OverClocking help and guidance for a beginner

[cctaylor88]

Well I honestly don't even know where to begin, as I have never even attempted to overclock before. The only thing that may be a problem is that I don't have any "aftermarket" cooling or heat sinks, but I don't want to do anything crazy as far as the overclocking goes. Just want to squeeze out whatever stable and safe performance I can!

Basically before I begin I want to know what I'm doing...

What software should I download, as I assume there will be a lot of trial and error involved with this

Ram: g.Skill Ripjaws 8gb

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2

Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD/USB3

Power: 600W

Case (to show fans/cooling): MidTower

Also.. I always notice that on start up when I see my BIOS screen I can press 4 to their "ASUS core unlocker" or whatever...

CPU-Z is saying that my CPU "Core Voltage" is sitting around 1.332 V
Also... the RAM I purchased states that it is a CL9 but CPU-Z is saying that the CAS Latency is at "11.0 clocks" why would this be?

 

[Taranabas]

That's a decent CPU to learn with. I am more of an Intel guy but I do own a Phenom 9550 Black, that I have overclocked. I can't give you AMD specific advice here due to lack of experience, but I can get you started. First off, download these applications: CoreTemp (or Realtemp if you prefer), IntelBurnTest, and you already have CPU-Z. Before you start you need to do some homework, you need to find out the max Tcase(For AMD) or TJMax(For intel) which can be found here for your 955:http://products.amd.com/pages/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=532&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Since you have an unlocked multiplier CPU the bus multiplier is the best place to start. My personal preference is to disable any features in the BIOS that alter clock speed, at least when testing for walls. There could be several, named things like turbo core, C1E, speedstep, etc.This just removes some variables and puts you in better control of what your proc is doing. It's also because I'm oldschool lol Once you've done that you should move to your multiplier. increment it up slowly, at first by 2 or 3 steps, then 1 or 2 after that. Boot up and run your benchmark suite each time, at the very least, runs ten passes of IntelBurnTest on the standard setting. It helps to write down the average GFLOPS and corresponding voltages/clocks in a table. What you're looking for is that the GFLOPS increases each time. You should be watching your temperatures on CoreTemp every time you run the bench. Eventually further increases of multiplier will no longer yield gains, and could even start stepping backward. If your temps are still acceptable, you can either back off the overclock to the highest GFLOPS speed, or increase your core voltage. Note that as Vcore increases you will see rapid temperature increases. Most of what you're after can be achieved this way.
If you want to take things a step further, you can get into base clock overclocking. The caveat here is that other onboard devices such as RAM, PCIe and your storage controllers use this clock as well, and decreased stability is likely. If you're interested you should google around, theres lots of resource available.

Core Unlocker - afaik is intended for use with X2 and X3 processors and allows you to unlock cores to allow x3/x4-like performance.

Memory Timings - sometimes memory will run at 'safe' timings to allow it to run at the advertised clock speed. You can take the same approach with your memory timings as with overclocking, gradually lower the timings to the advertised values in the BIOS, and beyond if possible. Note if you increase your base clock, you might have to increase your timings to allow the higher memory clocks that result.

Oh, and if you are on a budget, check out the Cooler Master Hyper 212, It performs on par with 80$+ cooler and can be found on sale for 20-30$.

Whew!