FX 6300, 970A-DS3P rev 3. OVERCLOCKING

[Luka 999]

So I've just got my Venom VooDoo CPU cooler and 3 more case fans. This makes a total of 6 case fans in my rig. Now that the cooling part has been taken care of I've started to experiment with AMD Overdrive. I've first overclocked to 3.8 and tested the system. It was stable for 4 hours. Then I stopped the stress test. I raised the clock to 3.9 and got a hardware failure message from the stress test. I've played around with the voltage and got it stable (for 4 hours) with the voltage set to 1.2625 V. I've been thinking of how much can I push my system. I know that the mobo will be the bottleneck, but I do have some small fans that I'm willing to put on the mobo if the VRM starts to get too hot. The airflow in the case is excellent. The top mounted fans suck out any hot air that isn't thrown out at the back or through the side, so I should have some room to work with. I've heard people who said that you can't overclock on this mobo (OK. I've proven them wrong at least) and some that say they got their FX 6300 to 4.6 GHz which is a bit crazy but would be awesome if I could get there. I've also set the boost 1 to 4.1 GHz and boost 0 to 4.4 GHz. It's still stable. I might need to raise the voltage a bit more to get the turbo 0 to 4.4 GHz but that's it. My question is. How much stress can this mobo take and do I have to worry about damaging it or will the system shut down before anything goes wrong?  There is the same mobo as I have in the picture...

[Luka 999]

 

I got the CPU stable at 3.8 GHz with the Vcore set to +0.005. I ran the stress test for an hour and monitored the temps. The mobo temperature hasn't been higher than 36 C. I'll leave it there for now and later go for 3.9 if I can. I'll have to get a new cooler for the northbridge and VRM cause the ones that I have now are really bad. Especially the northbridge heatsink is really hot. I can hold a finger on it for 10 seconds before it really starts to hurt. I'll get one with a fan that can blow the heat to the left and right so that the exhaust fans on the top and back can pick up the air and move it out of the case. The VRM heatsink is a bit warmer but barely noticeable so I think that I will be able to get the chip to 4 GHz. Maby to 4.1, but I doubt it unless the new heatsinks will get the temps much lower. Any advice would help.

[Ryujin2003]

1 hour ago, Luka 999 said:

 

I got the CPU stable at 3.8 GHz with the Vcore set to +0.005. I ran the stress test for an hour and monitored the temps. The mobo temperature hasn't been higher than 36 C. I'll leave it there for now and later go for 3.9 if I can. I'll have to get a new cooler for the northbridge and VRM cause the ones that I have now are really bad. Especially the northbridge heatsink is really hot. I can hold a finger on it for 10 seconds before it really starts to hurt. I'll get one with a fan that can blow the heat to the left and right so that the exhaust fans on the top and back can pick up the air and move it out of the case. The VRM heatsink is a bit warmer but barely noticeable so I think that I will be able to get the chip to 4 GHz. Maby to 4.1, but I doubt it unless the new heatsinks will get the temps much lower. Any advice would help.

I've never used that MB, however, I've got the MSI 970, with a 6350, and I'm at 4.4. However, my MSI 970 doesn't get as hot add your saying your board does. Do you have a heat laser? If you're heating things up a lot, I'd be worried about socket temps.

 

I've overclocked on other boards,and they didn't manage under hast too well. What Gigabyte board is that? Also, I'm not even sure what boost 0 and boost 1 are. Never heard of them. I'm assuming they are switches on the board?

[Luka 999]

On 10/9/2016 at 3:41 PM, Ryujin2003 said:

I've never used that MB, however, I've got the MSI 970, with a 6350, and I'm at 4.4. However, my MSI 970 doesn't get as hot add your saying your board does. Do you have a heat laser? If you're heating things up a lot, I'd be worried about socket temps.

 

I've overclocked on other boards,and they didn't manage under hast too well. What Gigabyte board is that? Also, I'm not even sure what boost 0 and boost 1 are. Never heard of them. I'm assuming they are switches on the board?

 

Thanks for the reply. The boost 0 is when the CPU is under full load and can boost it to 4.1 GHz while boost 1 is activated when the CPU is under half load and it boosts it to 3.8 GHz. It's in AMD Overdrive.

[Ryujin2003]

3 hours ago, Luka 999 said:

Thanks for the reply. The boost 0 is when the CPU is under full load and can boost it to 4.1 GHz while boost 1 is activated when the CPU is under half load and it boosts it to 3.8 GHz. It's in AMD Overdrive.

Why don't you I overclock in BIOS. I would imagine that would provide more stable temps and clock speeds.

[Luka 999]

On 10/24/2016 at 4:24 AM, Ryujin2003 said:

Why don't you I overclock in BIOS. I would imagine that would provide more stable temps and clock speeds.

I did overclock in the BIOS. Now I've turned boost off. I'm on 4 GHz and the temperatures under load are SYSTEM: 26 C, CPU: 45 C, TMPIN2 36 C.

[Ryujin2003]

21 minutes ago, Luka 999 said:

I did overclock in the BIOS. Now I've turned boost off. I'm on 4 GHz and the temperatures under load are SYSTEM: 26 C, CPU: 45 C, TMPIN2 36 C.

Is this helping the NB temps? I think that OC through BIOS with no boosts would be more stable. Instead of clock constantly changing, you will have one constant clock. The CPU temps don't seem too bad, but you might be able to work on the voltage a bit. What are your specs? What multiplier?

[Luka 999]

I've confirmed it's the northbridge. It's kinda cold. The heatsink is so hot that I can't hold a finger on it for more than 10 seconds. My multiplier is 20X I'm still running on 4 GHz. I'm running a stability test in overdrive. I've bumped the voltage to +0.08 now cause the CPU was unstable and overdrive was reporting hardware failure. For now, it's stable. The CPU temp is 47 C max. The system is at 26 C and northbridge is on 38 max. I don't think the mobo has a sensor on the VRM so I might have to improvise a bit. I don't have the laser thermometer but as far as I can tell it's warm but not hot. I can keep my finger on it with no problem. Do you think an older thermometer would work? I have one with mercury inside it. Would it work?

[Ryujin2003]

I wouldn't use a mercury thermometer. The heat transference isn't going to do well with a glass tip. You'd be wasting your time. if its hot to the touch, then it's probably too hot. Do you have fans blowing air across the MB? Like front of case out the back? Any way to increase air flow? I'm not sure what the thermal limitations of that board is.

[Luka 999]

11 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

I wouldn't use a mercury thermometer. The heat transference isn't going to do well with a glass tip. You'd be wasting your time. if its hot to the touch, then it's probably too hot. Do you have fans blowing air across the MB? Like front of case out the back? Any way to increase air flow? I'm not sure what the thermal limitations of that board is.

 

 

OK. Don't worry. The northbridge heatsink was hot even at stock speed. People were saying that the northbridge heatsink is alway hot. Is it true? The VRM heatsink is warm but nothing concerning. I'm running a stress test and the case fans are running at full and it's almost room temperature now. I have 6 case fans. Two on the top, 2 at the front, one in the back and one on the side panel. I have a Venom Voodoo CPU cooler.

[Ryujin2003]

I've only had a NB get hot on one MSI board, but that was right before I blew one of the diodes near it. My MSI 970 Gaming isn't hot at all. A little warm, maybe around 32-35 Celsius. I would say temperatures may definitely vary by board, but I haven't found any hot spots on my board. I've also played on some other AMD boards this week, but all were MSI, and none of them had hot spots. The hottest was one Phenom II had a hot NB, but the heatsink over it wasn't bad. Backside of the board was about 42, but heatsink was about ~35. Which way is the side panel blowing? You want to create air flow, like an invisible river. The VooDoo wouldn't cool anything on the board, but with 120mm dual fans, you will be fine on that.

[Luka 999]

1 hour ago, Ryujin2003 said:

I've only had a NB get hot on one MSI board, but that was right before I blew one of the diodes near it. My MSI 970 Gaming isn't hot at all. A little warm, maybe around 32-35 Celsius. I would say temperatures may definitely vary by board, but I haven't found any hot spots on my board. I've also played on some other AMD boards this week, but all were MSI, and none of them had hot spots. The hottest was one Phenom II had a hot NB, but the heatsink over it wasn't bad. Backside of the board was about 42, but heatsink was about ~35. Which way is the side panel blowing? You want to create air flow, like an invisible river. The VooDoo wouldn't cool anything on the board, but with 120mm dual fans, you will be fine on that.

 

I've set up the fans so that the two in the front are the intake fans. The fan on the side is an exhaust fan that carries hot air away from the GPU heatsink that has an exhaust on the side. The two fans on the top and the one in the back all push air out of the case. This way I get negative pressure but I don't have much dirt in my room anyway and I get better cooling. I was thinking of placing a fan near it or buy a new NB heatsink with a fan. The CPU is now at 4.1 GHz. I knew this would be stable since the CPU is designed to turbo up to this frequency. The temperature doesn't seem to increase or decrease with load. I don't see the NB temp. I've tried my best to make an accurate reading. With the mercury thermometer, I've measured 53 C on the NB heatsink.