A guide to overclocking the AMD FX series. (And some info on OCing in generall)

[Rataridicta]

Good day everyone, today I would like to share my proven way of overclocking a FX series CPU. So let's get right to it shall we?

First of all there are some things you will need in order to overclock your CPU stably and consistently:

Motherboard: You need a mobo with a 990FX chipset, I'm personally using Asrock's fatal1ty 990FX Pro

CPU: You are going to need an FX series CPU and please just get a piledriver, bulldozer is just not the right core for any cpu. I use the FX-8350

Memory: Get at least 1600MHz on dual chanel

CPU cooler: To overclock an octa core you will naturally need to use an aftermarket cooler. Keeping in mind that AMD uses lower quality CPU's you should not dare to go above 65c at any point in time. Keeping this in mind your options for air cooling are limited. I recommend using a CoolerMaster v8 or v10. When using watercooling you've got a lot more so choose from, basically any watercooling will work but when going for some higher clocks you should look for an H100i.

PSU: The reason your CPU runs hotter when overclocking is because of the increasing powerconsumption. Keep this in mind. Depending on your GPU you should be able to getaway with 600+ I was able to reuse an old 500 watt suply as I'm using a mid end GPU which never runs fully

Patience Overclocking is easy but it takes a long time as every chip is different, you need to perfectly balance your system in order to get the best clocks.

Ways to overclock

1. Multiplier overclocking: All you need to do for this is to increase the multiplier, use a black edition CPU for this. It is highly recommended that you use both CPU and FSB multipliers when using this method.

2. FSB increase: The FSB is the basic host clock that is multiplied by every multiplier there is (CPU FSB CPUNB DRAM), basically it effects everything.

3. Increasing the voltage: This is not an actual way to overclock but more a tool you can use. We'll talk about this more later on.

4. Secondary multiplier: The primary multiplier is ofcourse the CPU, but there are others. The CPU-NB, FSB and DRAM are the secondary multipliers and though they do not directly increase CPU performance they Will higher the overall performance.

Voltages

As promised we'll go more in depth in voltages but before we begin, I can not stress this enough: Too much voltage WILL hurt your performance, if you brute force it you are going to damage your CPU and you will NOT get great performance.

Now, there are several voltages to keep in mind all of these voltages have a different effect on the system but once again VOLTAGES WILL HURT YOUR SYSTEM WHEN YOU GET TOO HIGH.

Also keep in mind that things like Core Boost will eat voltage; before fine tuning any voltages you should disable any extra's you don't really need and reboot.

1. CPU VCore: On air you should keep this voltage under 1.45v or 50C at standard use. This is to avoid electron migration and heat or voltage degration.

2. CPU NB VID: This will be safe up to around 1.35v. (having never used intel I can't say for sure) but from what I've read this is something Intel does not have. The AMD platform used 2 different NB's one is the 990FXA which is the standard Northbride but AMD have also got a NB in the CPU, it doesn't handle the CPU core but has a great impact on the FSB, CPU NB and can help memory overclocking.

3. NB voltage(: Speaking for itself this voltage can be taken up to around 1.2v safely, which can help to higher your FSB frequency.

4. DRAM: The voltage of your RAM, it should be at or preferaly just under what your memory is rated for.

Voltage control and PLL are unimportant.

LLC is a setting that counters voltage drops and lowers the temperature; if you do not have it available you should find out what the voltage drop is under 100% load and higher your base voltage so that the voltage is always where you want it to be.

OC settings

1. CPU multiplier, I think we all know what this is so I will skip it.

2. CPU host clock, this is simply the FSB. When you start to fiddle with this setting you are expected to have a hang on the ropes. This is the frequency all multipliers are multiplied by. When fiddling with this clock you can achieve higher clocks with less multiplier, you will need a bit more voltage on your CPU though.

Now that you know what we're doing, let's OC!

We're going to break this part down in steps so that you can easily follow it.

1. First we are going to increase our voltage(VCore) to 1.4 or 1.45 and increase our multiplier to something not too special, let's say 4.5GHz. (you WILL need good cooling) Should you have LLC, feel free to set it to the highest.

Now restart and boot up. If you didn't change anything else you should be able to boot up without any problems.

2. Ok so great, we've got a nice clock but our voltage is still way too high so we are going to decrease it all the way to where we can't post anymore(are unable to get in to the bios). Till you hit under 1.3v you can just take it in 2-4 steps as it's unlikely you'll fail to post. Keep remembering your clocks or write them down because when you fail to post you are going to perform a clear CMOS. So once you fail to post set your clocks back to what they were and higher the voltage about .05v

NOTE: This step is going to be a pain in the butt, when fine tuning my voltages and clocks I spent nearly an hour resetting my system to find the best voltage and clock.

3. Now it's getting fun. We are going to boot in to windows. Should you fail to get past the Windows loading screen you should higher the voltage with 2 steps and try again. Once you're in windows run a 30 minute stress test at full load. If you pass move to step 4, if you don't, higher the voltage by 1 step.

4. Yay for you, you've just made your system run kinda stable! We're not going to stop here though, the next thing to do is to increase the FSB clock, increasing about 10% should be fine to start with. The CPU-NB, DRAM and HT multiplier will have to be changed, just higher them a bit and keep in mind that the CPU-NB should NOT get over 2.7GHz

5. Now you are probably going to increase the voltage of your CPU-NB a bit, don't go too high hough, it will hurt performance. 1.25v should be plenty. You can also increase the FSB voltage a bit if you want to get high FSB clocks.

6. Boot again, should you fail while using the same frequency that's probably because of changing the FSB. Just higher the voltage on VCore a but and you should be fine.

7. Time to run some stability tests. Try running prime 95 for at least 3 hours. If it works it's great, else higher the voltage a bit or change frequencies or multipliers. Keep a track on your temperatures. Keep them as low as possible, anything higher then 70 will probably damage your CPU.

8. Now this step is going to be the most time demanding of them all. It could take a week or more to perfectly fine tune your CPU but here's how:

When you are in windows, run some benchmarks and write the result down. After doing that go to the BIOS and change some timings, multipliers, frequencies etc. Mix them up, higher them, lower them, fiddle around with the voltage (keeping in mind that this stage is only for small changes and NOT for big ones) and boot again. Run the same benchmarks and see if there's improvement, if there is you're doing great and are on the right track, if there is a decrease in performance you're on the wrong track and should try something different. Depending on your cooling and how lucky you are with your chip I've seen overclocks of 5.2GHz stable.

9. Run more stability tests until YOU are satisfied it'll be stable. Some say it's stable after 2 hours of stress testing, others want to run it for at least 24 hours. For me I like 6-12 hours.

To all of you current and future OCers GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN!

I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial, I know I haven't been perfectly clear on every single part of my tutorial but I don't need to be, once you start working on it you'll get a feel for it. Keep in mind that every chip is different and only very few can reach huge speeds. Make sure you have enough cooling and keep in mind that voltage/temperature are deadly things for your system.

Greetings,

Rataridicta

Terminology:

CPU - Processor

PSU - Power Supply Unit

Multiplier - This one is very complicated but simplified it works like this: Your FSB gives your CPU a base clock, this clock is usually nowadays around 200 MHz. Now your CPU takes that clock and multiplies it by the desired amount. It does this by assigning cycles to the clock. Let's say you've got a clock of 200 MHz and you're using the multiplier 20 (meaning you'll have 20*200=4000MHz of clock speed) the CPU will allow 20 CPU cycles to run. I honestly can't make it much simpler then that, for more information I direct you to wikipedia

FSB - This stands for the Front Side Bus which is the collection of busses (gateways) that connects the CPU to everything else on the mobo.

CPU VCore - Simply the voltage provided to the CPU by the PSU

CPU NB VID - The power supplied to the north bridge on the CPU

NB - Stands for the North Bridge which basically controlls all the fast data processes like RAM and PCIe

Clear CMOS - Resetting your Bios to it's default settings

[Mrinsane]

First time overclockers will not interpret this. Quickly reading through this, people who don't understand the computing jargon wont understand anything. Too many abbreviations. Or at least you could have wrote what is means in brackets next to it. Besides that. Nice tutorial.

[Reconciliasion]

3 hours in my opinion isnt enough for a 100% certain stable overclock - try a min of 12 and max of 3 days...

20 hours of no issues generally 98% positive fornon-failure

overall very detailed guide very happy.

[Rataridicta]

First time overclockers will not interpret this. Quickly reading through this' date=' people who don't understand the computing jargon wont understand anything. Too many abbreviations. Or at least you could have wrote what is means in brackets next to it. Besides that. Nice tutorial. [/quote']

I've added some terminology to the tutorial, do you feel like there's still something missing?

[Rataridicta]

3 hours in my opinion isnt enough for a 100% certain stable overclock - try a min of 12 and max of 3 days...

20 hours of no issues generally 98% positive fornon-failure

overall very detailed guide very happy.

Note that at the 3 hour test we're not going for 100% overclocks, we still have the fine tuning process to go after which another stability test is required. For the sake of clarity I've added this to the start post.

[DLM_012]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

[Rataridicta]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

Honestly undervolting is something very strange. It is not uncommon for me to have to restart my computer 5-6 times after my OC just because else it won't post. And then once it started it runs dead stable even at a 36hr stress test.

What are your current settings? As 4.5 has to be achievable on EVERY 8350

[DLM_012]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

Honestly undervolting is something very strange. It is not uncommon for me to have to restart my computer 5-6 times after my OC just because else it won't post. And then once it started it runs dead stable even at a 36hr stress test. What are your current settings? As 4.5 has to be achievable on EVERY 8350

I'm using a Sabertooth 990FX motherboard with high CPU LLC, high CPU/NB LLC, CPU current capability at 130%, and CPU/NB Current Capability set to 130%. The CPU power phase control is set to "optimized." I've left voltages set to auto and every sort of power saving feature available is turned off.

Those are my current settings for 4.3Ghz. I don't remember my 4.4Ghz settings because 100Mhz doesn't justify all of the extra heat I get imo.

[Rataridicta]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

Try manually changing the voltage, all the power-management features are things you just don't want.

[Resonance]

I managed to get my FX-6100 to 4.6Ghz at 1.39v a while back, which is awesome. Though having that voltage all the time made my room's ambient temperature skyrocket. :(

I couldn't bear being in my room for too long. So I'm back to stock. (I never went over 63C at load)

[Rataridicta]

I managed to get my FX-6100 to 4.6Ghz at 1.39v a while back, which is awesome. Though having that voltage all the time made my room's ambient temperature skyrocket. :(

I couldn't bear being in my room for too long. So I'm back to stock. (I never went over 63C at load)

The power of the FX series ^^

[DLM_012]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

Try manually changing the voltage' date=' all the power-management features are things you just don't want.[/quote']Yup. Tried that. Anything over 1.4v my Coolermaster V8 can't handle to cool. I get core and socket temps that exceed 70C in minutes. If I keep P95 going, it'll get to 80C or hotter.

[Rataridicta]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

Try using a good pressure optimized fan in your V8, it's capable of handling quite a lot but the fans that come with it are not strong enough to effectively push air through the heatsinks.

[DLM_012]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

Try using a good pressure optimized fan in your V8' date=' it's capable of handling quite a lot but the fans that come with it are not strong enough to effectively push air through the heatsinks.[/quote']Lol that's already been taken care of too. When I bought the cooler I bought a GEILD fan because the stock red LED fan that came with it throws off the color scheme I have going in my build and reviews stated that it wasn't the greatest. Here's a link to the GEILD fan I bought:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835426015

It's relatively quiet at around 1200RPM and moves a decent amount of air. If push comes to shove, I might buy a Noctua fan to replace it but I don't know yet. I'll buy it if the Noctua fan moves more air than the fan I currently have.

[Rataridicta]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

I recommend the Noctua NF-F12 they deliver a little less air flow but the static pressure is WAY superior which you will need to push air through all 4 heatsinks.

[DLM_012]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

I recommend the Noctua NF-F12 they deliver a little less air flow but the static pressure is WAY superior which you will need to push air through all 4 heatsinks.

If it will impact my temps by at least 5-7 degrees it might be worth it for me but I don't know. I wish I had some sort of comparison to base this off of.\ instead of blindly buying the new fans.

[Panda Bruv]

I managed to get my FX-6100 to 4.6Ghz at 1.39v a while back, which is awesome. Though having that voltage all the time made my room's ambient temperature skyrocket. :(

I couldn't bear being in my room for too long. So I'm back to stock. (I never went over 63C at load)

I never go over 70 with my fx-6300 at 1.45 volts and 4.5 ghz. Would I be able to get more clocks out of that voltage because I don't have enough money for an aftermarket heatsink?

[Rataridicta]

I managed to get my FX-6100 to 4.6Ghz at 1.39v a while back, which is awesome. Though having that voltage all the time made my room's ambient temperature skyrocket. :(

I couldn't bear being in my room for too long. So I'm back to stock. (I never went over 63C at load)

I doubt it.. if you can overclock a GHz you won't go much further.

[Rataridicta]

Maybe my chip just isn't a good overclocker but to achieve 4.4Ghz, I have to up my voltage to 1.41v which on a Coolermaster V8 gets me peaking at 72C under an 8-10 hr P95 load on my FX-8350. I've heard of people getting far better results at a lower voltage or if they're using the same amount of voltage as me, they run fine at 4.6-4.7Ghz solid.

You're probably just going to get 3 degrees off of it so I'm afraid not.

[Panda Bruv]

I managed to get my FX-6100 to 4.6Ghz at 1.39v a while back, which is awesome. Though having that voltage all the time made my room's ambient temperature skyrocket. :(

I couldn't bear being in my room for too long. So I'm back to stock. (I never went over 63C at load)

Yeah, I figured. Well when I eventually get an aftermarket heatsink then I'll crank it up to 1.55 volts and get something like 5GHz out of it. It's amazing how high you can go with the fx series processors.

[Rataridicta]

I managed to get my FX-6100 to 4.6Ghz at 1.39v a while back, which is awesome. Though having that voltage all the time made my room's ambient temperature skyrocket. :(

I couldn't bear being in my room for too long. So I'm back to stock. (I never went over 63C at load)

Don't forget that the reason you can go that high is because it's the same generation of cores as the higher clocked chips. Just remember that the higher you get the harder it gets.

[Jmjam]

How high do you think an FX-4100 can go with a Hyper 212 Evo (or 212x if it comes out soon) and M5A97 Mobo?

[TheCanadianGamer16]

How high do you think an FX-4100 can go with a Hyper 212 Evo (or 212x if it comes out soon) and M5A97 Mobo?

go with a 99X or 990FX mobo if you can, ive got the ASUS M5A99X and have got my 6100 up to 4.4Ghz stable, though it runs hot since on a 120 rad, so im running it at 4.0Ghz

[Rataridicta]

How high do you think an FX-4100 can go with a Hyper 212 Evo (or 212x if it comes out soon) and M5A97 Mobo?

Get a new mobo, they're not too expensive but makes a great deal of difference. Further more I can not answer how high you will be able to go, it's fully dependent on the quality of your chip. You see when a waver is baked they shoot plasma at the surface to create the transistors. Plasma is not extremely well controlled and thus there are always imperfections. The quality of the chip mainly depends on the position of the waver and having a good waver over all.

[tito]

How high do you think an FX-4100 can go with a Hyper 212 Evo (or 212x if it comes out soon) and M5A97 Mobo?

I dont see the problem of using an M5A97 mobo, if he doesnt need crossfire, there is no need to go and buy a 99x or 990fx mobo, it will only make him waste money.