First time OC'er with a Phenom II please help?

[Shadowprice]

Hello, first post in this sub forum here. I want to OC my Phenom II setup a little bit, as I've been nagging back and forth at myself of wanting to upgrade to a SB build but part of me wants to see if I can OC to get some more performance on my processor and carry out my build longer, the end result, saving some money.

Now, this is my first time ever overclocking a processor, I've always ran stock speeds. I've looked up some guides online and some YouTube videos, but so far, my OC attempts using AMD OverDrive have been very unsuccessful, I haven't tweaked the voltage, but even so much trying to increase the multiplier to 3.6ghz and running a stability test, my temps get above 50c, if I increase the multiplayer to 3.8ghz, I get a blue screen instantly.

For the record, here are my complete system specs.

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2Ghz
Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80 Plus
Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD/USB3
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5770 1GB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz
Case: Antec 300 with default fans and no mods
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 500GB

I'm using a aftermarket CM Hyper 212+ and Artic Silver 5 thermal paste for cooling.

Games I mainly play are Skyrim, WoW, and some BF3 (mostly SP) .. I'd like to see if I can squeeze a bit more performance out of my rig, as I am almost there in my own terms of satisfaction, and without having to upgrade my rig. Although, I'll probably be getting a GPU upgrade in the few coming weeks here.

Can anyone help me with some OCing? Not looking at anything extreme, but I've heard even so much of 3.8ghz on air is very obtainable.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

do not use AMD overdrive to overclock, only use the bios.

its a black edition processor, so the only things you have to mess with are the cpu multiplier and cpu voltage. the easy route is set the cpu to 1.45v and start off with the multiplier at 18x which is 3.6Ghz. stress test it with intel burn test for 5-10 passes. if it passes that then try raising it to 19x which is 3.8Ghz, test it again, if it passes then go ahead and try 19.5, if it fails then try increasing the voltage a little and see how it does.

things to keep in mind.. keep the temps under 70C when stress testing and do not exceed 1.55v.

 

[aphasia]

sirmonkey1985 reply covers PII oc'ing pretty well in a 'nutshell', tho i might question the 70C threshold. think that might be stretching it a bit far. i'd suggested nothing over 60C. the whole issue over max CPU temp is further complicated as many (or most?) denebs & thubans have a bugged temperature sensor (displaying temps well below ambient).

anyway, probably have a look at these guides for a solid introduction into deneb/thuban OC'ing...
http://www.overclockers.com/step-guide-overclock-amd-phenom/
http://www.overclock.net/amd-general/777378-official-gappos-little-deneb-thuban-overclocking.html