Can I have some help overclocking my system?

[petecharles1]

Hi guys
I need some help overclocking my system
Specs

Phenom II X6 1045T
Kingston Value Ram 4GB DDR3 1333MHZ
ASROCK N68C-S UCC
NVIDIA 9500GT
Cooler Master 212 +
3 Case Fans

At idle i run at 18-21 degrees.

Can you guys recommend what to enter into my bios. Im looking for 3.1Ghz until i get my new Ram and Gfx card next week to go for 3.5GHZ. Before i tried to overclock to 3.1Ghz, downcloked ram to 1226Mhz, set voltage to 1.350 and ran prime for 30mins. It was running with prime at 29-32degrees, and then shut down by itself. Can you please help?

 

[Flakkattack]

If prime shut down by itself then there is either a setting that you set to only run for 30 minutes, or you are encountering errors that are causing the instability of your overclock. You should run prime95 for a lot longer than that (people have different opinions, I personally run between 10-12hrs on blend) to determine that your clock is stable. I dont have your chip so I really dont know too much about it nor the bios that you have on your mobo. But research, research, research. Thats what I did.
If you really are getting those kind of temperatures, you may be able to hit your target clock without having to wait for your ram and gpu. The blend test on prime95 will test a lot of things including the cpu clock and the ram at the same time, therefore allowing you to see if it is stable in its entirety on your system.

 

[petecharles1]

So sorry I wasnt clear. I didnt mention that it was my system shutting down by itself, not prime.

 

[Flakkattack]

Something is going wrong with a setting that you may have set in your bios or your clock/voltage is set too high/low. Could also even be something as far as a faulty or insufficient psu.

If the system is shutting down during the prime95 test (either small fft's or blend) then my first thought would be that the voltages might be off. As I mentioned, I am not familiar with that particular cpu, but overclocking in general is about the same. Increase the voltage with increase in core clock. Once it is stable, you can try to back down the voltages to decrease temperatures and power consumption (also increasing the life of the chip).

Try to reset everything back to default in the bios, then try to set a clock again.
Does your chip have an unlocked multiplier? If so, it could be as easy as setting the multiplier to 31 (3.1Ghz) and then testing stability. If that turns up as stable (I personally call a clock stable after 2 hrs small ffts, and 12-16hrs on blend) then you can decrease the voltage one step at a time, then retesting. It is kind of tedious, but the end results make it worth it.

You can become like me and become addicted to overclocking. Its pretty interesting when you get into the technicalities of it, and a sense of accomplishment upon completion. Ill help with anything else that you may have, trial and error my friend, youll get it!

 

[Flakkattack]

One other thing, I dont know if I would mess too much with the ram at first, that could possibly be the cause of the failures. I dont really have to mess with mine so I cant really say for certain. But I will say that the voltage seems high to me since im running an i5-2500k @ 4.5GHz with a vcore of 1.310v