Help me with my OC

[cheti]

Hey, so im trying to get the max out of my FX-8120 on a 990FXA-UD3 but im failing miserably.


The max 24/7 stable OC that i can get is 4.0ghz at 1.35V (20x200) (1600mhz corsair vengeance 8gb)

Now when i try to aim for 4.4/4.6 then i just cant get there no matter how high i raise my volts.
I did get a semi-stable oc of 4.4ghz at 1.425V (20.5x215) (1333mhz memory)

But thats about it, can any1 help me ? I want to aim for atleast like 4.4 to 4.8 range.

 

[mcnumpty23]

have you got a decent heatsink?

heres an overclocking guide for 8120

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=688663

 

[cheti]

i have a cm hyper 212 evo yep, temps are fine its just the wall i cant get past

 

[cheti]

in the OC guide it says 1.45v at 4.5ghz

i cant even get that with the same settings as he has.

 

[mcnumpty23]

every cpu is different

maybe you got a poor overclocking one

 

[cheti]

you sure its not cause of the mobo ? cause if its not about the mobo im gonna get a 8350.
if its about the mobo then ill get a 3570k+z77x-d3h

 

[mcnumpty23]

not familiar with the board

but did find this for that board

If you do overclock with this board, it’s important that you go into the BIOS and set “APM” off, and set the Load Line Calibration at a pretty high level to maintain stable voltage.

 

[cheti]

i have a 1.0rev of this board and there is no LLC.

Whats APM tho ?

 

[mcnumpty23]

apm is Application Power Management

dont know what it actually does and if its in your revision 1.0 board bios

edit--no llc may be part of your problem as vdroop may be causing voltage drop

so voltage in windows may be lower than you set in the bios

check voltage under load with cpuz to see if its less than in the bios

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Overclocking by Mousemonkey

 

[steddora]

It sounds like you've hit the limit on either the motherboards ability to push power to the chip or in fact the chip is just not going to make it that far.

Vdroop is where a processor pulls power at a certain rate and the motherboards ability to stabilize the voltage isn't good enough to keep consistent voltages. Even if you are pushing say 1.4v at idle it may drop clear to 1.35v at full load. This is what LLC is for. If your motherboard doesn't have it; that does kind of suck as overclocking with touchy voltage amounts gets really difficult. If the motherboard just can't keep up then it may be the motherboard being the issue. I've actually had a couple motherboards that just couldn't handle the pressure of large wattage processors. Once you start overclocking them the VRM's just get pounded and don't do a good job keeping a stable voltage through the processor. This is where motherboard quality comes into play a LOT.

As for the CPU, each chip is different. While one 8210 chip might do 4Ghz at 1.35v, another chip may need 1.4v just to boot at 4Ghz. So it's one of the two but from what I see; it's probably the chip being nasty.

I'm not real familiar with that chip and haven't used that motherboard at all. But see where the "Safe" limit is for that CPU and if you can run the voltage and clock it; try it. From what I see with a quick google search cheti pretty much nails it. 1.45v for around 4.5Ghz. So you're looking at really getting that voltage up on the chip just to get it near 4.5Ghz. Now remember, just because someone else hit 4.5Ghz at 1.45v doesn't mean your chip will.