What are your CPU and NB voltages, plus any other important settings?
What are your CPU and NB voltages, plus any other important settings?
So should I raise other voltages besides my main CPU voltage? Maybe to avoid a bottleneck or get stability when I overclock. Is there a sign or symptom that tells me if this is needed? Right now, my DRAM voltage is set to auto. I plan to keep it that way because I don't know what else to do. The XMP profile sets the RAM voltage at 1.67 volts, but the advertised max limit is only 1.65 volts. So my guess is just leave the settings alone! But I'm scared I might burn something out. Should I lower the voltage? Or should I copy the settings from the XMP file but manually set the timings and other stuff? Most of the other voltages seem to be connected to the North Bridge, which is old tech in my case. I guess if I start messing with them all, I'll finally let everyone know about it as far as headaches and mystery issues go. Also, I'm worried that if I don't raise any or some of these extra voltages to match my new CPU voltage, I will never be able to optimize my rig effectively. This will cause unnecessary heat and frustration instead. If I can figure out how this works, I'll create a signature with my specs listed in it. Not sure those details matter for these questions, but if they do: Asus 970 Pro gaming/aura motherboard AMD FX 6350 CPU CLC 280 AIO 2x8 GB DDR3 RAM @ 2133 MSI Radeon r9 270 OC GPU 1500W PSU. Everything is old, so I don't care about it anymore. I just play old games.
I have been using many motherboards with DDR3 (Intel) for years and it has never broken anything. I usually just set them to 1.65v manually. That is usually enough for speeds like 2133 MHz. In fact, I am currently running some systems at 2400 MHz or even 2275 MHz with only 1.65v, so no higher voltage is needed here. However, this applies to Intel boards specifically, not AMD ones, and I don't know the limits of your memory controllers. Maybe the XMP profile on my motherboard sets a voltage for 2133 MHz that could be a problem? Wow, even with a powerful 1500-watt power supply, you should have plenty of room to overclock it!
Sorry I took so long to reply. My AIO cooler is working great and I don't have any stability problems with my PC. My hard drive RAID array crashed yesterday after the big update, but I'm pretty sure the update didn't cause it. I don't know what those voltages mean or how to look them up on my motherboard. Can you help me understand what they are and what they do? My temps are low and my system is stable at 4.5Ghz running at 1.45V. The advertised boost speed is 4.3, but I have been going as high as 4.9 before. I am very afraid that pushing it higher will fry something important that costs too much to replace. I would really like to try hitting the 4.9 mark, but I need to feel super sure that I am doing this safely or at least as safely as I can be.
With an AMD card you might see "soc voltage" instead of VTT. I don't have any tips for overclocking AMD chips either. The DDR3 voltage between 1.65V and 1.67V is still pretty safe. If someone could share more about the IMC quality on AMD FX series and what kind of DRAM voltage it can handle, that would be great.
Ddr3 can go upto 1.8v. The 1.65v ram was original release ram, right after having used DDR2. It wasn't until somewhat later that DDR3 refinements allowed the voltages to be dropped to 1.5v and for a few models, as low as 1.35v (not including DDR3L). There's no difference between amd and Intel for these generations, you'd have to go back several years, back to when Intel ran low-density ram, and amd ran either low or high density ram, back in the days of DDR and pre lga775. Motherboards are different. As are cpus. Most times xmp settings worked perfectly stable, but xmp IS considered an overclock, so there is no guarantee it will be stable, just that it's attainable. This can mean you may need to bump dram voltages, nb voltages, system agent voltages or any combination, especially if the cpu itself is overclocked. XMP on my lga1155 worked fine at 1.5v to get the rated 1866MHz. To get stable ram with a cpu locked core OC of 4.6GHz (i7-3770K with 3.8GHz turbo/3.4GHz base) I needed to manually bump dram voltage to 1.55v. A bump from 1.65v to 1.67v isn't an issue. AMD memory controllers weren't as strong as the Intel versions. With an FX cpu, you should not be concerned with temps, the cores do Not contain thermal strips, so temp readings as such cannot exist. There's only 2 programs qualified to give temp advice, and thats AMD Overdrive and Coretemp, set for Thermal Margins. Because there's no accurate way to read temps, Thermal Margins are used instead. These are a amount of thermal headroom left in the cpu. It's a complex algorithm comprised of loads, voltages, usage, core usage, bandwidth usage and a bunch of other readings, all rolled up into a number. With that, the number itself is not important, it's what the number represents that is. A TM of 40 doesn't mean you have 40°C left, it means you have @ 40°C of workload left. The higher the workload, the faster that number gets smaller. 40's is idle or low usage, 30's is light usage, 20's is gaming usage, 10's is heavy usage and under 10 is pushing your luck. It's like when ppl count from 10 to zero. They never actually stick to a perfect second, you always get to 3, 2½, 2, 1½, 1, ½, ¼, ⅛... and it takes another 15 seconds or more just to count down from 3. Thermal margins work the same. The core temp for many same gen Intels was around 100°C. For the FX, it's 62°C. (as measured from jury rigged engineering samples by amd techs/engineers). But there's no way for a consumer to guage that temp. So you'll often see ppl with idle temps of 8-18°C, and load temps pushing 70+°C, non of which are accurate. Or in some cases, even physically possible unless they live in Alaska or Siberia and the pc was sitting next to an open window in the winter time. Using thermal margins will tell you if you are pushing any OC too high. As long as you stay within safe voltage boundaries for that cpu/motherboard, I've seen ppl push FX upto 5.4GHz, But that was on a FX 4100 with a 280mm AIO, so cooling wasn't an issue.