Not much idea what i'm doing OCing, Why did it fail the test?

[tomdabomb]

On Sunday, i tried overclocking my AMD FX 8120, Being very new to overclocking i decided to stay low at about 3.7ghz. The next day i did some research and overclocked it to 4.2ghz. Being the obsessed gamer I am, i didn't run any tests or do anything to make sure it was stable, I just kept an eye on the heat, which stayed around 16 degrees, and played. It didn't crash, overheat or anything like that.

Today when i did a AIDA64 test it got about 8 minutes into the test and then said it had a hardware failure.

What I did.
Turn off cool and quiet.
Turn off C1E
Put the multiplyer to 20.5
Up the BUS to 207
Make the Memory the right speed. (I think i screwed this up)

Please tell me what i have to do to make it stable.
And what would happen if i use it and it's not stable?
If you need to see a picture of my BOIS settings then i can take a photo of that for you.
Specs:


And help would be great.
-Tom

 

[amuffin]

First of all, you don't have the temp of 16C. Bulldozer idle temps are screwy.

Basically this means you need more voltage to get that OC stable.

 

[inzone]

This is exactly what happens when someone will just put in a random number to overclock instead of taking the time to do a proper overclock.
Overclocking is a time consuming tedious process and requires a lot of patience but if done right then you only have to do it once and the end result is a solid , stable overclock that you can enjoy and not have to be constantly worrying about crashing. There are some stickys at the top of this forum that will help you to get a good idea of what you need to do. A cpu is a complex piece of hardware that you need to treat as such and if you damage it you'll be buying another one so it's worth being careful with what you do with it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/274820-29-black-edition-overclock-raising-multiplier-guide

 

[inzone]

If you decide to just add some voltage to get the overclock stable , don't just add any number , go with the next increment , it doesn't take much voltage to get the cpu stable and the least amount that you can use the better.

 

[tomdabomb]

If you decide to just add some voltage to get the overclock stable , don't just add any number , go with the next increment , it doesn't take much voltage to get the cpu stable and the least amount that you can use the better.

This may sound very dumb... but is the voltage the multiplier?
As i said, i am very new to this.

 

[inzone]

The voltage and the multiplier are two seperate options but you have to use both to do the overclock.

 

[tomdabomb]

Best answer selected by tomdabomb.