Overclocking Help

[BitterRoot]

I'm running a Asus Crosshair v Formula/Thunderbird motherboard with a AMD Phenom II x4 980 BE CPU, 32 Gigs Kingston Hyper X 1333 MHz (16 usable due to Windows 7 Home. Will be getting Pro soon) Asus Radeon HD 7770 2GB video card and a Corsair H50 cooler. I'm needing suggestion on overclocking my system. I would like specifics like voltage, Ram timing, video card settings ect. I'm still new to the overclocking scene and would like some advice on how to overclock my set up to get the most out of it that I can and would like to know how long can I keep it overclocked for.

 

[airdeano]

bitter, we cant give you exact because each system is different.
what temperatures are you experiencing now with the H50 cooler under a load?
this can give us a baseline of what we might expect in temperature control.
first determine a baseline with stock..

youll need a temperature app (realtemp, HWMonitor...), a load app (prime95, OCCT...)

then increase multipler until the stability fails. after the fail, then increase CPU
voltage and retest. keep upping the voltage until it is stable again. still keep note
of temperatures. if the cores are 62° or hotter, then either the cooling solution is
weak or the overclock is volted to heavy. back off to last know stable overclock and
rethink cooling solution. once that has been upgraded, then re-attack the
overclock from last high-voltage stable try.

 

[Rich_]

do what airdeano said, also get something like msi afterburner and 3dmark11 for the video card (realtemp and hwmonitor are good for the phenom cpu).

For CPU, go up on clock speed in the bios until you are unstable on prime 95 then find the last stable clock speed. Do not raise voltages until you have read extensively and are familiar with it, raising the voltage will allow you to be stable where you were not stable before, but it comes at a cost, your cpu temperatures will rise, sometimes slightly, sometimes significantly, every chip is differnt. You will want your temperatures to remain under ~85-90c after prime 95 has been on for a couple hours. Raising voltages too much can burn your cpu and leave you without a computer, so read about it, and remember to have patience and do tiny tiny increments. Find a few people with the same 980 BE you have, and get an idea of what overclocks they've obtained and what voltages and temperatures they got, this will give you an idea of what to expect. Every chip is a little different, so find more than one person, I'm sure there's a few on these forums.

Same with the graphics card overclock, except you'll use msi afterburner to adjust clock speed instead of bios, and you'll use 3Dmark11 to test stability.