Why overclock ?

[rjk44]

Hi all,

I've just spent several days, (while foot is in plaster - crushed between motorbike and a high kerbstone - motorbike argued with a Petrol Tanker and lost ! ), hunting down parts to replace my, still gorgeous and swift, and ancient, pre-2009 build :-
Asus M3N78+AMD Phenom 955-Arctic 7 ? cooler+4gb Ballistix
Kingston SV300S37A60 SSD, Zotac 9400GT,
Seasonic 430watt psu in there somewhere, ....Jmicron eSATA pcie x1 card
...must be some other stuff in there ...LG DVD ROM, DVDRW, Camera card bay, 160gb+500gb 7,200 hd's in there, ...Startech caddyless hd bay, ...Kingston boot SSD is in a 2.5" to 3.5" converter, in an Antec Solo case....enough of my kit.

So since pre-2009 it hasn't missed a beat. Wouldn't want to knacker my Windows platform by OC'ing it ! I have tentatively read up on the subject several times across past few years, and several times, (after always first imaging boot hard disk out to external hard disk ready to recover knackered Windows registry), experimented a little, then pushed a "little," a little too far, and always ended up with a knackered registry.

So, I always thought to myself, why stress that expensive CPU, (and RAM), beyond the thermal rating at which it was binned ? ...I don't fancy frying it and having to buy another one, ...I could barely afford the last one ! And if I'd found a stable overclock, I doubt the thing would have lasted 6+ years. After decades of chucking out motherboards and CPU's, (almost monthly in the early years), for that next better model/generation, it was great to reach a point where hardware has remained pleasantly useable for over 6 years !

Anyhoo, I've just received an Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 (didn't need SLI or CrossFire or whatever it's called - don't play games), FX-8320, 2xBallistix 4gb Tactical (damn / that means I've got to get a 64 bit Windows :-(, and will soon be rearranging the innards of two PC cases. I noticed, during my wading through the web that the above board is bristling with overclocking features but, I doubt that I'll be using them.

But then again, if I could have a small overclock without frying the thing, or corrupting the registry, I might get tempted

bfn, Richard

It's better to into a bend slow and come out fast,
than it is to go in fast and come out dead !
...or in my case, ...go in fast and smack into a petrol tanker

 

[billbobaggins87]

i have no idea what knackered means

 

[Flapdrol1337]

damn / that means I've got to get a 64 bit Windows

So download an image, the activation key doesn't care if it's 32 or 64.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You aren't going to fry anything with thermals. It's voltage that kills chips, sometimes slowly and painfully.

That M5A97 Evo is a "meh" OC board, not really top-of-the-line, but you can do some okay stuff with that 8320. You are more likely to kill the board VRMs overclocking than you are to nuke your chip.

I would say, stick to 1.4v vcore and lower, and you should be okay. How far can you get on that much voltage? I dunno, depends on your chip. Since you have one of the older FX chips, I would not expect too much past, what, 4.3-4.5 ghz on that voltage, which is still respectable.

You may also be limited by cooling if you are using the stock HSF for the 8320.

i have no idea what knackered means

Cor 'es a bit knackered eh wot?

 

[.vodka]

There are two kinds of overclocking, up to stock voltage and when you start overvolting.

Overclocking up to what stock voltage lets you do, is essentially free performance waiting to be used. The stock cooler most chips come with is usually strong enough to handle the extra heat without going overboard with noise, and there isn't much added load on the power supply or the motherboard. You *can't* fry anything this way, there are too many protections these days working to keep everything under control. Of course, if you're using a power hungry chip like your 8320 and are running the show on a generic PSU, expect fireworks. This goes without saying.

The problem appears when you aren't satisfied and start overvolting to reach higher speeds. That's where you start to actually stress your components and where you have to be careful. Power consumption (and as a side effect, generated heat) increases exponentially with voltage (see the need for aftermarket cooling?) and linearly with frequency. Remember that what kills chips is a combination of voltage and temperature... keep your components cool, overvolt by what your cooling solution lets you, have good airflow in your case and it'll be fine.


You have to ensure the system is stable afterwards with enough stress testing. An unstable overclock results in data corruption, which usually manifests as borked windows installations, or a crash in the middle of transcoding/rendering/gaming. That's on you for not testing enough.

 

[Dave3000]

Even with hours of stressing testing without problems on an OC system and OC can make a system unstable in other ways that don't necessarily stress specifically the CPU. I have an i7-4930k that does not run stable at max turbo (3.9 GHz) and auto vcore for all core loads but it runs Prime 95 and Intel Burn Test for hours without issues, but decides it want to turn back on my system when I turn it off or will BSOD on me while loading CPU-z at that OC setting.

 

[.vodka]

Then you need to adjust other settings.

You have to look at it and tweak as a whole.

 

[Burpo]

Even with hours of stressing testing without problems on an OC system and OC can make a system unstable in other ways that don't necessarily stress specifically the CPU. I have an i7-4930k that does not run stable at max turbo (3.9 GHz) and auto vcore for all core loads but it runs Prime 95 and Intel Burn Test for hours without issues, but decides it want to turn back on my system when I turn it off or will BSOD on me while loading CPU-z at that OC setting.

Stress testing proves nothing if your settings aren't right.. I wish I had your board & chip.. It'd be running smooth as butter @ 4+Ghz in 30 minutes, and not restarting itself. Your settings are wrong, but we already told you that. Whatever you do don't change them Then you'd have nothing to complain about in other peoples threads.

 

[Randy99CL]

Richard
Is your point that you're not going to OC? Lots of people don't.

I've built systems for decades and used to upgrade parts and spend hours tweaking to get the max out of my chips. Some systems were stable and lasted for a long while but others were flaky and failed.
It was fun playing with OCing and knowing I was getting the max out of the chip and saving a little money.

But it's not worth it to me anymore.

Processing speed hasn't been the biggest bottleneck to overall system response; it's everything else. It's more important to ensure that you have the fastest interfaces possible: SATA, video and memory. And multi-core chips with a 64bit OS.
Speeding up your chip 20% doesn't make your computer 20% faster. The overall performance is what matters.

I don't game so don't need much. When things happen almost instantly, why would I want to invest time and money to get 10% faster than instantaneous?
For two years I've used a Toshiba laptop with quad-core, 12g RAM, Win7, SSD and wired internet.
Plenty fast enough for me, especially when compared to what we had 25 years ago.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Stress testing proves nothing if your settings aren't right.. I wish I had your board & chip.. It'd be running smooth as butter @ 4+Ghz in 30 minutes, and not restarting itself. Your settings are wrong, but we already told you that. Whatever you do don't change them Then you'd have nothing to complain about in other peoples threads.

With my mobo generation, certain choices of LLC and offset can result in idle-level resets or BSODs. Usually, you can nail these things down fairly soon after getting stable load/stress settings.

Sometimes, driver conflicts, over-use of available computer resources and other factors can cause intermittent but fairly regular crashes, which are difficult to replicate. Then again, some people make the mistake to run two sensor-monitoring programs at once, causing the system to crash and making the user think he needs to tweak the OC settings.

If the OP wants to do it (keep in mind I've not kept up with AMD) -- I'd suggest he locate the specs on the processor for its "TCASE" or similar temperature and (hopefully) a maximum safe voltage -- the spec Intel stopped publishing beginning with Sandy Bridge.

If he chooses his stable clocks so that the voltage is within 20mV of that spec, and if he takes advantage of power-saving auto-downclock features similar to Intel's EIST, there's not likely to be any damage to the chip. As for the temperatures, I'd think your chicken limit could be 10C above the stock spec recommended: most folks are comfortable with twice that on the Intel chips.

Also, there are a lot of extra tweaks to squeeze another 100 or 200 Mhz out of a processor, but if they amount to pushing higher current levels through the chip, the extra speed doesn't seem worth it to me. If my highest stable clock is 4.7GHz and I can't reach 4.8, then I might back it off to 4.6.

But true -- "auto-volted" overclocks are free, nor any worse than stock settings if there are efforts taken for a little extra cooling.

There are just situations where you can find yourself bogged down in trouble-shooting -- you have to be prepared for it. And it is far from ideal if one already has software configured for regular usage, or storing and updating files and work-product on a system that's in such a state of purgatory or limbo. You'd want to get it done before you actually begin "using" the system.

 

[Yuriman]

Generally speaking, after years, chips will begin to degrade from high voltage, requiring that you either back off your clocks a bit, or add more voltage to maintain stability. What "high voltage" is, varies. I had an Opteron 165 that ran at 3ghz, a 66% overclock, for close to 7 years before I sold it, and it didn't show any signs of degradation during that time.

I ran my 3570K for several years at 4.6ghz (25% over stock) with a healthy overvolt. Recently, I moved to a much smaller ITX case and to keep noise and heat under control, as well as to make it easier on my smaller power supply, I've backed off to 4ghz @ stock volts, which is just over 10%. In day to day use, I really don't see a difference, but I figure I might as well take the extra 10%.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Old habits die hard. When you've been addicted to OCing since the days of swapping out clock crystals, you just can't let go
That said, I do not OC most of my systems (eg. 2x fileservers, folks', etc.), only my main work/play ones.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Old habits die hard. When you've been addicted to OCing since the days of swapping out clock crystals, you just can't let go
That said, I do not OC most of my systems (eg. 2x fileservers, folks', etc.), only my main work/play ones.

Clock Crystals? You mean a wrist watch?

(NOT at you Playa)I'm not sure why people run ITB for hours lol, I run it to see my max V core under auto over clock. My boards will auto volt up to 4500Mhz, I just make sure the temp's n V core are good for less then ten seconds. ITB puts a load on a CPU no program you can use does, its like fur mark for the GPU. JUNK< oh wait don't forget memtest :sneaky:. I've not borked a OS install in a while, not sense 775 days.

 

[alcoholbob]

Yeah it's all up to voltages. My 4790K CPU clocks to 4.7GHz (4.4 stock) on the stock voltage of 1.18V so the temps are only 3-5C higher than stock (idles in the 25-27 C range, still well below stock cooler performance), so to me that's a safe overclock.

 

[MongGrel]

You Overclock because you can.

 

[Dave3000]

Yeah it's all up to voltages. My 4790K CPU clocks to 4.7GHz (4.4 stock) on the stock voltage of 1.18V so the temps are only 3-5C higher than stock (idles in the 25-27 C range, still well below stock cooler performance), so to me that's a safe overclock.

Stock is 4.2 GHz for the 4790k when 4 cores are under load. 4.4 GHz is stock for only 2 cores under load the the others in a sleep state.

 

[escrow4]

Hi all,

I've just spent several days, (while foot is in plaster - crushed between motorbike and a high kerbstone - motorbike argued with a Petrol Tanker and lost ! ), hunting down parts to replace my, still gorgeous and swift, and ancient, pre-2009 build :-
Asus M3N78+AMD Phenom 955-Arctic 7 ? cooler+4gb Ballistix
Kingston SV300S37A60 SSD, Zotac 9400GT,
Seasonic 430watt psu in there somewhere, ....Jmicron eSATA pcie x1 card
...must be some other stuff in there ...LG DVD ROM, DVDRW, Camera card bay, 160gb+500gb 7,200 hd's in there, ...Startech caddyless hd bay, ...Kingston boot SSD is in a 2.5" to 3.5" converter, in an Antec Solo case....enough of my kit.

So since pre-2009 it hasn't missed a beat. Wouldn't want to knacker my Windows platform by OC'ing it ! I have tentatively read up on the subject several times across past few years, and several times, (after always first imaging boot hard disk out to external hard disk ready to recover knackered Windows registry), experimented a little, then pushed a "little," a little too far, and always ended up with a knackered registry.

So, I always thought to myself, why stress that expensive CPU, (and RAM), beyond the thermal rating at which it was binned ? ...I don't fancy frying it and having to buy another one, ...I could barely afford the last one ! And if I'd found a stable overclock, I doubt the thing would have lasted 6+ years. After decades of chucking out motherboards and CPU's, (almost monthly in the early years), for that next better model/generation, it was great to reach a point where hardware has remained pleasantly useable for over 6 years !

Anyhoo, I've just received an Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 (didn't need SLI or CrossFire or whatever it's called - don't play games), FX-8320, 2xBallistix 4gb Tactical (damn / that means I've got to get a 64 bit Windows :-(, and will soon be rearranging the innards of two PC cases. I noticed, during my wading through the web that the above board is bristling with overclocking features but, I doubt that I'll be using them.

But then again, if I could have a small overclock without frying the thing, or corrupting the registry, I might get tempted

bfn, Richard

Hope you didn't pay for that FX. Just isn't worth it against a modern Haswell i5 (or Skylake). I've never overclocked. Too lazy. And the only difference in single player games are the minimum's and the dips (don't play multiplayer) which can be offset by buying the fastest stock clocked CPU you can and using MCE.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Hope you didn't pay for that FX. Just isn't worth it against a modern Haswell i5 (or Skylake). I've never overclocked. Too lazy. And the only difference in single player games are the minimum's and the dips (don't play multiplayer) which can be offset by buying the fastest stock clocked CPU you can and using MCE.

He said he doesn't play games. In everything else you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the FX and a Haswell quad.

 

[2is]

If you're exceeding "thermal limits" when you overclock, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Dufus]

For some it is interesting to see how far a component can be pushed, for others an increase in price/performance. For instance a mobile i7-4700MQ today can be had for about $180 while an unlocked MX would be about $800 IIRC. Of course the MX is a better binned chip so it should beat the 4700 but the gap between them could possibly be closed a little.

 

[maddogmcgee]

i have no idea what knackered means

It roughly equates to being 'buggered' in the non-literal sense. I suppose, if you were to take being buggered literally, you could be knackered from too much buggery.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Buggeritall, millenium hand and shrimp!

 

[rjk44]

Richard
Is your point that you're not going to OC? Lots of people don't.
....Processing speed hasn't been the biggest bottleneck to overall system response; it's everything else.
...Plenty fast enough for me, especially when compared to what we had 25 years ago.

Hi, You sound like a person after my own heart.
I suppose what it comes down to is that, (with time on my hands), I started pondering on the age of my system, and little things like my old M3N78 motherboard doesn't have solid aluminium, (in American that's "aluminum"!), capacitors, so I got to thinking that if I let many more years roll past, I could be taken by surprise by a dried out cap or other failure.
I know I used pretty good quality parts, (pre-2009), but, now I would like solid caps. on a new board, and SATA III support , and eSATA ports on it, (am thinking also of a new 1tb WD Blue 64mb cache, or even two, one to go in SOLO box for data only, (to replace two SATA II 7200rpm 160gb and 500gb disks currently in it), and the other one to go into ORICO caddyless ext. case, (replacing Seagate SATA II 320gb disk), that has USB and eSATA ports ! I may even try that lovely blue USB 3 lead that came with it. Never got to the bottom of why the red eSATA port on M3N78's back panel never worked with two Sumvision ext. hard disk cases, which I recently chucked as eSATA support in them recently died.

It's a bit disappointing looking at SATA III and USB 3.0 specifications, and then comparing it with real-world benchmarks, ....still I should get some sort of improvement I suppose.

Back to your opening Q. I don't know ! I suspect that I may be tempted to explore the BIOS timings, and tweak a little !
Due the very interesting points about increasing current / overvolting, (much obliged to all in this thread on that topic), and I'll be wading through posts relating to that but, suspect that I will not do that.

best regards, Richard

 

[rjk44]

So download an image, the activation key doesn't care if it's 32 or 64.

Opps, I should have said an "extra/new" Windows (64bit), as I'll be transplanting M3N78/955/2x2gb Ballistix etc, into my other / 2nd, PC case), ...Lian-Li case, ...and chucking out the Conroe 865PE board, and XP Home ed. in it, that's all been sat there unused for two or three years !

best regard, Richard

 

[rjk44]

That's hilarious ! ...but, makes one wonder just what's going on in your mind

best regards, Richard