conservative OCing w/ stock HF: x3 720

[andersonviola]

I will be building tomorrow a new system for my brother:

x3 720
ASUS m4a78t-3
4gb ocz reaper ddr31600
antec sonata iii w/ 500w earthwatts

I will know soon whether I have 4 cores working or not, but this question is more about some moderate OCing that I can do before I hand over the system to him. I have been reading various threads about upping the modifier, ocing the NB, raising the FSB, etc. What I have not seen is what the performance differences are between these methods. I would like to not mess around too much w/ voltages and will not have an aftermarket cooler.

Is is better to just raise the multiplier and leave everything else alone? or should I raise the FSB and/or NB and see how far I can go with the other components?

any advice is appreciated!

 

[deimos3428]

I assume "conservative overclocking" means you you're not trying to see how far you can go -- just how far you can go easily.

Leave the voltages at stock, and bump up the CPU multiplier in 0.5x steps until it won't boot into Windows. Then go back into the BIOS and take off 2x for stability, and you're done.

Someone might tell you that's undoing a lot of work and you could go much higher, but they're wrong: It wasn't a lot of work, and that's the point.

 

[soccerballtux]

I would get a motherboard that is known to unlock the 4th core on those 720BE's. Mine will-- only bad thing is it can't supply less than 1.95v to the RAM....

Just look into that Asus to make sure it can do it consistently well.

 

[nyker96]

so let us know if it unlocks. I heard many manufacture's new bios patched it by now.

 

[Sylvanas]

Raise multiplier, test for stability in OCCT or something. After you have determined the max core speed, time to OC the northbridge- plenty of info out there on that.

 

[andersonviola]

thanks for the info. to sum up, I was able to OC to 16.5x (3.3) while keeping heat below 50C. I got NB to 2400, but it would not run stable at 2600. Also, my OCZ reaper ddr3 1600 would not run stable at 1600 and 7-7-7-24 stock, but I got it to run stable at 1333 6-6-6-18, which I felt was a good compromise. had to work around only one 120mm fan and stock HSF, so I feel good about these results.

Thanks to all for suggestions.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: andersonviola
thanks for the info. to sum up, I was able to OC to 16.5x (3.3) while keeping heat below 50C. I got NB to 2400, but it would not run stable at 2600. Also, my OCZ reaper ddr3 1600 would not run stable at 1600 and 7-7-7-24 stock, but I got it to run stable at 1333 6-6-6-18, which I felt was a good compromise. had to work around only one 120mm fan and stock HSF, so I feel good about these results.

Thanks to all for suggestions.

You can push the temps to 73C if you're running with x3; if you unlock to x4 then 71 is your Max. This applies to the AM3 chips.