TriRyan or anyone else. Liquid Cooling.....

[ninjageek]

Ok, I have my Computer up and running. So I have some questions. I am running AMD FX-6100 hope you all can help.

Is the default software for temps the best? Or is there something different I should use?

Using Celsius Scale what temps should I kick the fan on? Default setting is what I am using, Its set to full speed at 50c is that right?

It runs Idle at 33c after some gaming the hottest I have seen is is 48 c.

Is overclocking the CPU make that much of difference?

Any other information you can send my way would be greatly appreciated. I have overdrive installed. There was another program on the motherboard disk. It wont install. Googled it, Seems like I need to flash the bios to get it to work. BUT!! With the same motherboard, others claim they are bricking there system with the bios flash. So I WON'T be flashing the BIOS unless I have to.

[TriRan]

Is the default software for temps the best? Or is there something different I should use?

Temp monitoring software is really personal preference I use hardware monitor by cpuid but you can use whatever you like best

Using Celsius Scale what temps should I kick the fan on? Default setting is what I am using, Its set to full speed at 50c is that right?

that works but if it were me and my system wasn't reaching that threshold during load i would reduce the threshold probably to around 40-45C so that it would kick up to max when i was gaming etc.

It runs Idle at 33c after some gaming the hottest I have seen is is 48 c.

okay so my system right now is idling at around 37C at 4.1GHz, Phenom CPU's are rated safe up to 70C and i usually see temps of around 60-65C under full load after an hour or two

from what i read AMD says the max temp for an FX cpu is around 61C but i've read tons of reviews where people sit around 65C and are still safe

Is overclocking the CPU make that much of difference?

Any other information you can send my way would be greatly appreciated. I have overdrive installed. There was another program on the motherboard disk. It wont install. Googled it, Seems like I need to flash the bios to get it to work. BUT!! With the same motherboard, others claim they are bricking there system with the bios flash. So I WON'T be flashing the BIOS unless I have to.

first you probably won't notice any difference if all you are doing is gaming... sure if you run a benchmark utility you will see the numbers increase but it probably wouldn't be noticable to the naked eye.

I have oc'd with overdrive before it seemed a little clunky to me and I didn't like it a whole lot I was able to hit about 3.8 stable on overdrive from the stock 3.2 not to high I know i much prefer just OC'ing with the BIOS instead of overdrive but again its totally up to you

[ninjageek]

I thank you so very kindly for the reply. After some thought, Think I will leave the overclocking alone. Really can not see risking it just for bragging rights. I for sure agree with the need to lower the defaults a bit. That way the cooler will kick on while gaming. Kinda pointless to have liquid cooling if I am not gonna use it.

Also handy having a better understanding of temps, what the max is, greatly appreciate that information. One other question, Should I Run amd Cool and quiet? I set the bios to run the motherboard optimized. If you look at this video below, It will help you better understand what I am saying. While looking at the advanced settings I noticed amd cool and quiet was disabled. Never to crazy to change bios settings. So like to be sure. Better safe than owning a brick.

[TriRan]

I thank you so very kindly for the reply. After some thought, Think I will leave the overclocking alone. Really can not see risking it just for bragging rights. I for sure agree with the need to lower the defaults a bit. That way the cooler will kick on while gaming. Kinda pointless to have liquid cooling if I am not gonna use it.

Also handy having a better understanding of temps, what the max is, greatly appreciate that information. One other question, Should I Run amd Cool and quiet? I set the bios to run the motherboard optimized. If you look at this video below, It will help you better understand what I am saying. While looking at the advanced settings I noticed amd cool and quiet was disabled. Never to crazy to change bios settings. So like to be sure. Better safe than owning a brick.

i run AMD cool n quiet especially since i'm OC'ing it really helps out on saving some power/reducing heat

and it will prolong the life of your CPU less heat on your cpu will mean longer life

changing most settings in the bios won't brick anything worst case is your pc won't boot but most of the time it will still post the bios

the cool thing about new motherboards is when you fail OC'ing e.g "oc'ing to high and the pc wouldn't normally post" the bios will still post and just say the cpu failed to achieve that oc so nothing to really be worried about also if it ever doesn't post you can reset the bios easily enough and everything will be fine... i've failed a lot of OC's i've even severely undervolted my cpu on accident and my bios wouldn't post... voltages are the one thing to be really careful with everything else i wouldn't worry to much about have some fun play around with stuff i'd be happy to answer any questions if you run into any problems

btw optimized is probably slightly OC'ing your cpu it's probably like an 8-10% oc nothing major

~ Mark

[ninjageek]

Hope you can answer this one does Asus Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard backup the bios if you flash it with a new one, just in case? Think they called it like a dual boot bios? Its supposed to save from a bad flash? I googled it, no luck finding out forsure. thought you may know.

[RTB]

It's rare to see anyone using Bulldozer, considering that they hardly match Phenom 2 CPUs. Since the introduction of turbuboost (and the AMD equivalent), overclocking has become a bit tricky, because the CPU can be in various modes which all have different voltages and clock speeds. Considering how cool you're currently running, you should certainly be able to get it to run at 4ghz on all cores. The convenience of overclocking inside windows is useful, because you're not waiting for windows to load over and over, but it also means that settings don't stick after a reboot. So once you find a stable OC, you'd have to set it properly in the BIOS.

[TriRan]

Hope you can answer this one does Asus Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard backup the bios if you flash it with a new one, just in case? Think they called it like a dual boot bios? Its supposed to save from a bad flash? I googled it, no luck finding out forsure. thought you may know.

I actually own one of those boards using a phenom II x6 on it and yes it will save it from a bad flash but also it let's you keep 2 sets of bios for different usage too also it's pretty hard to flash the wrong bios I tried for over an hour to flash the wrong bios and it wouldn't let me haha

[Pgoodwin1]

Set the fan turn on point as low as you can stand from a fan noise and power consumption perspective. If the fan is relatively low power compared to the total power draw of the computer, then it's not much of a money impact letting it run at just above the idle temperature. If the fan is real noisy, and it's bothersome except when you're gaming, set the threshold higher- just above the hottest temp it gets when the room is warm and your doing you typical stuff on the computer.

Running electronics hot decreases the reliability of the components. The predicted failure rates double about every 10 deg C for most electronic assemblies. Allowing the parts to get hot then cool down is also detrimental in that the temperature cycles stress and unstressed the solder joints. The bigger the temperature swing the more detrimental it is and the less likely it is that some solder joint will fail. The best case is cool and constant.

If you have the option of low speed and high speed fan set points, you could set the fan to low ON at 25C and high ON at 40C for example.

The one sentence in there is wrong. "The bigger the temperature swing the more detrimental it is and the less likely it is that some solder joint will fail". It should have said:

The bigger the temperature swing the more detrimental it is and the MORE likely it is that some solder joint will fail

Sorry 'bout that, didn't proof read. B(-).

[TriRan]

Hope you can answer this one does Asus Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard backup the bios if you flash it with a new one, just in case? Think they called it like a dual boot bios? Its supposed to save from a bad flash? I googled it, no luck finding out forsure. thought you may know.

I actually own one of those boards using a phenom II x6 on it and yes it will save it from a bad flash but also it let's you keep 2 sets of bios for different usage too also it's pretty hard to flash the wrong bios I tried for over an hour to flash the wrong bios and it wouldn't let me haha

[ninjageek]

WELL.....Guess what I tried. Yep, HAD to play with overclocking. That did not turn out well. Lol. With google, I looked around. Overclockers are pretty much nuts. No disrespect meant. They act like it makes such a huge difference. Gotta wonder how many have messed something up thinking they were gonna end up with a much faster computer.

I kinda figured on the motherboard was idiot proof. Thats why I picked it. lol. Learned that you can use a flash drive to recover it worse case senerio So flashing it is no big deal, Still wont do it unless I HAVE to. IF and WHEN you have time, I wanna learn how to overclock this thing. Just to play with my geek side. Learn something new. Maybe if you could write a guide or how to I would appreciate it. With google I am starting to understand it a little. The need to up the voltage and mess with the multiplier. Of course I will write down the defaults, Unless you can teach me how to back up and restore the Default bios and how to recover it. That would be handy to learn.

So yea, if and when you have the time, Be cool to learn how to do it. Not sure I will leave it that way, Just something I have always wanted to learn, Seems like you know your stuff, Think the trick to learning is finding someone that knows what they are doing, willing to teach. There can be lots of wrong information on google. I thank ya sir.

Oh one last question for now. if your processor is reading say 3700 Mgh, That means its a 3.7 Gigahertz right? .

[TriRan]

Yes that's exactly what it means and I'd be happy to teach you I just don't have any experience oc'ing an fx series cpu so ill be learning right along side of you

[ninjageek]

Well when you get time, Let me know how to start, What to do bla bla bla. Lets see how fast we can push this cpu.

[TriRan]

Well I get off work a little later today I can help you with the basics the main thing to remember is just to do it in small increments

[TriRan]

okay the first thing i would do is download a few programs we're in this for the long haul so we need to make sure our OC will be stable and safe

your gonna need CPU-Z

http://www.cpuid.com...ares/cpu-z.html

and prime95 for our burn in and stability tests

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

once you have and install those two programs we're going to use CPU-Z first you need to find out what your cpu voltage is for your stock clock speed

once you have that write it down

then before you start cranking anything up heres what you do

you go into the bios and set the voltage for the cpu manually

then you'll want to manually set a bunch of frequencies

you need to manually set the northbridge frequency so its not auto and the PCI bus frequency aswell PCI bus is gonna be 100Mhz and the northbridge will also be shown in the CPUZ you can see mine there aswell mine is OC'd to 2400 but its supposed to be 2000 at stock for my cpu yours may be different

once you get those frequencies set if your CPU is unlocked you can simply up the multiplier to the next step then boot your PC up and run prime95 for about 30 mins or so if it has no errors and doesn't BSOD you then your golden keep going once you get a BSOD or an error you've hit the CPU's limit at that voltage so you can either increase the voltage by a small amount and try again or drop it down a step on the multiplier or two and be happy with what you have achieved... if your multiplier is not unlocked then OC'ing is a tad more difficult as you have to underclock your ram and northbridge and then raise the CPU's bus speed

the reason you have to underclock the ram and northbridge is because as the BUS speed increases so will the northbridge frequency and ram frequency and you don't want errors from those messing with your tests plus OC'ing the northbridge isn't usually a good idea

if you need more help or clarification let me know and remember take it slow don't up any setting by a huge amount from stock small changes will prevent your cpu from getting fried... if your pc BSODS or gets errors at least it won't do permanent damage and you can just revert the setting in your bios

[ninjageek]

WHen you say up the voltage just a bit, How much should I jump it up at a time?

[TriRan]

WHen you say up the voltage just a bit, How much should I jump it up at a time?

when i'm adjusting my voltage i usually go like this

stock is 1.35 i'd up it to around 1.38 or 1.4 then after that do like smaller increments. it depends on how high i'm getting on voltage i mean MAX voltage my MB will supply is 1.6V and i have to use 1.51V to keep 4.1GHz so when i was getting in the upper 1.4V range i started going in increments of .01 or .02 because its dangerous at that point

when entering the voltage on my MB it shows as like 1.35000 btw so you can use even less then a .01 increment

keep in mind those voltages are for my cpu yours will probably be different but it might give you an idea

[ninjageek]

Ok, Get ready to shake your head. Im Sorry. The settings you told me to change are simply NOT in my Bios. The ONLY place I found any of them is in Advanced Mode, AI tweaker. This is what I have there.

CPU/NB Frequency Is on Auto, To take it off I have 3 "Unsupoported" Then it goes from 1610 Mhz to 3680 Mhz. With several choices there. to pick

HT LIne Speed is auto then it goes from 920Mhz to 2990 Mhz. Several selections there.

AMD Turbo Core Technology is on Auto

OC tuner is set to cancel

This New Bios is just completely different. I am LOST!! I found no settings to change Multiplier.

Edited February 20, 2012 by ninjageek

[TriRan]

Ok, Get ready to shake your head. Im Sorry. The settings you told me to change are simply NOT in my Bios. The ONLY place I found any of them is in Advanced Mode, AI tweaker. This is what I have there.

CPU/NB Frequency Is on Auto, To take it off I have 3 "Unsupoported" Then it goes from 1610 Mhz to 3680 Mhz. With several choices there. to pick

HT LIne Speed is auto then it goes from 920Mhz to 2990 Mhz. Several selections there.

AMD Turbo Core Technology is on Auto

OC tuner is set to cancel

This New Bios is just completely different. I am LOST!! I found no settings to change Multiplier.

okay so i have no experience with UEFI BIOS lol i'll have to research this a bit and get back with you

[TriRan]

okay so after some research you OC under the A I Tweaker

AI Overclock tuner - Manual

Ratio - 17 ( going to start here and then slowly up this by halves so 17.5 next and 18 after i've been reading that people are easily getting this to 22.5 which is roughly 4.2GHz that is a hefty overclock )

AMD Turbo Core - Disabled (it will mess with your OC and will make it unstable)

PCIE - Freq - 100 (freq at which the PCIe slot operates, don't want this higher then 100 so lock in at 100 )

Spread Spectrum(s) - Disabled (increases stability on FX cpu's )

CPU/NB Frequency - AUTO ( can leave auto or set at 200MHz CPU, 2200MHz NB )

HT Link - AUTO ( can leave auto this is your hypertransport link operating speed)

Goto the Advanced CPU config tab and DISABLE all the power savings etc, Disable the whole list.

then go down to voltages and manually enter the CPU's voltage

i read the FX6100 is safe up to 1.4V most that achieve 4.2GHz are using around 1.3375v so we'll work up to that from stock after we run into stability issues

hope this helps get you started and gives you some insight to what each setting does if it asks for memory voltage type in 1.5001 v and leave NB voltage at auto or use 1.25000v

[ninjageek]

WOW, That was a fast response. Greatly apreciated!! Ok, Sometime Later tonight, Gonna start clocking this baby up, Will keep notes of what I did, Let you know how it turned out. Before I start, Do I need to back up the BIOS? If so How??

[mudmanc4]

The old standard is F8 key to set the BIOS defaults, then F10 to save. Is that your key, I do not know. I'm sure it'll say somewhere in there. That and if you bork it up to where it cannot init , then you might have a jumper on the board to reset. Or pop the battery for 30 seconds.

BTW, do they still burn in the CPU's or is that a by gone. When I do a new machine , it's rarely anymore anything special so there's no need to scribe lines.

[ninjageek]

Ok problem. First I switched gears and I started using "OCCTPT. http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/. It easier for me to understand. It when it shows an error. prime95 does the same, But Not getting BSOD on either. I changed all the settings you told me about. Still unable to find the voltage settings in my bios. Will look some more. So I cheated and used overdrive.

Now I am not getting any BSOD. Just not sure what to do about "core" errors. Do I up or reduce the voltage a bit? Or Is the multiplier the issue?

I set the voltage at 1.2500 with a multiplier of 17.5. That gave me a jump to 4.04. Ran OCCTPT, Getting a error in one of the cores. Maybe your right, Using overdrive to change my voltage and multiplier is the issue. Will hunt more for the CPU voltage in my BIOS. Found everything else.

[TriRan]

Ok problem. First I switched gears and I started using "OCCTPT. http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/. It easier for me to understand. It when it shows an error. prime95 does the same, But Not getting BSOD on either. I changed all the settings you told me about. Still unable to find the voltage settings in my bios. Will look some more. So I cheated and used overdrive.

Now I am not getting any BSOD. Just not sure what to do about "core" errors. Do I up or reduce the voltage a bit? Or Is the multiplier the issue?

I set the voltage at 1.2500 with a multiplier of 17.5. That gave me a jump to 4.04. Ran OCCTPT, Getting a error in one of the cores. Maybe your right, Using overdrive to change my voltage and multiplier is the issue. Will hunt more for the CPU voltage in my BIOS. Found everything else.

sounds good and yes core errors are basically instability in that core so it means you'll probably need a bit more voltage to increase the stability for that clock

[ninjageek]

You sir are the man. I got my very first stable overclock!!! Got it to 4.1. Not only did I get my very first stable overclock, The knowledge I got was amazing. I thank you. In case you want to teach others with this bios.

Change the bios Just like you said with one exception. For the ratio, Leave it on auto!

Then I fired up amd overdrive. Made Sure I wrote down its default Voltage and Multiplier. This Bios is really safe. If you mess up to bad, It will let you reset it to optimized settings no problem. REALLY noob friendly.

I started kinda Big. Went with 18 multiplier, Set it to 1.25v. Ran OCCPTP Got a core error. Bumped it up small amounts. Stable Voltage ended up being 1.30v.

Now I will Leapfrog it, With 1.30v I will Jump it up at first One full step. Will go from 18 to 19. Reboot, Then Run OCCPTP and adjust my voltage as needed to get it stable.

If the Full step becomes to much, Will jump it by half a step. Once I get it about maxed out, Or close, and Stable, Then I will Leave it be. Play my games, all that good stuff. If they become odd, May try to jump up the voltage a tad to help that out.

Now Will I leave it overclocked or not is unknown. Like you said, Won't notice any difference, Just wanna see how much I can overclock. Probably lean even more.

One thing is for sure, Yes I am keeping notes, Yes I will save the notes to txt file and keep them around, so if I do forget, There they are.

Can not tell you how much I appreciate your help on this. Always wanted to learn how to do it. Will I recommend others try it. NO!! I not only have liquid cooled system, I have a nice amd quad core chip that is fine from my old system that will fit fine in my outfit. Plus chances are I won't leave the cpu overclocked. My bet after I push it to the max, I will reset it to defaults. Just a learning experience for me. Nothing more.

I am off to push this cpu to its limit. See how far I can get it. Will let you know my final wont go any higher clock speeds and voltage. I am gonna TRY to back up the bios when I reach the max, When I go back to default, I will wait a bit, Load my saved bios just to see if I can figure it out, If everything is still ok fine. Just another learning experience.

Of course I will let you know my final results. Simply can not thank you enough. In fact, feel free to date my sister. You have my blessing LOL.

Edited February 21, 2012 by ninjageek

[ninjageek]

Ok, Update. Got it to 4.15 stable. Ran OCCT for 30 min, LINPACK For another 30 Min, No errors, No issues. Man I Dig that OCCT program, Sweet you can run LINPACK from that Program plus Two other tests I have yet to play with.

Think I am Close to max on the cpu. Think 4.3 or so is top end. Have not seen anyone hit 4.5 yet. If they do would love to know how they did it. My guess they changed something I am missing like front side bus or something else. If you figure it out let me know. I am at 18 multiplier and 1.30 volts. Have not seen my Temps over 45c during testing.

I MAY run OCCT overnight, My guess it will be fine. Thats what my gut says.