Hey!
While I've build a couple of rigs, I have never before dared or at least bothered to try any overclocking. In fact it has been a while since I've done much anything besides very light gaming on the notebook I use for school. As I now got some spare time I wanted to catch up on some gaming, as such I wanted a desktop PC.
I didn't want some big monstrosity nor did I feel like breaking the bank. Furthermore I had been caught up in the E3 excitement especially the the idea of an APU had caught my mind, so I soon found out that APUs had already been around for some time, though obviously it was still not very impressive in terms of performance, but it seemed it should be able to serve my needs. Plus in terms of power consumption it wasn't too shabby. While gaming PCs generally doesn't have huge impact on electricity bills, I still appreciate a bit of energy efficiency.
I had come across this performance test which ended up as my basis for the build.
I used both some spare components and some new, overall it ended up costing me around $300.
I have already overclocked it a bit and the system seems stable at least there doesn't seem to be any system slowdown. But as I've said I'm basically a newb when it comes to overclocking. And it is all still pretty confusing. I expected to only need to do the overclocking in the BIOS but was confused by the names of the different BIOS settings, in particular I expected to be able to overclock the GPU but found only something called GFX Engine Clock, I thought It had to be related to the 8760D but was confused by the fact that the clock was set to 760 MHz as I had expected it to be 884 MHz. I've tweaked around with it as much as I dared but still feel it is all a bit vague, besides the "wrong" GFX engine clock have put me off a bit, and made wonder if other aspect aren't what they appear to be.
I'm attaching some screen captures to give you an overview of what I have done.
I used AMD Overdrive as the IGP (though I kinda thought this was on the motherboard) had the right Stock Clock and overclocked it to 1014 as in the Performance test but now it seems to have changed to the same "scale" as in the BIOS GFX Engine Clock.
Another screen capture, just to show that I have set the Northbridge to the same speed as the XMP RAM profile speed as described in the aforementioned performance test. (though I did this in the BIOS).
I would like to show you some screen capture of the BIOS, but I don't have a camera at hand right now.
My goal is to have System and BIOS profile optimized for gaming - like a high performance profile. And one low power profile for when I might not be actively using it, but while it is still able to download with minimal power consumption. I had expected to only need to use Asrock Extreme Tuner, but if I have to use AMD Overdrive it it loses a bit of the simplicity.
Screen captures of AXTU in case it might be useful. OC DNA is for switching between BIOS profiles.
I wasn't sure where to post this but thought It was mostly related to GPU overclocking. I apologise if I'm wrong.
In any case I would appreciate any help I can get (especially related to overclocking and voltages, but any tips and suggestions are welcome), and I learn something for future projects.
While I've build a couple of rigs, I have never before dared or at least bothered to try any overclocking. In fact it has been a while since I've done much anything besides very light gaming on the notebook I use for school. As I now got some spare time I wanted to catch up on some gaming, as such I wanted a desktop PC.
I didn't want some big monstrosity nor did I feel like breaking the bank. Furthermore I had been caught up in the E3 excitement especially the the idea of an APU had caught my mind, so I soon found out that APUs had already been around for some time, though obviously it was still not very impressive in terms of performance, but it seemed it should be able to serve my needs. Plus in terms of power consumption it wasn't too shabby. While gaming PCs generally doesn't have huge impact on electricity bills, I still appreciate a bit of energy efficiency.
I had come across this performance test which ended up as my basis for the build.
I used both some spare components and some new, overall it ended up costing me around $300.
- SilverstoneSugo SG05-B - 300W PSU
- Thermatake - Water 2.0 Pro with 2x Gentle Typhoon
- Obviously AMD A10 6800K CPU
- 2x 4GB Kingston HyperX Predator Beast DDR3 - 2133 MHz (2400 XMP)
- 256 GB Sandisk SSD
- Asrock - FM2A85X-ITX
I have already overclocked it a bit and the system seems stable at least there doesn't seem to be any system slowdown. But as I've said I'm basically a newb when it comes to overclocking. And it is all still pretty confusing. I expected to only need to do the overclocking in the BIOS but was confused by the names of the different BIOS settings, in particular I expected to be able to overclock the GPU but found only something called GFX Engine Clock, I thought It had to be related to the 8760D but was confused by the fact that the clock was set to 760 MHz as I had expected it to be 884 MHz. I've tweaked around with it as much as I dared but still feel it is all a bit vague, besides the "wrong" GFX engine clock have put me off a bit, and made wonder if other aspect aren't what they appear to be.
I'm attaching some screen captures to give you an overview of what I have done.
I used AMD Overdrive as the IGP (though I kinda thought this was on the motherboard) had the right Stock Clock and overclocked it to 1014 as in the Performance test but now it seems to have changed to the same "scale" as in the BIOS GFX Engine Clock.
Another screen capture, just to show that I have set the Northbridge to the same speed as the XMP RAM profile speed as described in the aforementioned performance test. (though I did this in the BIOS).
I would like to show you some screen capture of the BIOS, but I don't have a camera at hand right now.
My goal is to have System and BIOS profile optimized for gaming - like a high performance profile. And one low power profile for when I might not be actively using it, but while it is still able to download with minimal power consumption. I had expected to only need to use Asrock Extreme Tuner, but if I have to use AMD Overdrive it it loses a bit of the simplicity.
Screen captures of AXTU in case it might be useful. OC DNA is for switching between BIOS profiles.
I wasn't sure where to post this but thought It was mostly related to GPU overclocking. I apologise if I'm wrong.
In any case I would appreciate any help I can get (especially related to overclocking and voltages, but any tips and suggestions are welcome), and I learn something for future projects.
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