Overclocking sucess?
Overclocking sucess?
I'm wondering what the manufacturer indicated regarding the heat load? How did you prevent APM from causing the CPU to throttle? I used a 6300 at 4.5Ghz; under Prime 95 temperature it would reach around 60°C and then reduce all cores to about 1.4Ghz for short bursts of 10 seconds before restarting. Monitor core frequencies using a tool like HWInfo64 while running P95. Keep it running and observe if clocks drop unexpectedly mid-process before they recover.
I also had the VRM intact with heatsinks on the FETs and a fan blowing over it, but when the VRM throttled it would drop to 800 or 900Mhz—a significant reduction, like hitting a wall for a few seconds—so I was confident it was under control. However, the APM throttling didn’t have a solution for me. Some premium overclocking boards with strong VRMs included an APM disable option, but I didn’t have access to one.
Using overclocking utilities didn’t help either.
mfgr set the maximum temperature at 62C even though they don't measure exactly that way. For APM I opened the advanced settings in my ASUS 970 pro gaming aura and turned off APM Master mode. I noticed cores throttling randomly before returning to full speed. It's unsettling, but it doesn't trigger an error. I'm not sure what it actually means. The thing I needed to locate and adjust was the LLC, which helped resolve about 90% of my heat problem.
My prediction points to the main throttling coming from either VRM overheating or CPU temperature rising and causing reductions. With APM Master Mode off, it seems like the system is allowing higher power usage than the TDP limits. It never produced any errors during throttling on my board; instead, clocks would occasionally drop under heavy loads. As long as you're okay with pushing past these boundaries, just remember it won't last forever. Still, many users have taken FX processors to their breaking point over time, and I haven’t seen reports of complete failures. These must be very powerful CPUs.