How to air OC an AMD FX-4100

[12pak]

Here is my setup:

AMD FX-4100
Hyper 212 EVO
Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3
G-Skill 8 gigs DDR3 (defaulted at 1333 mhz)
Gigabyte GTX 560
Toughpower 750 watt psu

Based on that, is there an expert here that can help me OC the CPU a bit? I know next to nothing about overclocking, but I only want to OC the CPU. Overclocking RAM is too complicated for me, and the Graphics card is too expensive, so I don't want to mess with those. I'm dissapointed with this AMD FX-4100 (should have done more research before buying) and will probably spring for a different CPU within a few months, so I would like to take this opportunity to learn how to OC a CPU. I realize there are probably 3 million posts about OC'ing a cpu on here, but I am wondering if there is someone that has already overclocked one of these 4100's in particular yet. I've seen reports on various websites of folks getting these things waaaaaaay up in the 4's and I'd like to get a piece of that. Thanks in advance for any takers.

 

[need4speeds]

-Disable "turbo core".

The gigabyte board has a setting for max power. Increase this so the cpu does not throttle.

-In hardware monitor in the bios, set the max fan temp to 50C. restart and look in the bios again, change the fan speed and temp settings until it runs reasonably quiet but keeps the cpu below 50C.

Increase the v-core by 0.050 volts.

-Go into the bios and Verify the cpu voltage in the hardware monitor and cpu temp before doing any of the overclocking below.

-Since the multiplier is unlocked on this cpu, just increase the multi by 1 untill windows fails to boot or there is a bsod or error.

-turn the system off by holding the power button. Then let it cool down for about 10 mins.

-turn the system back on and go into the bios, dont let windows boot.

-Set the multi back down by 1. This will lower the cpu speed by 1 times the fsb speed.

-Start windows, if there are no errors, test it with a couple of games. If it seems to be running ok restart and go into the bios.

-Increase the fsb by 5mhz until windows has a error again. Shut down and wait for it to cool, Go into the bios and lower the fsb by 10mhz. The cpu along with the ht bus, mem, chipset will all get a small speed increase this way.

- Start windows and if there are no errors boot into the bios and check the temps in the hardware monitor. Make sure they are below 55C. Under 50C is more ideal.

-Test they cpu with a few game benchmarks, prime 95, don't run the benchmarks for more than 20 mins since it does work the cpu at 100% load.

-If there are errors, drop the fsb by 5mhz and try again.

-If the computer fails to start after a failed overclocking setting, keep trying to start the computer by hitting the power button, it should bail and bring you to a screen saying you overclocking failed.

-As a last resort push the bios reset button on the board. You shouldn't have to do this on most boards.

 

[12pak]

Awesome, sounds simple enough. Ill get to work on it tommorrow and let you know how it goes.

 

[full_out]

Not sure how it went with you. But just so everyone knows I OC'd my FX-4100 up to 4.6ghz with a 0.05 voltage bump. Played BF3 and Skyrim for about 4 hours last night fully stable This CPU runs very cold even with a 1.0ghz OC! It would boot to windows with 4.8ghz but wouldn't pass Prime95.

My system:
FX-4100 - OC'd 4.6ghz
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD990FX
Corsair Vengeance 2X4GB - 1600mhz (soon to be OC'd)
Sapphire 5850's Crossfired - OC'd 891mhz/4700mhz
Corsair Cooling Air Series A50 Performance CPU Cooler
CX600 Corsair PS
Antec 300 Case