New to Overclocking- General Inquires

[obubdeno]

Hey guys Im looking to do some overclocking to my System... My GTX 480 is a little bottlenecked at the moment and I don't understand some of the concepts with Voltage and Timings and what not. First off here is my rig:


CPU: Phenom II X4 945 (Im not sure what C revision I have)
Mobo: ASRock 970 Extreme3
GPU: EVGA GTX 480
Memory: 8 GB G.Skill Sniper Series - 2133
Heatsink: Hyper 212 Plus
PSU: Antec Earthwatts 650w
Case: NZXT M59
Ventilation: 5 Case Fans... (2 Intake 3 Exhaust)

Background Information:

Ram:
My Ram and Heatsink comes in today. I was using 4x2gb 1333 memory with all different voltages. This made the timings all weird and I did get a few BSOD but I overclocked the CPU so I don't know what the culprit is. Anyways I O/Cd the memory to 1600mhz and it was like DDR3-1200 or something like that. Voltage was 1.5v because one cards max voltage was 1.5v. All else were 1.55-1.75.

CPU:
My CPU I overclocked to 3.45ghz by simply going into my BIOS. I went to CPU Speed and hit +10% Performance and My BIOS and Utility App says im running at 3.499ghz. Temps on idle are around 35-40C with Loads from 47C-50C. This was on stock cooling and I am getting the 212+ today. Again... I received blue screens but I want to guess this is because of memory. Now I DID NOT mess with the multiplier or voltages or anything for the CPU except for the % to performance.


Now.. with this new cooler coming I want to push 3.65-3.8ghz on my 945. Temperature wise its possible. What do I need to mess with in terms of Voltages and Timing for the Memory. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[joedjnpc]

Hi fella,

Firstly, from my own experience stay away from automatic oc utilities, they cause serious stability and heat issues whenever I used them.

Secondly, I have no experience with the Phenom line, but when I started overclocking I googled guides and printed them out, there's tones out there.

You'll begin to see correlations between advice given in guides. Print a few out and (conservatively) try to find what settings best suit your chip best by testing. Starting minor and getting more aggressive as you get more familiar with your architecture.

There's a lot of reading if you want to do things properly, it's extremely hard to say in a short forum reply what exactly you'll need to set in your BIOS since everyone's setup isn't the same!

 

[joedjnpc]

Here's one I just found that seems good:

http://www.overclock.net/t/525113/phenom-ii-overclocking-guide

 

[obubdeno]

Will Do... I will say that Basically it wasn't Automatic OC Utilities... I just raised the Clock speed of the processor without touching the voltage...which i know isn't necessarily a bad thing especially for new comers. Where do you believe my stability issues are coming from at the moment?

 

[quilciri]

Yes, the memory overclock is what is most likely causing your blue screens. You won't see much performance increase from memory overclocking compared to CPU overclocking anyway. Unless you want to squeeze every last inch of performance out of the machine, you'll have a much easier time getting a worthwhile overclock if you decouple the RAM from the FSB increases and leave it at default speeds. (Can't remember exactly how to do that in that particular bios off the top of my head, I can give you more detail when I get home tonight if you still need to know.)

Since it's not a black edition, you won't be able to increase the multiplier, but you might be able to get a higher overclock by lowering the multiplier and increasing the FSB further.

The safe voltage ceiling for the phenom II's is about 1.45v. I personally don't recommend using te 1.5v in some overclocking guides because your "safe" voltage ceiling is dependent on your voltage regulator. The extreme 3's have a 4 phase regulator, which is ok, but not great (more phases = less voltage fluctuation).

good luck!

 

[DarkOutlaw]

This made the timings all weird and I did get a few BSOD but I overclocked the CPU so I don't know what the culprit is. Anyways I O/Cd the memory to 1600mhz and it was like DDR3-1200 or something like that.

For the good of your computer I suggest you undo everything you have done, and do not attempt anything that involves bios, overclocking, voltage, etc.

 

[obubdeno]

Eh... I mean I will get a BSOD once every few days, Im 100% trying to overclock and I will reset and start again, but I don't want to stay stock because I play CPU Intensive games and my GPU is not being used to anywhere near its potential.