some OC guidance with an FX 6300

[sleazyhunterx]

so I O.C. the cpu from base 3.5 GHZ to 4.2 GHZ(after testing each increment up to it one by one) using the cpu ratio...also I did NOT change the voltage, I don't want to mess with that and I wanted to see how far I can go without changing the voltage...anyway, while using the cinebench test, I got max temp at 73 C at 4.2 GHZ, is that ok for this cpu or too hot?

I did do my research and just wanted to get different views, is 75 C really the max temp(found from research)...btw, I am not using aftermarket cooler, I know you need one for an actual OC worth anything, but I am not looking for crazy speeds or extreme OC, just a simple push from base that it can handle as is, but I do have a fan at high speed giving air directly to the cpu and there is lots of ventilation as my case has a lot of room.

[Rove]

Tips for overclocking on stock cooler:
*download AMD Overdrive and use that from now on after resetting current settings to default.
*don't overclock base clock. Undervolt it.
*overclock your Turbo settings instead and try and undervolt them at the same time, they have a different voltage setting than base clock which is higher. Turbo overclocking rather than base clock overclocking will allow you to keep AMD Cool & Quiet enabled and will also give you a little more thermal protection on the overclock as it will try and only turbo when there is enough thermal margin available for it to do so.
*there are two levels of turbo setting. I recommend aim for 4 GHz on the lower one and whatever you can get away with at a comforable undervolt & temperature balance on the second up to 4.5 GHz
*I think the stock Turbo settings are 3.8 GHz (low) and 4.1 GHz (high) so 4.2 GHz base clock isn't much better than stock performance BUT you shouldn't be overclocking base clock on the stock cooler anyways, only turbo.
*undervolting can help your CPU use less power and run cooler, too little voltage and thus too little watts will make it unstable so find the lowest comfortable limit.
*as far as I know the maximum temp for a AMD FX is supposed to be 61C, if you are ucky that was your socket at 73C and not your internal thermals. AMD Overdrive will measure internal thermals separately from socket temperature and they are what need to worry you or not.
*try not to go within 5C of the "thermal margin" listed in AMD Overdrive.

I personally recommend that you do not overclock. A FX 6300 should currently be fine at stock settings for any game out there. Aftermarket cooler is also worth it for overclocking if you have a good motherboard.

What is your motherboard?

At stock setting did your CPU ever go over 80% usage?

If not why would you overclock now and void your warranty?

I also suggest looking at other parts of your system that you could tune up or improve like: HDD, RAM, northbridge, southbridge, PCIe speed, Hypertransport speed, your graphics card.

A common mistake is to overclock a good CPU when you have a bad graphics card expecting it to give you more performance. Well bad news, if the GPU (graphics processing unit) is the part holding you back then overclocking the CPU (central processing unit) won't help at all.

What GPU do you have?

[Public But Anonymous]

I would get an aftermarket cooler it would help. A hyper evo 212 cheap and pretty good. 73 temps are a bit too high. A higher voltage is useful when OCing it helps increase stability(a good thing).

[_I_]

make sure the board is good for overclocking
http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database

if its a 760/710 chipset or earlier, overclocking will not gain anything

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Get a better CPU Cooler; something even as cheap as Hyper212-EVO will allow further stable OC as well as max temps well below 60*C range.

You shouldn't ever really need to manually change the CPU/VCORE voltage unless an OC is deemed unstable. For FX series all u really need to do is:

- Set Overclocking to Manual
- Disable CPU options for C1E, Cool&Quiet, Turbo
- Lock in your RAM settings with AMD DOCP/AMP and select the XMP Profile #1
- Then simply up the Multiplier a bit to achieve a higher CPU Clock

[Rove]

引用自 _I_：

make sure the board is good for overclocking
http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database

if its a 760/710 chipset or earlier, overclocking will not gain anything

Not true I think, just that overvolting will risk frying VRM as will stress tests.

Also if you turned it off put Cool & quiet back on and Turbocore back on as they will help with Turbo overclocking & keeping cool.

[sleazyhunterx]

引用自 Rove：

Tips for overclocking on stock cooler:
*download AMD Overdrive and use that from now on after resetting current settings to default.
*don't overclock base clock. Undervolt it.
*overclock your Turbo settings instead and try and undervolt them at the same time, they have a different voltage setting than base clock which is higher. Turbo overclocking rather than base clock overclocking will allow you to keep AMD Cool & Quiet enabled and will also give you a little more thermal protection on the overclock as it will try and only turbo when there is enough thermal margin available for it to do so.
*there are two levels of turbo setting. I recommend aim for 4 GHz on the lower one and whatever you can get away with at a comforable undervolt & temperature balance on the second up to 4.5 GHz
*I think the stock Turbo settings are 3.8 GHz (low) and 4.1 GHz (high) so 4.2 GHz base clock isn't much better than stock performance BUT you shouldn't be overclocking base clock on the stock cooler anyways, only turbo.
*undervolting can help your CPU use less power and run cooler, too little voltage and thus too little watts will make it unstable so find the lowest comfortable limit.
*as far as I know the maximum temp for a AMD FX is supposed to be 61C, if you are ucky that was your socket at 73C and not your internal thermals. AMD Overdrive will measure internal thermals separately from socket temperature and they are what need to worry you or not.
*try not to go within 5C of the "thermal margin" listed in AMD Overdrive.

I personally recommend that you do not overclock. A FX 6300 should currently be fine at stock settings for any game out there. Aftermarket cooler is also worth it for overclocking if you have a good motherboard.

What is your motherboard?

At stock setting did your CPU ever go over 80% usage?

If not why would you overclock now and void your warranty?

I also suggest looking at other parts of your system that you could tune up or improve like: HDD, RAM, northbridge, southbridge, PCIe speed, Hypertransport speed, your graphics card.

A common mistake is to overclock a good CPU when you have a bad graphics card expecting it to give you more performance. Well bad news, if the GPU (graphics processing unit) is the part holding you back then overclocking the CPU (central processing unit) won't help at all.

What GPU do you have?

ok, I have a M5A78L-M LX PLUS w/ 780G chipset

no it did not go over 80% but the reason for OC was to try it out and to see if I would get fps boost in dolphin and pcsx2 emulators(cpu heavy)

my gpu is GeForce GTX 750 2gb

now I returned everything to defaults in bios and did what you suggested on the turbo settings, but I only see one option for OC'ing the Turbo, the "target value" can be raised up to 4.1 GHz max by moving CPU core multiplier to 20.5x...is that what you meant? because when it is in high performance mode, it is that, but in balanced mode it changes between 1.4 and 3.0 GHz

[Rove]

In AMD Overdrive there should be a button to open a pop-up window that allows you to change turbo settings. This is in AMD Overdrive not BIOS. There is a Turbo 1 and 0 and that makes 2 states total. You can find the second one by a little drop down menu on the bottom of that windows that opened to allow adjsutment of turbo states. It says "boost level" right next to the tiny drop down menu that will allow you to select state 1 or 0.

This is under: Performance Control -> Clock/Voltage and then the "Turbo Core Control..." button in that Window pane which opens the new menu for changing turbo clock and voltage and has the tiny drop down menu to shift between the two states, state 1 and 0 that I mentioned.

Be aware that on your M5A78L-M LX PLUS motherboard you run the risk of breaking not only the CPU but also the motherboard when overclocking. I hope the motherboard will be ok as long as you don't overvolt. If you ever do get a custom cooler and overvolt though then there is a very real risk of breaking the motherboard even when the CPU is really nice and cool. The motherboard VRM (or other parts) can still get very hot and break with the nicest CPU cooler when you are using them harder than they are made for. A more solid motherboard like the ASUS M5A97 R2 or a even better one could potentially allow overvolting safely as long as the CPU was kept cool because it has more VRM and they have a heatsink on them to help keep them cool. A board with 8-10 VRM with heatsink would be even better for a safe and stable overclock.

I know you want the best out of your system. I hope you are able to achieve it and it is possible to get better than stock even with your parts if you really think it's worth the effort.

I just urge you to be careful because it really is possible that you can break things by overheating them or stressing them too hard. Maybe even things like the motherboard that you were not thinking of while overclocking the CPU. Ideally on that board you should learn about VRM temperature and other motherboard temperatures and try and keep them below the maximum safe level just like your CPU. Remember if you push too close to the safety limit then one hot day in summer it can go pooooffff and make you very sorry.

[sleazyhunterx]

引用自 Rove：

In AMD Overdrive there should be a button to open a pop-up window that allows you to change turbo settings. This is in AMD Overdrive not BIOS. There is a Turbo 1 and 0 and that makes 2 states total. You can find the second one by a little drop down menu on the bottom of that windows that opened to allow adjsutment of turbo states. It says "boost level" right next to the tiny drop down menu that will allow you to select state 1 or 0.

This is under: Performance Control -> Clock/Voltage and then the "Turbo Core Control..." button in that Window pane which opens the new menu for changing turbo clock and voltage and has the tiny drop down menu to shift between the two states, state 1 and 0 that I mentioned.

Be aware that on your M5A78L-M LX PLUS motherboard you run the risk of breaking not only the CPU but also the motherboard when overclocking. I hope the motherboard will be ok as long as you don't overvolt. If you ever do get a custom cooler and overvolt though then there is a very real risk of breaking the motherboard even when the CPU is really nice and cool. The motherboard VRM (or other parts) can still get very hot and break with the nicest CPU cooler when you are using them harder than they are made for. A more solid motherboard like the ASUS M5A97 R2 or a even better one could potentially allow overvolting safely as long as the CPU was kept cool because it has more VRM and they have a heatsink on them to help keep them cool. A board with 8-10 VRM with heatsink would be even better for a safe and stable overclock.

I know you want the best out of your system. I hope you are able to achieve it and it is possible to get better than stock even with your parts if you really think it's worth the effort.

I just urge you to be careful because it really is possible that you can break things by overheating them or stressing them too hard. Maybe even things like the motherboard that you were not thinking of while overclocking the CPU. Ideally on that board you should learn about VRM temperature and other motherboard temperatures and try and keep them below the maximum safe level just like your CPU. Remember if you push too close to the safety limit then one hot day in summer it can go pooooffff and make you very sorry.

ok, I found what you meant...and yeah that is why I don't want to mess with the voltage, I heard of many horror stories where the cpu catches fire as well as the motherboard ...I decided to keep it at 4.1 GHz, temps are in the safe zone after testing compared to 4.2 GHz, and 4.1 GHz is the max turbo core speed given anyway. Thanks for your help.

[Rove]

Undervolting is should actually be safer than stock voltage unless there is something I don't know. Too low will make it unstable but it shouldn't burn anything out. It goes to 0.8V when your CPU is idle using AMD Cool & Quiet.

Overvolting it on the other hand is what I hear all the horror and fire stories about.

Undervolting it should actually make it run cooler as long as you can get a stable undervolt.