Overclocking Phenom II 1100t

[kcducttaper]

My rig:
AMD Phenom II x6 1100t (stock speed) with a Hyper 212 cooler
Asus Sabertooth 990 FX
Ripjawz 16G (4x 4G) DDR3 1600
Asus GTX 1070 OC dual fan
OCZ 850w Gold modular PSU

My bottleneck is obviously my CPU. I got a killer deal on a 1070 to replace my GTX 460 that I just couldn't pass up, but I'm not ready to build a whole new system to take full advantage of the 1070 yet.

My motherboard has one of those one-click OC profiles in the bios. With my GTX 460 installed, I used it just for grins a couple times with no issue at all. It boosted from 3.3 to 3.8 - not sure if it did anything with the memory though. Now, with my 1070 installed, when I enable the same one-click OC profile in the bios, it won't boot. The case lights will come on and it will look like it's booting for a little bit, then shut off. After it shuts off, it'll power back on again, look like it's loading for a couple seconds, then just sit there. There is no screen output for any of this process. The only way to get it back is to reset it back to stock speeds and it boots up like nothing ever happened, so that's got me avfully confused at the moment.

I know everyone's grandma has OC-ed the 1100t with good results, so I'm curious (a) why the one-click OC isn't working anymore (surely the GPU swap wouldn't have anything to do with it?) and (b) some generic 1100t baseline OC settings I can start out with. It's been quite a while since I was interested in OC-ing so some of the details have fallen out of my head by now. I don't need to OC it to the moon or anything - just a reasonable boost to 3.8 or so should be plenty sufficient. I don't believe I've ever seen my CPU temp over 40c in its present stock state, so I think I have plenty of thermal room.

[Omega]

1 thread is usually enough.

Never use automatic overclocking tools, they always have issues or seriously overvolt the CPU to the point of killing it. Always manually overclock.

I wouldn't even bother with this 8 year old garbage anymore. Throw it in the bin and get something new, any modern CPU will obliterate the 1100t.

It is a huge waste to have such a powerful GPU combined with dirt slow ancient hardware.

[kcducttaper]

I'd love to upgrade my garbage. Please PM me for wiring instructions and I'll have you wire over the funds to support this right away!

[Omega]

Sure, I have a pile of CPUs here which obliterate that 1100t. If you come over I will give you a few for free.

[Viper]

Boosting that far is actually a significant overclock. I am not suprised it would not be stable at that overclocking. Every CPU is different . Just because others have overclocked it that far doesn't mean your will. Does the setting change other things like VCore voltage. By the way don't do that yourself unless you know how to go about it. Even a small change could potentially burn up your CPU. I believe you don't want to raise that any further than 1.44-1.45 V.

[Arya]

Originally posted by kcducttaper:

My motherboard has one of those one-click OC profiles in the bios. With my GTX 460 installed, I used it just for grins a couple times with no issue at all. It boosted from 3.3 to 3.8 - not sure if it did anything with the memory though. Now, with my 1070 installed, when I enable the same one-click OC profile in the bios, it won't boot. The case lights will come on and it will look like it's booting for a little bit, then shut off. After it shuts off, it'll power back on again, look like it's loading for a couple seconds, then just sit there. There is no screen output for any of this process. The only way to get it back is to reset it back to stock speeds and it boots up like nothing ever happened, so that's got me avfully confused at the moment.

At a glance that sounds like a voltage deficiency. But I've never worked with a CPU that old, so I may be wrong.

As you increase the Core Clock, you also have to compensate with more Voltage. If the voltage is a little too low, the system will boot and then crash to black screen at very high CPU. If it's way too low you'll get behaviour like this.

So my hypothesis is the Auto Voltage is for whatever reason not setting high enough.

One-Click OCs barely work, even with the latest technology they're borderline dangerous. I have the latest Intel CPU and a serious overclocking board to match, and yet the BIOS simply cannot OC the CPU in a workable manner. The auto-voltage runs almost dangerously high at full load, the opposite of what I think may be happening here.

[kcducttaper]

Originally posted by Omega:

Sure, I have a pile of CPUs here which obliterate that 1100t. If you come over I will give you a few for free.

I'll need a motherboard and memory too. Memory is the expensive part at the moment.

Ooo. Good tutorial from Linus. It's a lower CPU model, but the same family.

YouTube™ Video: AMD Phenom II X6 Overclocking Tutorial (NCIX Tech Tips #66) 

Views: 788,339

Today Linus takes a look at the new Phenom II X6 processor from AMD and also shows us how to "push it to the limits, in only a few minutes"

[Omega]

Overclocking is really simple.

Do a Google search to check what people recommend as the maximum voltage. Set that voltage and look for a clockspeed which seems doable, then stress test and check if the CPU overheats or not. If the CPU overheats lower the voltage, if the PC crashes either increase the voltage or lower the clockspeeds.

If the PC does not boot anymore remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes and try again.

Originally posted by kcducttaper:

Ooo. Good tutorial from Linus:

YouTube™ Video: AMD Phenom II X6 Overclocking Tutorial (NCIX Tech Tips #66) 

Views: 788,339

Today Linus takes a look at the new Phenom II X6 processor from AMD and also shows us how to "push it to the limits, in only a few minutes"

I wouldn't follow his tutorials, he goes quite often seriously overkill on the voltage.

[Arya]

Originally posted by Omega:

I wouldn't follow his tutorials, he goes quite often seriously overkill on the voltage.

And I wouldn't follow his tutorials because I can only stand hearing the words "tunnel" and "bear" so many times. :P

Even when he gave up on tunnelbear, he still made an entire episode dedicated to tunnelbear and the breakup with tunnelbear. #namedrop #productplacement

[Omega]

Originally posted by Wolfey:

Originally posted by Omega:

I wouldn't follow his tutorials, he goes quite often seriously overkill on the voltage.

And I wouldn't follow his tutorials because I can only stand hearing the words "tunnel" and "bear" so many times. :P

Even when he gave up on tunnelbear, he still made an entire episode dedicated to tunnelbear and the breakup with tunnelbear. #namedrop #productplacement

I can already see this be mentioned in "Only 2010'ns kids will remember" videos in 10 years or so..


"Tunnelbear! The free VPN!"

My ears! It hurts!

[Arya]

Originally posted by Omega:

I can already see this be mentioned in "Only 2010'ns kids will remember" videos in 10 years or so..


"Tunnelbear! The free VPN!"

My ears! It hurts!

And who could forget DBrand? Or the new MasterCase Maker 5 from Cooler Master? With it's sleek design and support for dual 240mm radiators? Link in the description below.

I owned a Mastercase Maker 5 during that era and I still found it annoying.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: Overclocking a Triceratops

[_I_]

212+/evo will not go too far on overclocking the 125w cpu

oc profiles on the boards are kinda crap
disable c states, turbo and a few other things in bios
and bring up the cpu multi and voltage as needed
60-72c should be the max before it throttles

basic steps, test with prime95 or ibt at each bump
cool+stable = bring up cpu multi
cool+unstable = bring up core voltage
hot+stable = lower core voltage
hot+unstable = go back to last good and stop

core voltage on pii to 1.4v will be ok with air cooling
above 1.5v is custom watercooling loop territory


you can go farther by finding out the fsb, ram, ht limits first
drop the cpu, ram and ht multi to lowest available
cpu to x8 (1600mhz) ram to x4 (800mhz) ht to lowest x5 (1000)
and bring up the fsb til its unstable will give a fsb limit

set fsb back to 200 and repeat bringing up those 1 step at a time til they crack
go back to last good and bring up fsb til it breaks
then figure out the freq thats each part is good for (multi x fsb)

once you know the limits of the parts, you can figure out the best multi and fsb for the combo
fsb 200-250 x each multi

for ram, you can tweak timings to get better oc
but remember mhz/cl is its effective speed

if the cpu is rev c2 (check using cpuz)
it will have a max of (6.66x200) 1333mhz when running 4 dimms
rev c3+ can run 4 dimms at 1600+ (8x200)

[Viper]

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/596023-Dolk-s-Guide-to-the-Phenom-II

[kcducttaper]

I just did a very quick boost to 3.85. A Prime95 pull got a max of 51c (granted only ~10 min, but enough to stabilize temps for quite a while). Here's how I did it:

FSB 240 (default is 200)
Dropped the memory down to a 1333 profile so it's currently at like 1605 or so with the fsb bump
CPU multiplier is 16.0 (not sure what default is)
Voltage = unchanged

In the whole 20 minutes I've had the machine running, it's solid. Gonna do a bit of gaming stuff this evening to see how things play out in terms of stability and cpu load compared to previously.

[_I_]

1100t stock is 3.3ghz (16.5x200mhz)
with turbo to 3700 (18.5x200mhz)

16x240 = 3840mhz

you may need to drop the ht multi down one if its not stable
iirc ht over 2200 doesnt help at all

[upcoast]

NB frequency helps a fair amount with PII on top of cpu clocks.

Don't expect much from it though.