I've found a stable overclock

[imported_inspire]

I'll update after I post, so by the time you read this, the rig should be in my sig. My main problem is that I jumped straight from stock to somewhere around this overclock pretty fast. Once I found out the new BIOS revision for my board handled some pretty obnoxious stability issues, I didn't want to wait around for too long slowly bulding my way up.

So I just juiced the CPU up to 1.55v - I've got the cooling down - 51c sustained load / 31c idle, so I wasn't really worried about it - I initially just wanted to see how far I could push it. Now, I'd like to see if I can drop the vcore down some, but before I start running anymore LeMans-style tests on this, I wanted to see if you guys had any help to offer - like experience with a roughly 30-40% oc on an AM2 3800+ X2 - and what vCore you settled on.

Just trying to save some time. Thanks.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Unless that chip is disposable, I would not recommend keeping it at such a high vcore. In fact, I have no idea why you went that high to start. Try bringing it down to 1.45v and see how stable it is then.

 

[imported_inspire]

I started at 1.55v because a couple months ago when I first tried overclocking, I had built up to that and I knew the heat wouldn't cause me any problems. Wanting to pick up where I left off to save time, I went straight for 1.55v on this round.

I was under the impression that the damage caused by raising the vcore was due to the heat it caused and not directly due to the voltage itself - is that wrong? 1.45v doesn't fly, but I may try to see if I can get to 1.50v and then clock back to around 2.7 and see how much I can drop the voltage then.

I'm at stock right now since I like to use CnQ and this OC runs a 9x multiplier. I don't plan to keep my computer overclocked unless I'm running some really huge data sets through SAS.

 

[customcoms]

Their can be damage due to too much voltage (i.e BH5 based ram that is fed high volts and has excellent air cooling can start needing to be slowed down or need more voltage to reach the same speed, due to a phenomenon known as voltage creep). Most people say 1.5v max for AMD64 for 24/7 operation. The guys at xtremesystems however will tell you that you haven't overlclocked an AMD64 until you've fed it 1.65+ volts and put it under liquid nitrogen (j/k). Its more what your comfortable with, and your temperatures are extremely comfortable.

 

[tersome]

You should be fine with 1.6v under air as long as you keep the temps under 60C or so.

My opteron 175 has been running with 1.61v since I got it, one year ago.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Personally I wouldn't put an X2 over 1.45v without good water, but that's just me.