;

The temp. gets too high to unsafe levels before I can get the voltage up.

So the only thing I can do now is get a bigger heatsink and try it out and if the problem is a combination of the chip quality, voltage and temperature, and where it's tolerances lie, well then after that I'll just buy a higher binned chip because at the end of the day overclocking does add a nice touch of polish to most of the games in your inventory.

I will give you some advance warning tho- before you prime95 make sure that you do have a few extra fans huffing on it

because a torture test will stress your cpu beyond anything else you will run on your system

if you're running at 54c you can be practically guaranteed to rise beyond safe temps. on a torture test and your cpu might shut itself down and the system might freeze. It just means you have got problems with coolng to address that are not revealed at your ordinary workload.

As time goes on the demands of software increase on the system. When that happens that will be the point where your pc starts to go a bit wonky anyway, and you may not necessarily realise it's because it has underlying weaknesses that have not been uncovered until that moment.

I easily passed a torture at stock levels and voltages and stayed at 35c.

at 4.7ghz on the multiplier 23.5x200 I passed a torture test on it at 45c.

But at 4.7ghz using both the multiplier and the fsb to clock it up the temp. creeps up ever so slowly to that unsafe level of 61.5c

and I have a 160w cooler supplemented by a backplate cooler and a dozen fans huffing into the case and now I have a thermaltake case and the window is open in the cool evening air.

The only thing left I can attempt is more direct contact heatpipes such as those offered on the v8.

The temperature gradually creeps up in the room the pc is situated in. My central heating is off but the air inside is significantly warmer than the air outside even with the window open.

The other problem is the duty cycle. The temp range of my cpu operating on this system is 0c on the package to 55c right now as I am writing and torturing on prime95 4 threads.

The chip contracts and expands between those extremes. Insufficient cooling will shorten it's life if it's not kept at a more uniform average. temperature most of the time.

I just went out for 15minutes as I feel safeish at 4731mhz and it's still going but that will take another 1hr45mins to pass the amd club and if I up the vCore from 1.392max to 1.4016 or 1.428 or 1.44 or 1.452 it's very likely these will reach unsafe temps.

That's with a heatsink 35watts greater tdp than the rating of the cpu. 125watts cpu on 160watt heatsink. Plus a few other mods jury rigged on it.

The point I'm making is that a medium heatsink like the 160watts isn't good enough to reach a high overclock.


To get the max. overclock that you want you have to go large on your heatsink!


Also when you are torturing it at 100% your cpu is not strictly running at the exact clock speed and voltage you set it to. It's ~approx with a +/-margin of error so you could be getting spikes where you're ok at say 4.8 but when it spikes to 4.85 it just won't take any more.

So you just have to test it at every level and try to figure out what it can handle. If you don't have the equipment to do that to start with, such as the massive heatsink, how can you find out out?

Other people will just say something like 'every chip is different what worked for me won't work for you'.

And don't forget the most extreme overclockers who get over 8ghz with insane cooling like liquid nitrogen.

Your cpu can probably do a lot more but it's not standardized or rated to do it because there are problems at higher clocks such as power consumption increases and temp. is a huge problem where it runs pretty ok at stock levels it's rated to at room temp. with smaller power&heat requirements. That's why the manufacturer doesn't endorse overclocking. You have to do it on your own recognisance and be prepared for the problems, the bills, the heat, and if you're happy with it, then that's ok.

mate, like I said try overclocking with the cooler you have. You will get a good idea whether your CPU is a good overclocker or not, and if it gets a bit too hot, all you have to do is end the stress test.