Phenom II x4 965, trying to reach 4.0ghz

[RTWM]

Hello, i am new here and this site was recommended by a friend. so thanks for having me. i want to start off by saying that i am between Noob and Intermediate when it comes to OC'ing. i'm sure theres alot more i can learn. Right lets get down to business..

My Goal: is to OC a Phenom II x4 965 140w 3.4ghz up to 4.0ghz stable or higher

i've tried a few times and gotten decent results but nothing stable and i don't want to damage my system. would like expert help if possible.

here are my main specs also can provide detailed info if requested.

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 140w tdp

COOLER: Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme w/AS5

MOBO: Asus M4A78T-E AM3 790GX

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600mhz @ 7-8-7-24 Timings

PSU: Rosewill Xtreme Series RX850-S-B 850w

GRAPHICS: 2x Radeon HD 5870's in CF mode

1. His brand

2. Sapphire brand

Both are running at stock speeds of 850mhz Core & 1200mhz Memory

well thats the majority i'll spare you the case/fan and HD's. i hope i made it easy to read and clear as to what i'm trying to do. thanks for reading and thanks in advance to anyone who can help me acheive my goal.

 

[Stryker64]

This might help you.

http://www.techreact...ing-essentials/

But a few questions, How are you overclocking are you ramping up the FSB or just increasing the multiplier? Have you tried overvolting? What temps are you getting?

If you are doing FSB overclocking you might want to loosen the timings on your RAM to see if it's the RAM or CPU that's causing the crashes.

Side note: May want to consider getting a higher end PSU or motherboard, but these are only a last resort.

 

[RTWM]

Hi Zeals thanks for the link i read it all.

i have tried both, Multiplier OC which i got as high as 19x200 3.8ghz which seemed stable 19.5 is unstable seems better at 1.5vcore though but still unstable.

i have also tried FSB OC the closest i got i think was FSB:206mhz, Multi: 19.5 which is 4017mhz but it put my ram at 1688 or 1686mhz and the NB/HTlink at 2100mhz each and 1.5vcore still. was stable for a few minutes then crashed.

temps are good idle @33 c stock 35c on OC temps have not gone above 47c even on OC so far usually crashes before temp rises above that.

1. i wanted to keep the ram at those timing but, if i loosen the timings will it still come out faster with the OC?

2. aida64 shows my dram/fsb ratio as 24/6 can i change that so my ram wont OC as much to possibly make it more stable?

3. the link states to try to find max ram and NB clocks before OC'ing cpu cores, how can i go about doing that?

4. is NB and HT Link speed supposed to be the same in mhz all the time or are they two different values that affect different things?

as a side note alot of my voltages in bios are on auto as i didnt want to fudge anything, i think this is also holding me back a bit

i like my PSU its held strong but hear ya on the mobo but its all i have right now

sry for long posts and questions, hopefully you guys can stick with me untill i get a good OC. i know its not easy to get 4ghz with this chip but it would be a great acheivment for me. thanks again in advance.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Hi Zeals thanks for the link i read it all.

i have tried both, Multiplier OC which i got as high as 19x200 3.8ghz which seemed stable 19.5 is unstable seems better at 1.5vcore though but still unstable.

i have also tried FSB OC the closest i got i think was FSB:206mhz, Multi: 19.5 which is 4017mhz but it put my ram at 1688 or 1686mhz and the NB/HTlink at 2100mhz each and 1.5vcore still. was stable for a few minutes then crashed.

temps are good idle @33 c stock 35c on OC temps have not gone above 47c even on OC so far usually crashes before temp rises above that.

1. i wanted to keep the ram at those timing but, if i loosen the timings will it still come out faster with the OC?

2. aida64 shows my dram/fsb ratio as 24/6 can i change that so my ram wont OC as much to possibly make it more stable?

3. the link states to try to find max ram and NB clocks before OC'ing cpu cores, how can i go about doing that?

4. is NB and HT Link speed supposed to be the same in mhz all the time or are they two different values that affect different things?

as a side note alot of my voltages in bios are on auto as i didnt want to fudge anything, i think this is also holding me back a bit

i like my PSU its held strong but hear ya on the mobo but its all i have right now

sry for long posts and questions, hopefully you guys can stick with me untill i get a good OC. i know its not easy to get 4ghz with this chip but it would be a great acheivment for me. thanks again in advance.

Your CPU/NB (not HT link, that's seperate again) is almost as important as CPU speed.

Concentrate on a higher CPU/NB, stay at 3.8/ 3.9 on the CPU itself. I have mine at 3Ghz, you should be able to get at least 2.4Ghz.

CPU/NB should be 1.5x your DRAM frequency or you won't fully utilise your DRAM's speed.

 

[Stryker64]

Well under the BIOS there should be CPU Clock Multiplier, CPU Northbridge Freq. The CPU Northbridge is what you use to overclock your NB.

Basically you need to increase the NB multiplier until your system becomes unstable then you need to drop the multiplier and start increasing your FSB and find the limit of your NB. Ideally you want over 2400MHz for 1600MHz RAM. Try loosening the timings to 8-8-8-24, in the real world you shouldn't see any difference between 7-8-7-24 and 8-8-8-24. You can try tightening the timings later on, but when you're finding your max overclock bus speed you want loose timings.

Just try these settings, it's basically a stab at the dark. FSB 225, multiplier @ 18. You'll then want your NB to be @ 12, because NB should be 3 times your RAM speed, which is 4 times the bus speed. RAM @ 8-8-8-24 and if it works, then tighten the timings.

But this is like a short cut and it might lead to you having to pull out the motherboard battery and resetting the BIOs settings.

 

[RTWM]

Well under the BIOS there should be CPU Clock Multiplier, CPU Northbridge Freq. The CPU Northbridge is what you use to overclock your NB. Basically you need to increase the NB multiplier until your system becomes unstable then you need to drop the multiplier and start increasing your FSB and find the limit of your NB. Ideally you want over 2400MHz for 1600MHz RAM. Try loosening the timings to 8-8-8-24, in the real world you shouldn't see any difference between 7-8-7-24 and 8-8-8-24. You can try tightening the timings later on, but when you're finding your max overclock bus speed you want loose timings. Just try these settings, it's basically a stab at the dark. FSB 225, multiplier @ 18. You'll then want your NB to be @ 12, because NB should be 3 times your RAM speed, which is 4 times the bus speed. RAM @ 8-8-8-24 and if it works, then tighten the timings. But this is like a short cut and it might lead to you having to pull out the motherboard battery and resetting the BIOs settings.

ok starting to understand the deeper meaning of this, although you lost me when you said my NB should be at 12 as i do not have a NB multiplier in my bios also once i change my cpu bus frequency the bios automatically changes my dram freq, cpu/nb freq etc for example when setting bus to 225 my dram changed to 1800mhz and cpu/nb freq changed to 2250mhz.

also i tried your shot in the dark with these settings along with loosening ram to 88824 and all i got was a black screen no post, which sucked because i had to take my 2nd gpu out to get at the cmos batt, but oh well. back up and running again and everything seems ok. do you think i need to update my bios ?

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

ok starting to understand the deeper meaning of this, although you lost me when you said my NB should be at 12 as i do not have a NB multiplier in my bios also once i change my cpu bus frequency the bios automatically changes my dram freq, cpu/nb freq etc for example when setting bus to 225 my dram changed to 1800mhz and cpu/nb freq changed to 2250mhz.

also i tried your shot in the dark with these settings along with loosening ram to 88824 and all i got was a black screen no post, which sucked because i had to take my 2nd gpu out to get at the cmos batt, but oh well. back up and running again and everything seems ok. do you think i need to update my bios ?

Your RAM was way too far above it's rated speed, that's why it failed. Either use 200 or 250Mhz BUS or else you'll end up with odd frequencies for everything. Your DRAM should be <1600Mhz and I recommend you run 12-12-12-36 or something ridiculously slack until you find your max stable clocks for everything else. Also give your NB (not CPU/NB) some extra volts. If it comes at 1.1 stock, give it 1.3v if you are running 250Mhz BUS, then if you are running high multiplier try to find 'CPUVDDA' and bump it up a notch or two.

 

[RTWM]

Your RAM was way too far above it's rated speed

i though that was the case as 2000mhz OC on ram would be beastly Ram OC lol but gave it a go anyway, learn the hard way i guess but lesson learned. today i am gonna tinker some more and try to find my max NB and BUS speeds hopefully i'll have some more useful info on my next post

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

You most likely wont with a 790 board. I had a Crosshair formula 3 with a 790FX chip and 965cpu and it was designed from the ground up to overclock BUT I could only hit 3.9 stable. It wasn't till I got a 990FX that I was able to hit 4+ghz.

 

[chudley]

If you go to the OC3D bench team forum section and look for the threads that state AMD overclocking you will pick loads up from there.

A few of us were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to do some OC'ing courtesy of OC3D, all our results were posted there along with plenty of top tips.

PCTwin, BigIan, Marsey and strawbs as well as myself all done some tampering. Whilst the CPU and boards were different the idea is the same. I have all my logs on sheets of paper and will dig them out for you and show "My" process of increasing speeds.

Happy reading

Chudley

 

[MrWizard]

You most likely wont with a 790 board. I had a Crosshair formula 3 with a 790FX chip and 965cpu and it was designed from the ground up to overclock BUT I could only hit 3.9 stable. It wasn't till I got a 990FX that I was able to hit 4+ghz.

I beg to differ. I have a 965 BE running on a ASUS M4A79T Deluxe and i can reach 4.3 stable just buy bumping the multiplier all the rest is set to auto exept the ram wich is OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) Model OCZ3P16004GK 9-9-9-24 1T 1600 the only issue i had was the stock cooler the temps were 60c+ under load. Now i tried the same thing with some new CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB 1600 Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B

with the same setup as they are rated the same at the same timings and the system would boot but lock once windows was loaded. I dont think the chipset is the issue

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

I beg to differ. I have a 965 BE running on a ASUS M4A79T Deluxe and i can reach 4.3 stable just buy bumping the multiplier all the rest is set to auto exept the ram wich is OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) Model OCZ3P16004GK 9-9-9-24 1T 1600 the only issue i had was the stock cooler the temps were 60c+ under load. Now i tried the same thing with some new CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB 1600 Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B

with the same setup as they are rated the same at the same timings and the system would boot but lock once windows was loaded. I dont think the chipset is the issue

Which is why I said "most likely" which means their is a slim chance it will work. All I am saying is is getting a 990FX will increase your chances quite a bit. Like for me, my 790fx board would only do 3.9 stable. I was able to hit 4.2 stable with a 990fx board easy.

 

[RTWM]

Ok sorry for the delay, for the comments about the 790gx not being capable idk hopefully i will still be able but will be tough. So i set out to find my max NB and Max FSB clocks and this may be unconventional but i started with the tightest timings as i wanted to learn what effect my ram has on the Clocks of a system and was quite surprised at the results.

Keep in mind Pass = booted to desktop Fail = Failed lol

by no means does pass mean stable as i didnt have time to stress test these, it was just an experiment.

Started with the NB and left everything else stock = 17 Multi, FSB: 200, RAM: 1600mhz @ 7-8-7-24

It was letting me go by 200mhz incriments so

2000mhz = Stock

2200mhz = Pass

2400mhz = Pass

2600mhz = Pass

2800mhz = Fail = 2600mhz Highest FSB Achieved

Now onto the FSB

also i've done a FSB of 210 in the past so i started at 211 to save a little time also all of these were done at the stock multiplier of 17x also that my loosest ram timings available are 12-12-12-36 so i went till i couldn't anymore.

FSB:211 RAM:7-8-7-24 1688mhz NB: 2110mhz = Pass

FSB:212 RAM:7-8-7-24 1696mhz NB: 2120mhz = Fail = 211 max fsb @ 7-8-7-24 1688mhz ram

FSB:212 RAM:8-8-8-24 1696mhz NB: 2120mhz = Pass

FSB:213 RAM:8-8-8-24 1704mhz NB: 2130mhz = Pass

FSB:214 RAM:8-8-8-24 1712mhz NB: 2140mhz = Pass but getting WMP Netwrok Sharing Service error/crash

FSB:215 RAM:8-8-8-24 1720mhz NB: 2150mhz = Fail = 214 max fsb @ 8-8-8-24 1712mhz ram

FSB:215 RAM:9-9-9-24 1720mhz NB: 2150mhz = Pass

FSB:216 RAM:9-9-9-24 1728mhz NB: 2160mhz = Pass

FSB:217 RAM:9-9-9-24 1736mhz NB: 2170mhz = Fail could not type password properly/laggy unresponsive = 216 max FSB @ 9-9-9-24 1728mhz ram

FSB:217 RAM:10-10-10-24 1736mhz NB: 2170mhz = Pass but laggy password

FSB:218 RAM:10-10-10-24 1744mhz NB: 2180mhz = Pass

FSB:219 RAM:10-10-10-24 1752mhz NB: 2190mhz = Pass

FSB:220 RAM:10-10-10-24 1760mhz NB: 2200mhz = Pass

FSB:221 RAM:10-10-10-24 1768mhz NB: 2210mhz = Pass

FSB:222 RAM:10-10-10-24 1776mhz NB: 2220mhz = Pass

FSB:223 RAM:10-10-10-24 1784mhz NB: 2230mhz = Pass

FSB:224 RAM:10-10-10-24 1792mhz NB: 2240mhz = Pass

FSB:225 RAM:10-10-10-24 1800mhz NB: 2250mhz = Fail = 224 max fsb @ 10-10-10-24 1792mhz ram

FSB:225 RAM:11-11-11-24 1800mhz NB: 2250mhz = Fail

FSB:225 RAM:11-11-11-30 1800mhz NB: 2250mhz = Pass but gadgets crashed

FSB:226 RAM:11-11-11-30 1808mhz NB: 2260mhz = Pass

FSB:227 RAM:11-11-11-30 1816mhz NB: 2270mhz = Fail kept booting into startup recovery, which then gave an error about memory = 226 max FSB @ 11-11-11-30 1808mhz Ram

FSB:227 RAM:12-12-12-30 1816mhz NB: 2270mhz = Fail = Highest FSB acheived 226

so i learned that ram definitly has an effect on your system when OC'ing but as far as if this information is useful i'm not sure also not sure if i did it right and if those numbers are really my MAX clocks so any feedback is appreciated, someone noted that 4.0ghz likes a NB of 2500mhz + so i think thats possible as i was able to reach 2600mhz the FSB is a different story only 226. also i tried a FSB of 240 again as it is a multiple of 1600mhz i did fsb:240 multi lowered to 15 ram: 1600mhz and NB at 2600mhz and it failed. also tried some others with the results from above with no luck. what do you guys think of this?

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

so i learned that ram definitly has an effect on your system when OC'ing but as far as if this information is useful i'm not sure also not sure if i did it right and if those numbers are really my MAX clocks so any feedback is appreciated, someone noted that 4.0ghz likes a NB of 2500mhz + so i think thats possible as i was able to reach 2600mhz the FSB is a different story only 226. also i tried a FSB of 240 again as it is a multiple of 1600mhz i did fsb:240 multi lowered to 15 ram: 1600mhz and NB at 2600mhz and it failed. also tried some others with the results from above with no luck. what do you guys think of this?

Stress test 3.8Ghz/ 2.6Ghz then 3.9Ghz 2.6Ghz then 3.9Ghz/ 2.7Ghz then 3.9Ghz 2.8Ghz. Use folding at home, Unigine, and Prime small FFTs. NB 1.1 volts should be 1.3 or above. Enable load line calibration (LLC) if you have the option.

 

[RTWM]

Stress test 3.8Ghz/ 2.6Ghz then 3.9Ghz 2.6Ghz then 3.9Ghz/ 2.7Ghz then 3.9Ghz 2.8Ghz. Use folding at home, Unigine, and Prime small FFTs. NB 1.1 volts should be 1.3 or above. Enable load line calibration (LLC) if you have the option.

i'm assumming u mean CPU/NB with those numbers? what about the FSB, leave it at 200? what about the ram?

also i've been stressing it with Aida64 i also have prime95 are those other programs free/where can i get them from?

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

i'm assumming u mean CPU/NB with those numbers? what about the FSB, leave it at 200? what about the ram?

also i've been stressing it with Aida64 i also have prime95 are those other programs free/where can i get them from?

Google, to cut a long story short.

FSB should be as high as you can get it stable - those numbers are targets, doesn't have to match exactly. Keep timings slack for now.