PRO guide to Overclocking?

[TheMiniMiney]

I want to understand how to get the most out of my PC. Is OC just cranking up that ratio multiplier for RAM and CPU or is there something more i should know to get the most out of it ? (like voltages and temps)

Also I dont understand RAM timings. So please help me understand these stuff better so i can do it on my rig. 

Thanks.

 

CPU - Ryzen 1700

RAM - Kingston 8x1 GB DDR4 2400 Mghz

MOBO - Gigabyte A320M

[Quackwich]

For RAM, 2400Mhz is slow for DDR4, you're better off buying higher speed RAM than overclocking it.

 

What GPU do you have?

[rorythedawg]

9 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

I want to understand how to get the most out of my PC. Is OC just cranking up that ratio multiplier for RAM and CPU or is there something more i should know to get the most out of it ? (like voltages and temps)

Also I dont understand RAM timings. So please help me understand these stuff better so i can do it on my rig. 

Thanks.

 

CPU - Ryzen 1700

RAM - Kingston 8x1 GB DDR4 2400 Mghz

MOBO - Gigabyte A320M

So your motherboard does not support over clocking so you wont be able to OC your CPU.

Typically ddr4 2400 kits wont OC much either as their typically the bottom of the barrel as far as quality goes. 

 

Your only real opportunity would be with your GPU as almost all GPUs have at least some overclocking room. I'd recommend looking up guides for your specific GPU. 

 

As far as understanding, id check out some youtube channels like Actually Hardcore Overclocking GamersNexus, der8er, really there are a lot and it takes a long time to gather all the different aspects of information.

 

The basics are that you first increase your power limits, then increase clocks until you crash, then apply voltage until you are stable, then keep ramping clocks and voltage until you start to crash due to thermals. MSI afterburner is a great tool for newbies as you cant hurt your GPU by cranking the sliders in there (dont remove any limitations in the software tho)

[TheMiniMiney]

7 minutes ago, rorythedawg said:

So your motherboard does not support over clocking so you wont be able to OC your CPU.

Typically ddr4 2400 kits wont OC much either as their typically the bottom of the barrel as far as quality goes. 

 

Your only real opportunity would be with your GPU as almost all GPUs have at least some overclocking room. I'd recommend looking up guides for your specific GPU. 

My motherboard does support OC , i did OC my cpu to 3.75 ghz using the ratio multiplier. Although my question is not whether i can apply or not , but rather is there anything i should know more than just increasing the ratio multiplier , like voltages , temps  , and ram timings. If it comes to it , I may upgrade my MOBO and RAM. But as for now i would want to understand this things before i purchase anything else. 

 

And my GPU is GTX 1080 , and I feel i understand GPU overclocking better than CPU and RAM OC , thats why i didnt mention it in the question.

Edited July 3, 2020 by TheMiniMiney

[rorythedawg]

17 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

My motherboard does support OC , i did OC my cpu to 3.75 ghz using the ratio multiplier. Although my question is not whether i can apply or not , but rather is there anything i should know more than just increasing the ratio multiplier , like voltages , temps  , and ram timings. If it comes to it , I may upgrade my MOBO and RAM. But as for now i would want to understand this things before i purchase anything else. 

 

And my GPU is GTX 1080

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3175005/amd-ryzen-motherboards-explained-the-crucial-differences-in-every-am4-chipset.html#:~:text=Crucially%2C while every Ryzen processor,of your CPU%2C look elsewhere. "Crucially, while every Ryzen processor can be overclocked, A320 motherboards do not support overclocking. So if you want to squeeze more oomph out of your CPU, look elsewhere."

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Zen/AMD-Ryzen 7 1700.html

"Maximum turbo frequency: 3700 MHz"

 

Are you sure you have an A320 board? That chip set is not supposed to have overclocking support. 

And if you are sure about the A320 board, have you checked that your CPU is actually at that clock when in windows?

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=11433&title=cpu-core-multiplier-wont-stay-put

this thread seems to be an example of someone being able to set a multiplier but as expected it doesn't stick in an OS cause a320 doesnt support OCing. 

 

I could be incorrect, I just genuinely did not think a320 could overclock at all. 

 

 

 

Onto your question, yeah there are a lot of nuances to know about OCing, but as long as you know the basic cycle of increasing clocks and voltage until you crash from heat your kinda fine tbh. Anything more than that doesn't usually give tangible benefits anyway and people mostly just do it for fun. 

Regarding RAM timings (and just RAM itself), that's probably the most complicated aspect of OCing. I cant assist with that much as I don't really understand them well enough myself. 

 

Definitely see what you can get out of your 1080 tho.

[mockedarche]

33 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

RAM - Kingston 8x1 GB DDR4 2400 Mghz

 

You only have one stick of ram? if you want more out of your pc get another stick!!!

[Chris Pratt]

To be clear, @rorythedawg meant the board is not intended for OC. A stable OC requires being able to manage and keep under control thermals and power delivery. This is an extremely low end board with cheap VRMs and doesn't even have a VRM heatsink. I can't even find specs on the VRMs phases, but it looks like there's only 6-7 MOSFets (there's two variations of this board, so not sure which you have).

[TheMiniMiney]

8 minutes ago, rorythedawg said:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3175005/amd-ryzen-motherboards-explained-the-crucial-differences-in-every-am4-chipset.html#:~:text=Crucially%2C while every Ryzen processor,of your CPU%2C look elsewhere. "Crucially, while every Ryzen processor can be overclocked, A320 motherboards do not support overclocking. So if you want to squeeze more oomph out of your CPU, look elsewhere."

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Zen/AMD-Ryzen 7 1700.html

"Maximum turbo frequency: 3700 MHz"

 

Are you sure you have an A320 board? That chip set is not supposed to have overclocking support. 

And if you are sure about the A320 board, have you checked that your CPU is actually at that clock when in windows?

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=11433&title=cpu-core-multiplier-wont-stay-put

this thread seems to be an example of someone being able to set a multiplier but as expected it doesn't stick in an OS cause a320 doesnt support OCing. 

 

I could be incorrect, I just genuinely did not think a320 could overclock at all. 

 

 

 

Onto your question, yeah there are a lot of nuances to know about OCing, but as long as you know the basic cycle of increasing clocks and voltage until you crash from heat your kinda fine tbh. Anything more than that doesn't usually give tangible benefits anyway and people mostly just do it for fun. 

Regarding RAM timings (and just RAM itself), that's probably the most complicated aspect of OCing. I cant assist with that much as I don't really understand them well enough myself. 

 

Definitely see what you can get out of your 1080 tho.

Thanks alot for your answer and time on this question. This really helped me get to know moreabout OCing .

[Chris Pratt]

8 minutes ago, rorythedawg said:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3175005/amd-ryzen-motherboards-explained-the-crucial-differences-in-every-am4-chipset.html#:~:text=Crucially%2C while every Ryzen processor,of your CPU%2C look elsewhere. "Crucially, while every Ryzen processor can be overclocked, A320 motherboards do not support overclocking. So if you want to squeeze more oomph out of your CPU, look elsewhere."

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Zen/AMD-Ryzen 7 1700.html

"Maximum turbo frequency: 3700 MHz"

 

Are you sure you have an A320 board? That chip set is not supposed to have overclocking support. 

And if you are sure about the A320 board, have you checked that your CPU is actually at that clock when in windows?

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=11433&title=cpu-core-multiplier-wont-stay-put

this thread seems to be an example of someone being able to set a multiplier but as expected it doesn't stick in an OS cause a320 doesnt support OCing. 

 

I could be incorrect, I just genuinely did not think a320 could overclock at all. 

 

 

 

Onto your question, yeah there are a lot of nuances to know about OCing, but as long as you know the basic cycle of increasing clocks and voltage until you crash from heat your kinda fine tbh. Anything more than that doesn't usually give tangible benefits anyway and people mostly just do it for fun. 

Regarding RAM timings (and just RAM itself), that's probably the most complicated aspect of OCing. I cant assist with that much as I don't really understand them well enough myself. 

 

Definitely see what you can get out of your 1080 tho.

The product page mentions overclocking, but only in the sense of enabling some Gigabyte branded auto OC in the BIOS. The board itself is extremely hobbled for OC purposes, at the very least, regardless of whether it technically let's you OC or not.

[TheMiniMiney]

2 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

To be clear, @rorythedawg meant the board is not intended for OC. A stable OC requires being able to manage and keep under control thermals and power delivery. This is an extremely low end board with cheap VRMs and doesn't even have a VRM heatsink. I can't even find specs on the VRMs phases, but it looks like there's only 6-7 MOSFets (there's two variations of this board, so not sure which you have).

GIGABYTE GA-A320M-S2H AMD A320 AM4 MAX-32GB DDR4 Micro ATX PCIE16

This is what I got from Amazon.

[Chris Pratt]

It's only third party sellers now, but you didn't actually pay $101 for that did you? You can do much better than that for that price.

[TheMiniMiney]

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

It's only third party sellers now, but you didn't actually pay $101 for that did you? You can do much better than that for that price.

lol no. I paid 59$ for it. If i had the budget i would not've cheaped out on the MOBO.

[Chris Pratt]

Just now, TheMiniMiney said:

lol no. I paid 59$ for it. If i had the budget i would not've cheaped out on the MOBO.

Okay, that's reasonable I guess, but this truly isn't a board for overclocking. Not sure how you managed a stable OC, assuming it was stable, but I'd be very concerns about burning out the VRMs.

[rorythedawg]

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

Okay, that's reasonable I guess, but this truly isn't a board for overclocking. Not sure how you managed a stable OC, assuming it was stable, but I'd be very concerns about burning out the VRMs.

500mhz isnt gonna kill his board, if it even applied the +500 in OS, which i doubt very much.

 

Also tbh its still a bad deal considering that if he bought this a year ago he could have had a b450 for $5-$10 extra, bought my old asrock b450 for $65 in 2018

[TheMiniMiney]

Just now, Chris Pratt said:

Okay, that's reasonable I guess, but this truly isn't a board for overclocking. Not sure how you managed a stable OC, assuming it was stable, but I'd be very concerns about burning out the VRMs.

If you dont mind , can you explain VRMs ? and how will i be able to burn them? I have been running my CPU at 3.75 (sometimes 3.85 Ghz) constantly since 5 months. I did notice my entire PC freeze from time to time , and only soln was to press the reset button , was it a result of unstable OC? ( although the freeze happens like very rarely , happened like 4-5 times till now)

[rorythedawg]

3 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

If you dont mind , can you explain VRMs ? and how will i be able to burn them? I have been running my CPU at 3.75 (sometimes 3.85 Ghz) constantly since 5 months. I did notice my entire PC freeze from time to time , and only soln was to press the reset button , was it a result of unstable OC? ( although the freeze happens like very rarely , happened like 4-5 times till now)

VRMs are you power delivery, if you have any airflow over them you dont need to worry to much (for this build at least), essentially you need to dissipate the heat off them the same way that your CPU and CPU need their heat dissipated. More VRMs and better cooling results in being able to push more power through the mobo to your CPU. 

 

and if you were running 3.85 on that board that is almost defiantly the cause of your crashes as that board just cant handle the extra power draw of a 1700 at 3.85

[Chris Pratt]

39 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

My motherboard does support OC , i did OC my cpu to 3.75 ghz using the ratio multiplier. Although my question is not whether i can apply or not , but rather is there anything i should know more than just increasing the ratio multiplier , like voltages , temps  , and ram timings. If it comes to it , I may upgrade my MOBO and RAM. But as for now i would want to understand this things before i purchase anything else. 

 

And my GPU is GTX 1080 , and I feel i understand GPU overclocking better than CPU and RAM OC , thats why i didnt mention it in the question.

Gamers Nexus has a pretty in depth video on RAM timings, but this is an extremely complex subject. It has to do with how much time it takes to execute various commands to open rows and such in memory. There's a ton of different timings but the four or five most important are the ones that are indicated on your RAM. That said 2400Mhz is already going to have timings about as tight as you're going to get. They get looser with higher clocks. In that regard, you may be able to OC your RAM, but that's going to require pushing more voltage and I'm just not sure if your board can even handle that. The absolute biggest performance improvement you can make, though, is to get a second stick of RAM. You're running single channel, which means you've got a hard bottleneck there. Dual channel would instantly double your performance, much better than any OC ever would.

[TheMiniMiney]

2 minutes ago, rorythedawg said:

VRMs are you power delivery, if you have any airflow over them you dont need to worry to much, essentially you need to dissipate the heat off them the same way that your CPU and CPU need their heat dissipated. More VRMs and better cooling results in being able to push more power through the mobo to your CPU. 

 

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

Gamers Nexus has a pretty in depth video on RAM timings, but this is an extremely complex subject. It has to do with how much time it takes to execute various commands to open rows and such in memory. There's a ton of different timings but the four or five most important are the ones that are indicated on your RAM. That said 2400Mhz is already going to have timings about as tight as you're going to get. They get looser with higher clocks. In that regard, you may be able to OC your RAM, but that's going to require pushing more voltage and I'm just not sure if your board can even handle that. The absolute biggest performance improvement you can make, though, is to get a second stick of RAM. You're running single channel, which means you've got a hard bottleneck there. Dual channel would instantly double your performance, much better than any OC ever would.

Oh i understand now. I am considering another stick of ram. Also thanks alot for your time and answer on this question , i understand alot better now than literally just an hour ago.

[rorythedawg]

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

Gamers Nexus has a pretty in depth video on RAM timings, but this is an extremely complex subject. It has to do with how much time it takes to execute various commands to open rows and such in memory. There's a ton of different timings but the four or five most important are the ones that are indicated on your RAM. That said 2400Mhz is already going to have timings about as tight as you're going to get. They get looser with higher clocks. In that regard, you may be able to OC your RAM, but that's going to require pushing more voltage and I'm just not sure if your board can even handle that. The absolute biggest performance improvement you can make, though, is to get a second stick of RAM. You're running single channel, which means you've got a hard bottleneck there. Dual channel would instantly double your performance, much better than any OC ever would.

The only part here I disagree with is that your board cant handle OCing the ram, as the RAM has its own VRM separate form the CPUs so you actually could probably OC the ram (provided the kit can OC at all) though you should leave this at stock as theres no way youll be able to match the stock timing + mhz performance, even if you got higher mhz you wouldn't be able to get the timings close enough to make the overall speed better. 

[TheMiniMiney]

2 minutes ago, rorythedawg said:

The only part here I disagree with is that your board cant handle OCing the ram, as the RAM has its own VRM separate form the CPUs so you actually could probably OC the ram (provided the kit can OC at all) though you should leave this at stock as theres no way youll be able to match the stock timing + mhz performance, even if you got higher mhz you wouldn't be able to get the timings close enough to make the overall speed better. 

I see , increase in frequency means also increase in the delay in timing ,basically almost nulling out the OC , so upgrading my RAM is the only worhtwhile option now.

[Chris Pratt]

4 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

If you dont mind , can you explain VRMs ? and how will i be able to burn them? I have been running my CPU at 3.75 (sometimes 3.85 Ghz) constantly since 5 months. I did notice my entire PC freeze from time to time , and only soln was to press the reset button , was it a result of unstable OC? ( although the freeze happens like very rarely , happened like 4-5 times till now)

Yes, that's instability, and it means you aren't truly overclocked. The VRM is the voltage regular module. It's what steps down the voltage coming from the power supply for the CPU (and other board components) and "cleans" it. The power supply doesn't just provide a constant voltage. It fluctuates up and down. The VRM(s) smooth this out, providing a consistent and predictable voltage. However, they can only do so much. The higher the draw, the more chance that they can't regulate it properly. This is also why there's multiples. The load is spread out over multiple modules to keep from overwhelming any single one. Just like anything else that works with power, they heat up. Again, the more power, the faster they heat up. If they get too hot, they can burn out, just like any other component. True overclocking boards generally have at least twice as many VRMs as this one, as well as a large heat sink to dissipate heat. Without that, getting a stable OC is going to be virtually impossible, and you're putting way too much stress on the VRMs even then.

[Chris Pratt]

6 minutes ago, rorythedawg said:

The only part here I disagree with is that your board cant handle OCing the ram, as the RAM has its own VRM separate form the CPUs so you actually could probably OC the ram (provided the kit can OC at all) though you should leave this at stock as theres no way youll be able to match the stock timing + mhz performance, even if you got higher mhz you wouldn't be able to get the timings close enough to make the overall speed better. 

I *think* (again, can't find hard specs), but this is a 3+3 phase setup, and it has no heatsink. I just wouldn't trust any overclocking, RAM or CPU.

[TheMiniMiney]

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

Yes, that's instability, and it means you aren't truly overclocked. The VRM is the voltage regular module. It's what steps down the voltage coming from the power supply for the CPU (and other board components) and "cleans" it. The power supply doesn't just provide a constant voltage. It fluctuates up and down. The VRM(s) smooth this out, providing a consistent and predictable voltage. However, they can only do so much. The higher the draw, the more chance that they can't regulate it properly. This is also why there's multiples. The load is spread out over multiple modules to keep from overwhelming any single one. Just like anything else that works with power, they heat up. Again, the more power, the faster they heat up. If they get too hot, they can burn out, just like any other component. True overclocking boards generally have at least twice as many VRMs as this one, as well as a large heat sink to dissipate heat. Without that, getting a stable OC is going to be virtually impossible, and you're putting way too much stress on the VRMs even then.

oh , so its better for the MOBO lifespan if I reduce the OC , i see

[rorythedawg]

30 minutes ago, TheMiniMiney said:

I see , increase in frequency means also increase in the delay in timing ,basically almost nulling out the OC , so upgrading my RAM is the only worhtwhile option now.

Not in every case, but typically you need to loosen the timings to get higher Mhz, 

 

the relationship works like this Cas/Mhz x 1000 = access time in ns as remember RAM is storage just like a hard drive or SSD.

 

CAS 11/1600MHz = .0069s or 6.9ns
CAS 9/1600MHz = .0056s or 5.6ns
CAS 11/1866MHz = .0059s or 5.9ns

 

also one other thing I should mention is that 1600mhz ram is actaully 1600*2 for 3200mhz as ddr stands for double data rate meaning your ram chip is running at half the speed your ram says, so your ram is actually running at 1200mhz but twice per cycle making it effectively 2400mhz (since your ram transfers data twice per clock cycle)

[rorythedawg]

1 minute ago, Chris Pratt said:

I *think* (again, can't find hard specs), but this is a 3+3 phase setup, and it has no heatsink. I just wouldn't trust any overclocking, RAM or CPU.

yeah to be fair I havnt actaully looked at the baord apart form one pic, my understanding was that almost every mobo has a dedicated VRM to RAM and other mobo crap but maybe this is only standard on mid-ranged to high end mobos