990FX
Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: OverClocking(OC) Zone
Forum Name: OC Technical Discussion
Forum Description: OC enthusiast's tech talk
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1995
Printed Date: 24 Apr 2024 at 1:53pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: 990FX
Posted By: Maples01
Subject: 990FX
Date Posted: 14 Feb 2016 at 6:18pm
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I used the bios OC tool, 5% had been working for weeks, so I went 25% and after a few hours my monitor went into sleep mode, I wasn't even able to turn it off using the button on it, had to pull its plug, the restart button on the pc was useless, had to hold down the power. Thinking it was the monitor, I tried another, no signal, I turned off my power source, and pulled the CMOS battery, gave it a few minutes before reassemble, and powering it back up, it came on fine. Not sure the issue, I went into bios and dropped it back to 5%, was it the setting, and is it due to my video card being old? I have a Phenom ii x4 960T, I opened it up to 6 core without an issue before, the card is a Geforce 9600, I've yet to see another even remotely like it, as it has 2 dvi and HDMI, along with a large heatsink. |
Replies:
Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 15 Feb 2016 at 1:13am
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25% was obviously TOO high. Hold out for PetrolHead here to discover and reply. He has IIRC an 1100T. I skipped that generation and although it's basically the same for manually OC'ing he has the knowledge on Phenoms. |
Posted By: Maples01
Date Posted: 15 Feb 2016 at 12:20pm
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The graphics card is old, could be bottle necking it, what would be a better card that doesn't cost over $100? |
Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 18 Feb 2016 at 2:13am
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I'm pretty sure it's the setting. Those BIOS OC settings aren't guaranteed to work and the higher you go, the more likely your system becomes unstable or even unable to boot. If you put some work into a manual overclock, you should be able to reach higher stable OCs than with the BIOS OC settings, but there's no guarantee your system is overclockable by any certain percentage. If you want to learn about overclocking your Phenom II CPU, Dolk's guide is probably the best place to start: http://www.overclockers.com/step-guide-overclock-amd-phenom/ I'll help with what I can, but I would like to know the following details: -Which 990FX motherboard do you have? -What CPU cooler do you use? -How have you arrenged your case fans? -Is your Phenom II a black edition (BE) CPU or a "plain" Phenom II X4 960T? -Which PSU do you have? -How many memory modules does your system have? Some of the programs you might want to use while overclocking: -CPUIDs HWMonitor -Prime95 -CPUIDs CPU-Z -AMD Overdrive -RealBench v2.41 P.S. Your GPU probably does bottleneck your system. If you are looking for an FPS increase in games, you probably won't get any noticeable increase by overclocking the CPU. You should either overclock your GPU, which could give you a relatively easy 10% increase, or then get a new GPU ------------- Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit |
Posted By: Maples01
Date Posted: 18 Feb 2016 at 5:06am
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I was given the Phenom by a friend, can't remember if it's black or not, he told me it unlocks to 6 core tho, it's the 990 FX Killer, I installed the large coolmaster CPU setup, the case is the CM Storm Scout, fan in the back, the front on the hard drives, and in the top, the temp reports are always below 40, I had the CPU monitor stuff. I just had to reinstall windows 10, kept getting disk error, somehow there was corruption, hope it isn't the M.2 harddrive. I've not started gaming on it yet, I'm just toying with the setting on it, trying to see how far I can push it.
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Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 20 Feb 2016 at 8:31am
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Does the BIOS give you the option to increase the multiplier for the CPU clock speed directly? If not, then you don't have a BE. It's not a big issue, just makes overclocking a bit more involved. What you will be doing is increasing the FSB clock speed while decreasing the multipliers for CPU, CPU-NB and HT. Which multipliers and when depends on which way you want to go first. CPU clock speed is king, and the other clock speeds can be considered secondary, but for example Dolk leaves the CPU clock speed last, if I remember correctly. But before we start: Your motherboard's VRM section should be able to handle some overclocking without extra cooling. It has a nice looking heat sink (the one that says Killer) and it's advertised as having 8+2 phases, although it may be that it's just a doubled 4+1. However, I've no idea how large a margin you have in reality, so I'd still consider even 10% a risk. It's advisable to use a smaller spot fan to provide airflow over the VRM heatsink - the more you OC, the hotter it will become. In fact, your VRM section may be running hotter than normal already. Your CPU had a TDP of 125 W to begin with and the fact that you have unlocked two extra cores means that may have gone past that (although the X6 has the same TDP). I'm assuming your larger coolermaster setup for the CPU is a tower cooler. This may be fine for the CPU itself, but it's also one more reason you need to consider extra cooling for the VRM section. Considering the temperatures, there are two you need to monitor: The CPU temperature listed under the CPU in HWMonitor (sometimes labeled "package") and the CPU socket temperature listed under the motherboard in HWMonitor (usually labeled CPUTIN). For the Thuban generation of Phenoms, the CPU temperature should not exceed ~62 C, while the CPU socket should be okay as long as it stays below ~70 C. The 40 C you have seen may be a good value or a bad value, depending on what you were doing on the computer when it occured. By the way, disk corruption can occur if you have an unstable overclock. It can also happen slowly over time, even if your computer is stable enough not to crash. This is why it's a good idea to stress test the system properly when overclocking, although it should be said that stress testing isn't very kind on your system and can be harmful in itself - especially if you don't take your time when overclocking. I don't know if your previous overclock is the cause for the disk corruption, but you should be aware that something like this - or worse - can be the result when you overclock. You should begin your overclocking by establishing a baseline for your system. Start with stock settings (keep the two extra cores unlocked, though), run HWMonitor and then run Prime95's Blend test on six workers. Keep an eye on the two temperatures I mentioned. If either one gets close to the figures I've stated, stop all workers immediately and report back. If this happens, there's an issue with your system's cooling. If the temperatures seem to level out at safe values, let the test run for at least a couple of hours. If everything runs great, make a note of the temperatures and post them here. If you lose any workers due to an error before two hours are up, you're not providing the CPU enough voltage. This is something I'm actually half expecting to happen. That X4 CPU of yours is basically a Thuban generation X6 that has failed AMD's tests, so it may be that all six cores won't work as well as they should on stock voltages. In short: 1. Understand the risks. 2. Don't forget the OC affects other components as well, especially the VRM on your motherboard. 3. Determine a baseline before you start. ------------- Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit |
Posted By: Maples01
Date Posted: 20 Feb 2016 at 5:17pm
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This is bios 5%, if I understood it all, I would OC myself, but I'm pretty new to it, this is my first build, I was just toying with it, I don't want or need to push it to the breaking point. I haven't played any PC games, I have some that I hope to play when I get time for it, I plan to edit some video with it tho. I'll run it later, should I turn off the OC feature then, is it better to use AMD catalyst, entering your own numbers, if so, what do I start with when it comes to voltage?
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Posted By: Maples01
Date Posted: 21 Feb 2016 at 1:09pm
| I ran it a few hours trouble free, no more heat than regular web surfing, I dropped the BIOs OC and increased it using AMD catalyst, I did keep the core unlocker up tho. BTW this is my chip. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103995 |
Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 22 Feb 2016 at 1:16am
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Increased what exactly using AMD catalyst? If none of the workers failed, you shouldn't increase the voltage. Furthermore, overclocking should be done from the BIOS and AMD's software should only be used for testing - at least this is what experienced overclockers seem to advise. It sounds odd that Prime95 - if that's what you refer to by "it" - would not produce any more heat than web surfing. Web surfing should not load up your system anywhere near as much as Prime95. Of course you may have set up your system so that the CPU cooler spins at lower rpm until the temperature gets near 40 C. Could you upload a screenshot showing Prime95 and HWMonitor info (temperatures and CPU clock speeds) roughly 20 minutes into a Prime95 blend run? ------------- Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit |
Posted By: Maples01
Date Posted: 22 Feb 2016 at 5:29am
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I think what I've done is pretty much just open 2 extra cores, removed the overclocking and the BIOs are all set to auto control the voltage. I've been getting frustrated with the disk error startup, was able to find a BIOs update that was directed toward the M.2 harddrive, thats where I put my OS, I'm hoping that is dealt with, then I may get back to OC, or may just abandon that all together, it's not necessary. When I'm on the web monitoring my temps, I'm usually watching videos while downloading my games from several clients, trying to put everything back, the prime didn't seem to do anything different, thats if the hwmonitor was reading correct. My fans are on auto, I wasn't sure I wanted to toy around with their settings, usually it's about 34 degrees. I'll have to look up screen shot again, I seem to have forgotten how to do it.
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Posted By: Maples01
Date Posted: 22 Feb 2016 at 5:38am
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OK, AMD overdrive I slid it to 3200 MHZ, thats what I meant about catalyst. What would be a good base clock, nothing heavy, just a base setting, since it's suggested not to use the boards percentage OC program, I mean it only crashed at 25%, yet had been stable for days at 5%? OR should I just pass up OC as I'm not really doing anything with it, I'm not a heavy PC gamer, have a console for that?
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Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 26 Feb 2016 at 6:21am
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Apologies for the delayed answer. 1. Having your fans on auto is fine and probably explains the temperature being similar in Prime95 and web browsing and doing other stuff. While your CPU cooler seems to be more than enough to cool the CPU at your current settings, please remember that you should also monitor the socket temperature, which is probably a bit higher. 2. Using the BIOS OC is probably fine when using the 5% setting. There's no guarantee that it's stable, but there's a reasonable chance it is - and you can check it using Prime95 and RealBench. Is it worth using? That depends on what the settings actually are. Sometimes those BIOS OC settings set the RAM to very low speeds - probably in an effort to make life easier for the memory controller - which may not be what you want if you are doing some of the (few) things that RAM speeds actually has an effect on. Based on what you've told, I'd skip using AMD Overdrive altogether and run the CPU on stock BIOS settings apart from the core unlock feature. Those two extra cores should already give you a nice performance boost for video editing and in gaming your CPU is not really a bottleneck at the moment. If at some point it starts to feel like you'd like to get even more out of your CPU, you can then look into overclocking in more detail. Start with the link to Dolk's guide I provided earlier and just google anything you'd like to know more about. You can of course try the BIOS OC settings as well, as something higher than 5% may also work (remember to test for stability). Just remember that if you decide to overclock, you should be willing to put some time into it, even if you're not trying to push your system to the limit. Slow and steady will give you the best chance of ensuring stability. P.S. If you want to upgrade your GPU on a budget of 100$ or less, I'd consider getting an AMD Radeon R7 250X or an NVIDIA GT 740. There are different versions of each from different manufacturers (with varying prices), so you should spend some time looking at reviews, youtube videos and comparing specs so that you'll know what you're getting. Availability may also be an issue. In general the R7 250X should be better for gaming while the GT 740 will consume less power. ------------- Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit |
Posted By: Xaltar
Date Posted: 26 Feb 2016 at 3:32pm
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Honestly, when it comes to GPUs you are better off purchasing something second hand rather than a new GPU for that budget. The R7 250x and GT 740 are both more expensive than their actual performance would warrant. When buying a new discrete GPU there really isn't any point in looking at anything less than an R7 360/260 or a GTX 750 from a value/performance standpoint. Picking up a decent used HD 7850/7870 or GTX 660/760 should cost around the same and offer significantly better value. I would go for the GTX 660/760 however as they are less likely to have been used for bitcoin mining. ------------- 
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Posted By: PetrolHead
Date Posted: 27 Feb 2016 at 6:06am
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Xaltar definitely has a point. If you are willing to buy used, you'll have access to better performance for the same amount of money. New or used, just make sure you have some idea of what sort of GPU fits your needs and your current hardware (power consumption, required power cables, the amount of memory the GPU has, the physical size of the GPU etc.). ------------- Ryzen 5 1500X, ASRock AB350M Pro4, 2x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z 3466CL16, Sapphire Pulse RX Vega56 8G HBM2, Corsair RM550x, Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB, Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500 GB, Windows 10 64-bit |