Overclocking A10-7700k questions

[ProGrams]

So I've got a successful overclock of 4.4ghz at 1.4V(it teeters between 1.37-1.4), staying stable at 40-50C at full load, ran 6 hours in Prime95, and then Extreme settings IntelBurn for 3 hours, never reached over 50C and passed them with flying colors. Same with FurMark on my GPU.

Turbo Core is turned off, and I've only messed with the multiplier and voltage in the BIOS.

Board : ASRock A88m-ITX/ac
CPU : AMD A10-7700k 3.4ghz (OC to 4.4ghz) quad-core
GPU : Asus Strix RX 470 (OC to 1320mhz)
8 GB RAM 1600mhz
PSU : Corsair 650W
1TB 7200RPM HD
256gb Samsung 850 Pro SSD
Water Cooler - Arctic Liquid Freezer 240

My question is, in my bios, it says my max CPU MHz is 6700mhz, and 1.55V. How high am I able to go with this overclock if temperatures stay stable? I tried pushing it to 4.5ghz, but I kept freezing after windows boot, or i'd get BSOD. I have quite a bit of voltage to work with yet, so I can't see what the issue is. Can anyone help me?

On another side note, is there another FM2+ processor anyone would recommend to sit stable at 4.7ghz+ ?

Thanks!

[dnklgrn]

You will never get such hich Clockrates under normal circumstances, so just forget about it.
4,5Ghz is good for your CPU, if you keep getting BSOD or your system runs unstable, the only thing you can do is increase voltage.
I'd even tune it down a little, 1.4V is quite much and will wear down your VRMs quicker, espacially on a board with only 5 power phases for the CPU, those old AMD ITX Boards are not really designed for OC.
Try to find a sweetspot with 1.3-1.35V.
You should also check the temps on your VRM (for example with hwinfo64), the mosfets are designed to withstand high temperatures, but I'd not torture them over longer periods since they have no cooling.

Clockrates above 4,5Ghz up to 5Ghz can be achieved with a good CPU and cooling ( custom loop H2O), above 5Ghz is 99% extreme overclocking and can most likely only be achieved with very high voltaged (->high temps) and liquid nitrogen cooling and by disabling cores.

And no, there is no recommended CPU for your board.
The plattform is old and you already have one of the more powerfull CPUs.
Save your money for a new board + CPU + RAM, maybe Ryzen oder Skylake-X.

[ProGrams]

You're the first person in 2 days to give me a response and I couldn't be more thankful. I went ahead and downclocked to 4.3, and 1.36V and it's doing great. It does seem to fluxuate its volts down quite a bit on its own however, which I'm not upset about. It doesn't run at a fixed 1.4V, but my OC seems incredbily steady after running all my tests. I didn't want to overstress it. I've kept a pretty steady eye on my temps, I use AMD Overdrive, HW Monitor and A-Tuning from ASrock to make sure the temps are all reading the same, but I haven't checked the VRM's. I'll make sure to do that. This is my first gaming rig, so I wanted to tinker wit hsome things.

[dnklgrn]

It is normal for a CPU to change voltages on the fly, as it does not need such high voltages in idle.
I suppose you increased voltages via offset, which is the right way to do it.
A fixed voltage will always be applied, even when the CPU is idle, offset just allows the CPU to draw the additional power (the offset).

Glad I could help.

[®NapalmSunrise®]

Originally posted by Programs:

You're the first person in 2 days to give me a response and I couldn't be more thankful. I went ahead and downclocked to 4.3, and 1.36V and it's doing great. It does seem to fluxuate its volts down quite a bit on its own however, which I'm not upset about. It doesn't run at a fixed 1.4V, but my OC seems incredbily steady after running all my tests. I didn't want to overstress it. I've kept a pretty steady eye on my temps, I use AMD Overdrive, HW Monitor and A-Tuning from ASrock to make sure the temps are all reading the same, but I haven't checked the VRM's. I'll make sure to do that. This is my first gaming rig, so I wanted to tinker wit hsome things.

Yeah the volts dropping is considered Vdrop and if you have UEFI BIOS you'll have a LLC load line calibration settings that you can manually set 110%, 120%, 130% to compensate the voltage drops but im not sure if your mobo supports that..

[ee]

Don't go over 4.4. What the motheboard allows is insane and impractical: With liquid nitrogen cooling you mightset some world record at 6.7 ghz if you happen to win the silicon lottery and keep the system long enough to run a pair of cores to boot into windoze and snap a screen shot.

4.5 ghz sounds unwise, but if you're determined to do it, you would need to try raising voltage until it's 100% stable, all while watching that temps remain under 60C.

[⎠⎝Zushikatetomoto⎠⎝ UFO]

Originally posted by ee:

Don't go over 4.4. What the motheboard allows is insane and impractical: With liquid nitrogen cooling you mightset some world record at 6.7 ghz if you happen to win the silicon lottery and keep the system long enough to run a pair of cores to boot into windoze and snap a screen shot.

4.5 ghz sounds unwise, but if you're determined to do it, you would need to try raising voltage until it's 100% stable, all while watching that temps remain under 60C.

You are right. But only oc really when you are water cooler safer.

[Fluffy]

higher overclocks past 4.4ghz might be a bit more practical on a board thats not mini-itx... really watch temps in a mini-itx setup and not just water cooled cpu

[ProGrams]

Originally posted by NapalmSunrise®ECWC:

Originally posted by Programs:

You're the first person in 2 days to give me a response and I couldn't be more thankful. I went ahead and downclocked to 4.3, and 1.36V and it's doing great. It does seem to fluxuate its volts down quite a bit on its own however, which I'm not upset about. It doesn't run at a fixed 1.4V, but my OC seems incredbily steady after running all my tests. I didn't want to overstress it. I've kept a pretty steady eye on my temps, I use AMD Overdrive, HW Monitor and A-Tuning from ASrock to make sure the temps are all reading the same, but I haven't checked the VRM's. I'll make sure to do that. This is my first gaming rig, so I wanted to tinker wit hsome things.

Yeah the volts dropping is considered Vdrop and if you have UEFI BIOS you'll have a LLC load line calibration settings that you can manually set 110%, 120%, 130% to compensate the voltage drops but im not sure if your mobo supports that..

Originally posted by dnklgrn:

It is normal for a CPU to change voltages on the fly, as it does not need such high voltages in idle.
I suppose you increased voltages via offset, which is the right way to do it.
A fixed voltage will always be applied, even when the CPU is idle, offset just allows the CPU to draw the additional power (the offset).

Glad I could help.

Originally posted by ee:

Don't go over 4.4. What the motheboard allows is insane and impractical: With liquid nitrogen cooling you mightset some world record at 6.7 ghz if you happen to win the silicon lottery and keep the system long enough to run a pair of cores to boot into windoze and snap a screen shot.

4.5 ghz sounds unwise, but if you're determined to do it, you would need to try raising voltage until it's 100% stable, all while watching that temps remain under 60C.

You guys are wonderful help. I can't thank you enough. I wasn't sure on how much I'd be able to do on this board with this processor and you guys SIGNIFICANTLY helped me in decision making. I decided to go with 4.3ghz, at about 1.38V, everything is running very smooth, passed all my tests, and it's more than fast enough for the games I'm playing, and the amount of multi-window tasking I'm doing.

I've been keeping a steady eye on CPU Temps, Core CPU Temps, and my Motherboard Temp, all have stayed at 50C or under, even at full load, and I'm comfortable with my current speeds so I think I'll take your guys' advice and stick with a little lower of a clock for safety reasons and cash.

I have plans to build a new Intel rig for myself, with a full size motherboard, and a custom water loop, and give this rig off to my girlfriend for whatever reason she may want to use it. Or just have it as an extra if need be, but in the meantime, I'd like to have it at full capacity, for my purposes.


I do have a UEFI Bios, and I do have LLC settings, but I only get the option for 1/2 Vcore or "default" "auto" settings. I'm pretty sure I'm talking about the right setting, I may need to check the BIOS again, but I know that was a problem I was having and had a hard time finding it inbetween watching videos, reading forums, and rebooting multiple times. I ended up just using "Xboost" on my motherboard settings, and then just tinkered with the multiplier and voltage settings. It seems that Xboost will run it OC'd stable at its max turbo setting (which is 3.8ghz) and after some research I found I'd be safe to go about .5 above the turbo rated setting on the processor. It changes all the settings to manual like I would need to do to overclock, except for the LLC setting, which I couldn't quite get a grasp on.

[ProGrams]

Originally posted by Fluffy:

higher overclocks past 4.4ghz might be a bit more practical on a board thats not mini-itx... really watch temps in a mini-itx setup and not just water cooled cpu

Good information to know! I wasn't sure on how much these mini-itx's could handle. I got the whole rig fairly cheap in great condition, so I wanted to kinda boost it up a little without swapping into a different FM2+ socketed processor since there isn't really a whole lot there for AMD on a semi older board. I've found some Black Edition 7860's but, I mean, do I REALLY need almost 4.8ghz overclocked for some pretty normal gaming and multitasking? Lol, probably not, I'm just a new enthusiast getting into the mix and want to dip my feet into some new information. For BF1, Overwatch, H1Z1, Doom, etc, I think I'll be arlight with the system I've got. Yea? Atleast for the time being.