inexperienced wanting guidance

joerilla · Sep 27, 2016

Hi, I am reasonably new to pc building in general, and have nearly finished my first build. However as I am with my cars and bikes, I love the idea of making what you have better, so in short what Im wanting to do a minor overclock of my system. My setup so far, which is used for gaming and whatever the hell the missus does whilst shes on it.
CPU: A10 7850K
Mobo: GA-F2A68HMDS2
RAM: 2* 8Gb G.Skill ripjaws DDR3 2133mhz
HDD: some old 2nd hand samsung sata 2 1tb
SSD: 128gb Samsung 850 Pro
PSU: Antec 450w
Cooler: CM Seidon 120 watercooler (not yet installed, but will be tomorrow lol)
GPU: onboard so far but will be getting RX460 (budget build so not going too much better than this for now.)

Currently, the CPU has its 4ghz turbo (obviously), at very least all I want to do is have it run at this frequency all the time, and if I can get away with it 4.3 ghz. I also want to overclock in the onboard GPU to about 1ghz until i have my card installed

My current understanding is that for me to achieve this I need to up the voltage of both the CPU and the northbridge, either via the BIOS or amd overdrive. From what I can tell atm in its stock form the CPU runs 1.362 on its usual 3.7, and ups to 1.437 when on turbo, and the standard NB voltage sits at 1.137. I have done some googling and some say that the NB needs to be in the vicinity of 1.35v or so to achieve what I am after, and I can only assume that i would need to set the CPU voltage at around 1.437 if im ging for 4ghz, or potentially 1.45 if im going for 4.3. Obviously over "volting" the CPU is death, but I am not sure of its tolerences.

I have also read that I need to set my northbridge frequency to match my ram, being 2134 (as it reads in the BIOS), Presently it is on its default 1800 (and 1.6v for DRam), which i tried to up to 2100 but upon restart the system wouldnt boot and gave me an error message. I only bring this up because when I read CPUZ or speccy (or anything else) it reads as 1064mhz (apparently because its dual channel) and I am unsure how these relate to one another in terms of overclocking.

Apologies for the long post but I am only wanting clarity on my own research, I realise that each setup is different but from what I have read on other items in this forum I am sure someone will have the expertise to help me out. Cheers and looking forward to answers.

Faux_Grey · Sep 27, 2016

Seeing as you have an APU, your heatsink is cooling both the CPU and graphics.
At the moment the built-in graphics are probably what's holding you back.
I would suggest leaving the CPU clock alone and rather just overclocking the graphics.

I've never overclocked any of my APUs before. (If a game is unplayable, a 5% overclock isn't going to make it magically playable)

But I believe it's done using the AMD overdrive tool: http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/technologies-gaming/over-drive

joerilla · Sep 27, 2016

Thanks for the answer mate, the OC for me is not so much to achieve a specific goal, more because i love tinkering and playing with things hahaha. Do you know if any voltages need to be changed for a gpu overclock? or roughly how much extra heat that could potentially produce?

herrwizo · Sep 27, 2016

I always recommend to inexperienced builders to stay as far away as possible from watercooling and overclocking of any kind. These things can cause issues even to very experienced people, so the first thing you need to do is build a rig and make sure it works. With stock AIR cooler and without any overclocking.

I would also like to support what Faux_Grey above told - don't overclock an APU and expect miracles. You should consider a decent GPU instead, at least if you plan to game in Full HD.

Bottom line is, I am not trying to discourage you in your attempts to learn more and tinker, hey, that's what most of the people on this forum like, after all. I merely tried to save you much trouble and potential issues all because of potential and negligible performance gains.

joerilla · Sep 27, 2016

cheers again, I dont know what went wrong but my stock air cooler is complete garbage, as i type this now with nothing else open it sits at around 67 degrees C, and have caught it in the 90s after playing half life for an hour. Have already bought the watercooler so in it goes, but went that road because after a bit of research it seemed more efficient both for power draw and cooling power. Went with a fully sealed from factory system because even though Ive done car cooling systems many times, im well aware of what can go wrong so I thought to leave the unit assembly to the pros (i assume). Im guessing from the 2 responses i have got though that "real world" effects of overclocking an APU aren't really noticable, even with my choice of GPU that I havent bought yet??

EDIT: Scrap the above temperature reading of 67C, apparently system tray temps freeze on what they were when you enable them :S

Faux_Grey · Sep 27, 2016

joerilla :

I would not advise changing voltages if it's your first time overclocking.
There's a lot of reading out there on the internet:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2749337/safe-gpu-overclocking-guide-2016.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saS8bFaBans
http://www.pcworld.com/article/198882/overclocking_for_newbies.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/
http://www.eteknix.com/amd-kaveri-a10-7850k-overclocking-unleashing-gcns-potential/

Overclocking integrated graphics is not the easiest thing because you have to deal with things like RAM speed, bus speed, IGD clock speed.. RAM latency, and voltages for all those components.
There's a lot of variables.

Most of the time when people are first overclocking it's with an intel K series processor, and it's very easy to do (2 variables: Multiplier & core voltage) while it can get very advanced too, as you learn more.

IMO first overclocking an AMD APU is the same as being thrown in the deep end.

If I were you, I'd just try to push the clock speed as high as it can go in AMD overdrive until things start breaking.

Heat output can increase exponentially depending on voltage and chip quality, as well as your CPU cooler.

AMD runs hotter than intel in the performance/heat ratio, so you'd need a good cooler for it.

herrwizo · Sep 27, 2016

Yeah, stock coolers can sometimes be very crappy. AIO watercooling systems like yours are considerably easier to setup than open-loop watercoolers, so you should have no issues with that.

First, try using the APU without any overclocking. It is simple - if performance is not satisfactory, overclocking won't save you, since you cannot gain much anyway. You will have to get a discrete graphics card. Try it out first - for many people APUs are good enough - it all depends on games played, resolution and level of details.

joerilla · Sep 27, 2016

"If I were you, I'd just try to push the clock speed as high as it can go in AMD overdrive until things start breaking"
sounds like something I would say when talking about Cars and Motorbikes hahaha.
Thanks for those resources mate I'll be sure to have a read of them all, to be honest I never originally planned on overclocking at all when I bought the APU, but as time goes on and you do more research and reading (the same occurs in the car world) you start thinking to yourself, "maybe I could do XYZ??" and other such thoughts.

joerilla · Sep 27, 2016

actually on a side note, do many APU owners set their clocks to permanantly be on the turbo setting? (through both frequency and CPU voltage)

Faux_Grey · Sep 27, 2016

Stock coolers, I've found they aren't actually complete garbage. (stock intel is perfectly fine for stock clocks)
But I've found that stock THERMAL PASTE to be absolute garbage.

Stock paste on any cooler is to be cleaned off and re-done.

When building systems I find stock coolers come with a pathetic amount of dry, incorrectly applied paste, and they expect you to use it. I've seen this on coolers from Intel's stock, all the way up to the top of the range corsair all-in-ones.

I don't find it uncommon if you have a huge drop in temperatures just from replacing the stock thermal paste that came with whatever cooler you're using.

joerilla · Sep 27, 2016

your probably not wrong grey, the cooler im using is whatever came with the processor. as for paste, i did a google at the time and apparently what felt like leftover glue was meant to be pre-applied thermal paste (there was no tube in the box). Thankfully this new cooler Ive bought comes with proper paste amongst other things, as I said even if its overkill, its bought, so its in there. on the topic of paste removal, do i need to get specific solution or can I use household substances readily available? (Im married with young kids so cleaning substances are a-plenty in my house)

Faux_Grey · Sep 27, 2016

joerilla :

Lots of people will suggest isopropyl alcohol or some such thing which I believe works well and evaporates quickly.

I've never had any issues using plain tissue paper and a small dab of water to clean paste off. (being careful not to get any water near any circuit boards)

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