Overclocking AMD Phenom II X3 - What Component is Failing?

[matthewk01]

Hi
I cant seem to get my phenom II X3 720 running stably past 3.5GHz, and am wondering which part of my pc is failing. Here are my specs:

-AMD Phenom II X3 720 running at 1.5v with the multiplier set to 17.5
-Coolermaster Hyper 212
-Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 1066 running at 2.1v
-Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H with the FSB set to 201
-ATI Radeon 4670
-2 Samsung 160GB SATA drives running in RAID
-Great Wall 550W Power Supply

If I raise the multiplier or FSB even just by 1 the computer will blue screen after say an hour or shortly into running a resource intensive program. Im pretty sure it is not CPU temp. related as there is no noticeable temperature rise before the system blue screens. So I'm wondering if it is my cheap motherboard or the pretty much generic power supply maybe?

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks

 

[photonboy]

You do realize that for games your CPU when paired with that graphics card will provide no benefit by being overclocked?

You are limited by your graphics card. Also, how high do you expect to get your CPU?

I recommend setting your CPU to no more than 3.2GHz.

If you want your games to run better you need more graphics power.

 

[mindless728]

the psu is more than likely not the problem, but i would swap it for a quality on eg corasair seasonic pc power & cooling

my guess is you are at the limit with your chip @ 1.5v, now i wouldn't try to increase the vcore since it is so high

though phtonboy is correct, there is no point in OC'ing your cpu since it won't help much in games with such a low end GPU

 

[matthewk01]

thanks for your reply's
the computer isn't used for games. I have read reviews for the phenom 720 that it can easily get to 3.8GHz and am wondering why I cant.

 

[juncwil]

Possibly the mobo is limiting your OC since its not a good mobo for OCing. Also if you have trouble raising the FSB, try lowering the multiplier as well before. Don't forget to change your RAM settings as well if you increase your FSB by significant amount.

 

[matthewk01]

right so should i bother upgrading the PSU?
thanks

 

[matthewk01]

and also sorry but should i leave the northbridge voltage as or boost it uP?
thanks

 

[blackpanther26]

well increasing your northbridge would help too. Maybe about 200MHz more of an overclock.