Where am I in the process of overclocking my FX-8150? Feel free to share your thoughts!
Where am I in the process of overclocking my FX-8150? Feel free to share your thoughts!
-Antec 1100 case
-970A-UD3P mobo (Fan pulling air off VRMs as well)
-FX-8150 cooled by an H105 with push/pull fans (set of stock SP120L up top, and a set of SP120 performance editions below them)
-4x4gb sticks Corsair vengeance 1866 tall
-Gigabyte 7870 oc edition
-TX750 psu
Well, im back with a new mobo to see what i can actually squeeze out of this chip. It seems i didnt win the silicone lottery, but ive never been a real lucky guy to begin with lol Currently the best ive been able to do stable is 4.5ghz on all 8 cores at 1.45v (220 fsb). Although i have left the cpu nb and ht link at 2000 mhz for now to see what i can get cpu clock to first. And this mobo wont let me set my ram to 1866 or even 1600mhz settings. This is very anoying, but ill fight with that after everythings stable elsewhere. Also after i feel i found the best 24/7 settings i can get on 8 cores, i want to step it down to 6 cores and do the same thing and see if i can get a noticeable amount more since i dont really have any real use for 8 cores in games and etc. This is with all power settings off, and LLC set to medium. Set at 1.45v in bios, it would idle at 1.45-1.46v and drop to 1.44v under load. No spikes up or down that hwmonitor can pick up other than that. Im still trying to figure out if this is an ideal LLC level or too high. My chip needs the 1.44v under load so the next setting down fails from dropping to 1.4-1.42v i beleive it was. I could go lower LLC and higher voltage at load, but im creeping up to 1.5v then and i dont know how far i really want to push it for daily use. I beleive i want it set to be as close as possible under load so that i dont have to send alot of voltage threw it when its not loaded up, right? Its definately a power hungry little guy lol What are your guy's LLC set to stay at compared to whats set in bios?
Temps have been amazing compared to my old 120mmx38mm clc. Im currently trying to get a stable 4.6ghz at 1.475v (1.45 under load) at the moment and the max ive ever seen in core temps are 53*C. Socket temps are confusing me since with the new board it wont show up anywhere as "CPU" like it was before. I beleive it is now my "Temp2" which is currently sitting at 47*C under load at my highest heat load. Previously my socket would consistently be 10* higher than my core temp with the old cooler. Does this sound right that the cooler can disapate the heat faster than the cores produce heat? Ive also still got another 100rpm left in the SP120L fans since at the highest bios fan settings i still havent reached the temp for max rpm. Im really enjoying not having to worry about temps, although my living room has been insanely hot now. You all werent kidding about the space heater comments! I guess i can also mention that these temps were also with the summertime high ambient temps even. With a/c on id do even better
EDIT: Ive been using prime95 for stress testing. I see someone on another post recomended to not use the newest prime edition for testing, something about after 26 if was different. Random bit ive seen, but any truth to this or something i should change to?
I attempted to achieve stability at 4.6ghz by tweaking settings, but consistently exceeded 1.475v. Although I came close, I experienced brief stalls during a test lasting 1 hour and 50 minutes. I prefer to stay well below 1.5v personally, as it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort. I tried adjusting FSB and CPU settings, along with changing the NBT/HT link, hoping to improve stability. My initial tests suggested 220-230 MHz FSB was slightly more stable, though results were very similar at those speeds.
Now that I realized experimenting with 4.6ghz was unproductive, I’ve managed to stabilize at 4.45ghz and 1.43v. This gives me a performance of 228x19.5, with the CPU NBT/HT link set to 2300MHz. The memory speed reached around 1520MHz. The LLC was kept at medium speed. I believe the BIOS is set to 1.43125v, and the HW monitor shows 1.43-1.44 (max) during idle, and 1.41v (min) under full small FTT Prime95 load. The maximum temperature is 45°C for the core, 44°C for the socket—no issues there. It has held steady for 9 hours of small FTTs last night and 2 hours in a blend today. I’ll keep adjusting CPU NBT and HT link settings to see if improvements are possible, and then consider reducing the CPU NBT voltage as much as feasible (currently set to 1.25v to rule out problems).
I’m oscillating between lowering the voltage further to reduce heat, aiming for a 24/7 stable run without risking chip damage within a month. If I can achieve better clock speeds on the 6-core setup, that would likely help. Previously, I managed this with lower voltages, but heat and VRM throttling were limiting factors. The lower power consumption was a big plus. I’m not sure if this will improve with the current configuration.
Set stable at 4.45ghz (240x18.5) @ 1.43v. CPU NB runs at 2400mhz @1.2v, HT link at 2640mhz. RAM is currently at 1598mhz from the FSB boost, with timings 8-9-8-24-1T @ 1.55v. Prime95 stress test for 12 hours using 80% of RAM seems like a solid way to evaluate RAM timing. There are many differing opinions on the best method, but I’m leaning toward testing it with a boot drive via memtest86 just to confirm. It appears the RAM is functioning well, so this might not be necessary. Unless there’s an issue and it’s actually misbehaving, this shouldn’t matter. Regardless, I’m really enjoying the performance now. The overclock paired with the new SSD has made things much smoother, especially compared to my previous 4.3ghz setup on a 6-core system before the motherboard and cooling upgrades. Temperatures are at a maximum of 45°C on Prime small FTTs and lower during idle than before with the H80 cooler.