When should I increase voltages?

[acer0169]

Hi all,
First post on the forums so I'll try not to sound too much like an idiot .

I'm currently running a AMD 5600+ Dual Core (2.8 @ 2.9) air cooled, which does me fine.. I mean I can play crysis and gta4 etc and have never really had any issues with the chip, but I'm soon to get a nice AMD Phenom X4 9750 2.4GHz.

I'm hoping to overclock the new Quad chip to 3GHz, with the help of a Bigwater 760i kit. But I was wondering, when should I increase voltages?

I'm overclocking my current CPU a tiny bit, but just by increasing the bios settings and not anything to do with voltages etc. I've been using the bios for CPU and Rivatuner for my graphics cards for ages but have never looked into voltage changes.

When should I start increasing the volts?
Cheers, acer.

 

[jsc]

You raise the FSB (this doesn't exactly apply to AMD CPU's or the Intel i7) and test - usuallly with Prime95. If it's stable, raise the FSB a little again. Sooner or later, the results won't be stable. Raise the voltage a little. Test. Repeat until it takes a fairly large voltage increase to get a small frequency increase. Stop there.

All of the time, you need to monitor temperatures. And you should keep the CPU voltage under the manufacturer's maximum recommended voltage.

Obviously the type of cooling you have will affect how far you can go. So will your choice of cases. Some cases simply have more airflow than others. For that matter, the amount of noise you are willing to endure has a big effect.

And if you are going to water cool, I'd recommend replacing the outlet that you are going to use to power your computer with a GFCI outlet. It's a little extra insurance if you spring a leak.

 

[acer0169]

Thank you JSC,
I'll try this out when I get my new chip.

I constantly check temps with EVEREST Ultimate and even if I know I could go further I never like my chips to go above 55ish under load.

I have great airflow in my case, using some powerful 120mm fans (four of them) for intake and exhaust.

I'm also needing to buy a 1000W PSU when I upgrade my computer so I'll look into safer supplies etc. Thanks again (Y).