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I have a AMD Athlon II X4 635 processor in my system. Other things in my PC are Hydro H60 CPU cooler, Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 motherboard & XFX XPS-650W Power Supply. I want to try overclocking my processor for faster performance. Can anyone help me with overclocking process, It is my first time in overclocking?
The first thing you have to do before beginning overclocking is to find the FSB limit of your system. Once found you will need to increase it step by step. First increase it by value of 10. Keep increasing till the system remains atable. Once a stable point is found, progressively keep increasing it by 5 till it becomes stable. While doing this, see to it that the speed of CPU remains same as that of stock speed. For example, if my stock spoeed is 3.0 GHz, then the value of multi will be 15 and that od FSB will be 200. So when the value of FSB will be 210 then value of multi should be 14.5. Same logic wirks for HT, CPU NB Frequency, and the RAM timings, and ratio. Once your computer fails to boot up, it means that you have found the maximum value of FSB. Now you can begin overclocking your processor.
Using the punched settings of BIOS, put the values in the BIOS setup. The values which are set to ‘Auto’ by default should not be changed. Items with unlocked multiplier, do not change the values of FSB. The FSB won’t affect your system much. It will only be used when you are running some heavy or overloaded process in your system. There is a limit to every CPU, beyond which it cannot be overclocked. You have to acept it and shouldn’t try to go beyond it. Even if you succeed to go beyond the limit, the system might crash in such a way that recovering it will become hard. Also, it will cause unstabliltiy in your system.
Now when starting the overclocking process, bring back the values of FSB & CPU multi to the stock values. Now again start increasing the CPU multi by factor of 10 and then once you achieve stability start increasing it by factor of 5. For every successful boot that your system does, run a benchmark test and stress test. At one point, your PC will start to crash when the benchmark test is run. Now you have 3 options here, you can raise the voltage of your CPU, the second option is to increase CPU NB frequency and the third option is to check out different options for RAM.
I suggest that you go for the 1st option. It works in most of the cases and successfully helps in overclocking of the processor. If this method doesn’t work as desirted, then you can go for other 2 options.
NB frequency is different for every process in every system. In its details you will find the values that work best with your processor. It will provide you details of values of voltage and NB frequency which will form the best combination to give best performance in your system. I recommend that you push the CPU-NB value of your processor to maximum of 1.40 V. If the processor is giving problems regarding stability, then try decreasing the value of CPU-NB. When you find a point where your system becomes stable, decrease the value of HTT. HTT doesn’t affect the overclocking process much, but it is better to keep it low. It is recommended that you keep the value of HTT between 1200-2200 MHz during whole overclocking process.
I suggest that you also try the 3rd option, it requires you to play with different possibilities that RAM provide. You can try increasing the voltage of RAM by factor of 0.2 V for the start. This works many times. Do not increase the voltage beyond 2.1 V. If you don’t get desirable results at this stage then try manipulating values of Timings and ratio. When working with values of ratio, see to it that bigger values are not always greater than smaller values. Your system will work fine at 800 than that at 1000. It is different for different RAMs, but you can try it out different values till your system reaches a stable point.
When working on overclocking, the most important factor that you should look out for the temperature of your system. You shouldn’t let it exceed it beyond 55 degree Celsius. If it reaches 60 degree Celsius then you must stop immediately. Overheating might damage the sensitive parts of your system.
If your computer fails to boot up, just remove the power cable and reset CMOS settings. The reset function of CMOS settings must be like button or a jumper must be provided. The jumper must be placed back in the original position before you restore the power back. Your system will be reset to the factory settings after this. The computer won’t boot into the operating system now, but it will always start in BIOS settings. Since you will be using FSB for overclocking , you should start your memory and HT link. The CPU-NB frequency should be set to a lower value to allow headroom for overclocking. The HT link frequency will start at low value. So you can increase memory to 1066 in the beginning.