Should I OC/All or Some?

[Dongle]

Hello! I return to these wonderful forums to ask in the correct section about some tips on my specific rig.
-AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
-G.Skill 2x2GB (PC 10666 I believe) 1333mhz (set to 1600 in BIOS)
-ASUS 4870 HD 1GB
-ASUS 790gx (M4A78T-E)
-Rosewill BRONZE 650w (I think?)
-ASUS 22" flatscreen 1920x1080 res
-640GB Western Digital Caviar Black
-Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
-Xigmatek Dark Knight CPU Cooler
-Case has 2 intake and 2 exhaust fans

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to OC'ing but I have all of these programs that offer simple/more precise overclockingl (i.e., Tubro V, QButton, ATI crap, EPU). My reason for questioning the OC'ing is I don't feel my computer is running as well as it could, without blowing it up mind you. Should I even worry about OC'ing and if anyone can offer some insight to which of all the programs on my computer I use what do I OC (ram, GPU, CPU) and how much or which settings?

 

[BradyT88]

This is a very open ended question, but in general, you get the most benefit from OCing your CPU and then your GPU. OCing ram gives you a little boost but in most cases, nothing major. As long as your Xigamatek is seated properly, I would go ahead and set your CPU voltage at 1.4v or 1.5v in your bios and start increasing your multiplier 1 at a time and run prime 95 small FFT and watch your temps. If they get up to 60+ you may want to drop the voltage a little. I would run each test for at least 1 hour (24 is considered the standard for stable). Keep doing this until you get an error, then drop the multiplier back by one and run the test for 6 to 24 hours and if it passes then try blend test for 6 to 24 hours. If that passes then you could play with the ref clock from there to get a little more boost If that fails then drop the multi again and run the tests again... For the GPU, download GPU Tool (unless you have a better program for changing the settings on the GPU) and OCCT. Increase the core clock by increments of 5 or 10 and run OCCT's GPU test for about 10 minutes or so and if there is no error keep going (your shader clock must be twice what your core is, so you may want to do the shader OC first, same way). Once you hit an error back off the clock by 5 and run it for a few hours. Keep this up until it is stable. Then do the same for the GPU memory, OCCT has a GPU mem test as well. Once you have found the maxes of all 3, turn them all up together and run the test for a few hours as well

Hope that wasn't too long and dull.
If this was too simplified and general, just look up some guides. There's plenty out there.

Good luck with OC

 

[jsc]

Learn to use the BIOS. You should not Windows utilities to OC your CPU.

Good place to start:
Overclocking Athlons
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-overclock-athlon,2161.html

Then look for a specific guide for your motherboard.

 

[henrystrawn]

You have all the right hardware.

I run my 955 BE C3 stepping at 3.8 Ghz, 24/7. I am stable at 4 ghz, but according to benchmarks I don't gain much. Just watch your CPU temps and stop at 62c max. I just used multiplier only, and reduced my CPU voltage until unstable, and called it good.

Nice rig. Have a great time with it. There's plenty of guides around.

EDIT: and listen to jsc, use bios for your overclock, OS based OC utilities are not as reliable.

 

[zerkerdude]

Aye use your BIOs and just adjust multiplier .5 at a time and test. To keep an eye on things I used cpuid(temps),cpu-z,performance test7(benchmark),Prime95(stress test)and memtest4(bootable software that tests ram). Careful with the voltages I wouldnt recommend increasing them unless you have really good temps, decreasing them a little should decrease temps and may allow you to increase freq. Just do it a little at a timeand one setting at a time and record your baselines and temps ect.. Goodluck man looks like a great rig.

 

[Dongle]

Thank you everyone who provided some feedback. I am going to check out some of those programs and read up on some of the guides before I initially start anything. My temps at low fan speed for my case are 30-34 C MB/CPU Idle, 40 C GPU idle. I haven't noticed how warm they get while gaming but I don't think it's been anything noticeable. Thanks again for the feedback everyone.

 

[BradyT88]

If you use HWMonitor, which is made by cpuid, it will report the min and max as well as the current temps so you can see how hot things got during games and such.