Beginner overclocking help

Although really, keep running that CPU at that voltage, it will die. Soon.

On idle it runs around 95 F and under load it goes up to 120-130 F. I have a gigabyte ga-ma790xt-ud4f motherboard, psu is a 600 w corsair and 4gb of cheap "Super Talent" ram That's everything I have changed.

By putting the voltage on the RAM a little bit higher, you may reach a better OC. Just like, .1v though. CHANGE THE CPU VOLTAGE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! YOU WILL KILL THE CHIP!   Kepp the voltage stock, and try to boot from there. When it crashes, raise it a little. But don't go past 1.45v. (.1v past stock) Now, if you get a crash, try raising that RAM voltage ONLY slightly. See if you get in to windows. Shoot for 3.8Ghz. Get back to me with what happens and how far you can get. Also, what are your temps in Celsius?

In celsius idle is 35 to 37 under load it's 48-53 and I reset all my settings to default.

Ok I can boot into windows on stock voltage but as soon as I ran prime 95 it bsod instantly. Even after raising my cpu voltage to 1.45 and my ram to 1.7 it only lasted 30 seconds.

Your CPU is also a C2 revision, which means it will not OC to 4Ghz very easily. You would be lucky if you got it there. Can you get it stable at 3.7Ghz? That is where a C2 chip will generally be at. 3.7-3.9Ghz. Try these settings: Auto voltage (MAKE SURE IT DOES NOT PASS 1.46V!), 2100Mhz NB, 1.7v memory, and that may do it. Monitor heat, voltage spikes, and VOLTAGE! Auto generally overvolts the CPU, but when I OCed yesterday (hit 4.4Ghz on auto easily) it actually was stable with a lower voltage that a fixed voltage I used.

In my bios I can't manually set the memory voltage and leave the rest auto but I set the nb to 2100 and not much changed.

Can you get to 3.7Ghz stable? If not, try 3.6Ghz. That looks like a pretty decent board. I don't know why it won't OC very well. Turn off Cool N Quite if you can too.

Why can't you manually set the memory voltage?

I can normally set the voltage but when I do i have to swich it from auto to manual on all the other things.

Oh, well then keep the RAM at stock voltages. Tell me if you can get 3.7 or 3.6Ghz stable.

Ok Should I be using the ratio multiplier or the clock control? And when I kept everything on auto and dropped the cpu frequency to 3.6 but it still crashes as soon as I hit start on prime 95. Here are the settings I used

Try OCCT. http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php?Download My Prime95 crashed after a while (about 5 hours) but the system didn't crash. My multiplier was also fluctuating. It was really weird, but when I used OCCT, my multiplier stayed at 44, and I got the whole 6.5 hours I set it for. Prime95 was interfering I think. It may be doing the same to your system. Also, using the multiplier is great, but you can also use the FSB. When using the FSB, tune your memory settings down. Meaning, run your memory slower, and the FSB increase can bring the memory speed up a little bit along with the CPU.

So, use OCCT, FSB a little, and tune the memory down a bit.

I doubt it but I have access to a amd athlon ii x4 635 2.9 Ghz, would that offer any more power/overclocking ability?

Did you use OCCT? The Athlon may yield better results. But keep in mind, it has a locked multiplier. Set your RAM speed down and then adjust the FSB.

Yes I tried OCCT i've had that installed for a while now I just never used it   It it lasted an hour but still bsod

Hm. Pop in the Athlon and see what you can get with that. Maybe for some weird reason your chip just doesn't like being overclocked.

Will do give me a few hours to get if my friend and I'll post back with results? Where should I start off at and what clocks are reasonable?
Everything here is stock.

Core voltage at 2.144volts? That was a insane voltage even for something like a 130nm athlonxp cpu.

That's directly from a HP pavilion desktop with just a stock cooler nothing has been changed.

The max voltage for that CPU is 1.25v. Either that CPU-Z is not reading the voltage correctly, or I am very surprised that CPU is not on fire. CHANGE IT QUICK! Check the BIOS or manually set the voltage! That is insane! For clocks, go by changing the FSB to 205, 210, 215, 220, etc. Also, change the memory down to 667, and if you pass 800Mhz on the memory with an initial setting of 667mhz, change it down t 533. What cooler again?

I can't change it since it's a HP computer and the bios is locked. and it's on the stock cooler from HP

Well, you can't overclock an HP anyway. Take the Athlon and put it into your machine.

When I put the phenom into the hp it wouldn't boot past the windows loading screen so that idea is bust.

That is strange. ;/ Hm. Well, you can try tuning the FSB instead of the multiplier. That is my best idea.

Try another cpu monitor, a different one to confirm the voltage. It might be a cpu-z glitch too.

-I would do some troubleshooting, and fast before it cooks itself. If cpu-z is telling you the truth it might already be cooked.

i found this because my AMD Phenom ii x4 830 is at 2.144 voltage too! also an HP desktop! im like WTFFFF!!!

Best answer selected by laptop4079.