Safe voltages for overclocking FX-8350?

M

Mr. Stryker

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Mar 15, 2005
Messages
5,221
As the title says above, what is the highest voltage that can be used to overclock the Vishera FX-8350 processor? I'm hoping to go for at least 4.8 to 5GHz. Right now I'm at 4.7 with 1.5v. Can I go any further? I have the Corsair H80 cooler.
 
My brother got this processor and I'm installing it today. He's running a Hyper 212 air cooler. What has your experience been at 4.7ghz in terms of stability. Have you run Prime95 or any benchmarking tools? Any stutter or issues in gameplay at this high of an OC? Just curious.
 
What are your temps right now? Your cooler might not be able to handle the extra voltage.
 
Temps peak at 57c when using OCCT. I haven't used Prime yet. 4.7Ghz is pretty snappy but I still get some FPS dips on the new Aftermath maps (BF3 DLC) when everything is blown up.
 
Prime is the ultimate test for stability. I was able to run IBT, Cinebench, 3DMark11, Vantage CPU tests at 4.7 GHz no problems but on Prime95 my system would reboot or some cores would shutdown. Its unlikely anything will stress your CPU the way that Prime 95 does but it is nice to know that your CPU will be able to handle anything you throw at it. In the end I settled for 4.6 GHz "stable" overclock. As for safe voltages, it is recommended that you keep it below 1.55 Volts (max) unless you have serious cooling and willing to pay for the extra electricity. One thing to consider, ever since I OC'd my FX-8350, I noticed coil whine coming from my motherboard when the CPU is under high load.
 
OCCT is good for telling me if my system is gaming stable, don't really care if it's not 100% stable. I'll try 1.525 for 4.8 then...
 
AMD wants you to go no higher than their the maximum recommended operating voltage allows you to go up to the absolute maximum voltage. I don't know what that voltage is, because AMD's website is a mess (one of the search results was about Java), but somebody said it's 1.55V. Don't exceed that for even one split second, and don't exceed the motherboard's maximum CPU power rating. It's proportional to the clock speed, meaning if you have a 4 GHz CPU rated for 125W and run it at 4.5 GHz, expect it to draw 4.5/4.0 x x 125W = 141W. Power is also proportional to the square of voltage, so raising the core from 1.35V to 1.50V would make that CPU draw 154W, or 174W. I have serious doubts about many motherboards being able to run for long at even their rated max powrer.
 
I would highly recommend not going above 1.55volts as well. I have an MSI board that would have serious voltage swings that put my 8120 over 1.57 volts fairly frequently. That processor is quite dead now. Heat wasn't the issue. The voltage fried it. Be careful.
 
Unless you have a custom water loop, or phase change. Your not going to get acceptable temps above 1.5 volts.

The cpus can take up to 2 volts, Under ln2. Under custom loop water cooling 1.6.

Things are going to be relative to your temperatures. Seeing as your on a h80, i wouldn't personally go above 1.5 volts.
 
I'm running mine at 1.535 volts but it rarely (i think only once it got above 1.5 volts and that was 1.51 volts) does it ever go over. As long as you don't have crazy voltage swings it should be okay. During intense gaming it goes up to 1.48 volts even though its set at 1.535 volts.
 
That'd be the vdroop, right? When a CPU goes under stress, the voltage drops. When I had the 3770K I was able to set the voltage drop to Level 1 so it kept a steady feed of volage but I guess AMD mobos don't have that yet.

I'm currently using 1.525 right now for 4.7GHz, and it gets up to 62c if using OCCT (which still fails). May have to try 4.6 or 4.65.

EDIT: My board is the 1.1 revision. I noticed that there's also 1.2 and 3.0 revisions of this board. Does it matter which revision I have? I also noticed that even at stock speeds, the northbridge was TOO f'ing hot to the touch. I'm like... wow I need a fan on this thing. Is this normal? And does that affect my OC stability?
 
Last edited:
ebduncan said:
Unless you have a custom water loop, or phase change. Your not going to get acceptable temps above 1.5 volts.

The cpus can take up to 2 volts, Under ln2. Under custom loop water cooling 1.6.

Things are going to be relative to your temperatures. Seeing as your on a h80, i wouldn't personally go above 1.5 volts.
Click to expand...

I'm running a custom water loop and mine died horribly under 1.6 volts. As I said in my previous post, temps are not what killed it. It never went above 55C.
 
Perhaps you could try 1.45 V to 1.47. 1.5V seems very, very high for air. Just because the processor can run clean for an hour or so full load at 1.5 and 60C does not mean it isn't on a fast train to failure. I cannot imagine that 200Mhz (4.5 to 4.7) is worth going from ~1.4V and 45-52C under load to 1.5V and 60+C. You are effectively pushing it past design for daily use, and to the very edge under heavy load.

This is like when someone "overclocks" a stock turbo on a car without spending proper money on cooling and other factors. Push it hard daily, and to the edge when racing? That turbo won't see 30K miles. Less than 20K is very likely.

The parallel is in getting stout VRMs, and a high end board, as well as water cooling. You do that so you can run 1.5 and 4.7Ghz or so, and NOT have a breakdown.

The above is just my take on it. My 8320 runs 4.3+ on ~1.35V, never hits 55C, and on a Hyper 212+. IBT hit 50C very briefly. That was before I dropped CPU-NB to 1.23V. Haven't checked since.

The above sees 42C peak in multi-tasking plus gaming scenarios, currently. I am good with 4.3GHz
 
botreaper10 said:
I'm running a custom water loop and mine died horribly under 1.6 volts. As I said in my previous post, temps are not what killed it. It never went above 55C.
Click to expand...


its is probably your motherboard which killed it. The MSI 990fxa boards are kinda crappy.

I've been at over 1.5 volts since Bulldozer was first released. (I was one of the suckers who bought the am3+ board before bulldozer was out)
 
Obviously I'm new to AMD overclocking. Last time I had AMD was the 5600+ Windsor 2.8Ghz dual-core.

So you recommend using volts under 1.5 and be content with 4.3 to 4.6GHz on air? And northbridge should be at 1.23 volts? I'm sorry, it's hard to find a good overclocking guide that doesn't have a wall of text where I just want to see the recommended settings.

I do admit that my board isn't the best, but I can upgrade to a better one if I have to. Are there any new chipsets in the horizon?
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Obviously I'm new to AMD overclocking. Last time I had AMD was the 5600+ Windsor 2.8Ghz dual-core.

So you recommend using volts under 1.5 and be content with 4.3 to 4.6GHz on air? And northbridge should be at 1.23 volts? I'm sorry, it's hard to find a good overclocking guide that doesn't have a wall of text where I just want to see the recommended settings.

I do admit that my board isn't the best, but I can upgrade to a better one if I have to. Are there any new chipsets in the horizon?
Click to expand...

your board is fine, if its revision 1.1 or higher.

No new chipsets are coming out for AMD at this time. Northbridge is fine at stock voltage, unless you are also overclocking it. I am referring to the cpu north bridge.

There are no recommended settings, all chips and boards are different in what they like. In general raising the cpu v-core will help you gain stability if your just increasing the cpu mutipier. Go outside of that and well things get tricky.
 
Stryker,

We have almost identical rigs. My motherboard is revision 1 with no LLC and I've run Prime 95 for 3+ hours straight in 2 sessions with no issues (max temps never exceeded 54 degrees...I live in Canada). Overclockers got a giant thread (over 100 pages) of people overclocking their FX-8350 and it was tough to find something that would work for me so I understand your frustration.

Disable turbo and do what I did. It will run stable. I've had my FX-8350 for about a month and stressed the CPU plenty in benchmarks and heavy gaming with no issues (except a dead GTX 470 - Far Cry 3 is to blame for that). I can promise you my settings will be stable (see my sig). If your lucked out on a better chip, you may be able to run at 4.7-4.8 GHz stable.

Use "CPUID Hardware Monitor" to make sure your voltage remains stable under load.

Keep in mind that the NB has shitty heatsink so don't add additional voltage to it. I emailed Gigabyte and they said 65-75 degrees is threshold for the NB under load. Anything over and it will start throttling.
 
Photo Album

In there are pictures of my current BIOS settings.. I let Prime 95 run for just 3? minutes or so and then freaked out when I saw it hit 67C.

EDIT: I'm at 1.450V instead of 1.475 at the moment.

EDIT 2: Using 4.5GHz instead of 4.6 right now

EDIT 3: Using 1.475v again with 4.53GHz instead of 4.6.
 
Last edited:
There was a previous thread (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1728792), where some [H] members game me some really good advice. Like many have suggested to me, the FX-8350 needs a lot of voltage to OC (around 1.5 volts). Check out the thread...it may help. There's a link on the first page that leads to a huge thread. As for your temps they seem a bit high for water cooled...is it really hot where you live?
 
Last edited:
it's about 28 C or so in my room right now... bedroom actually. 4 roommates in a 1400sq ft apartment. I could try opening the window as it's 27-35 F outside.
 
1.500 v in the bios is not good enough for 4.6 or 4.7GHz when it peaks 1.536 under stress. The CPU speeds begin to throttle and go to 2.8GHz and the temperatures peak 69c. I didn't know the H80 was this bad. 1.525 v peaks 1.568 and that just makes me freak out while the temps shoot in the 70s. Would hate to accidentally fry the CPU.
 
You may need to play around with LLC (try on/off/auto) to try to keep the voltage peak under control. My MB doesn't have LLC. Under load it never reaches the 1.5375 volts its set in the bios but jumps between 1.38 and 1.5 volts. Since the voltage never goes over the 1.55 volt threshold, temps hover between 50-55, doesn't throttle, and Prime 95 keeps going, I consider it stable.

Keep playing around with it...I'm sure you will find the sweet spot somewhere. In my experience, I had to play around with memory settings as well to keep my OC stable.
 
I do not even see the LLC option in my BIOS... and I'm not even touching my RAM settings, why would I need to play with the memory settings? I was hoping it wouldn't get complicated.
 
Sometimes you need to change RAM timings to make NB overclocks work properly.
 
But I'm not overclocking the NB. I'm leaving it at stock and I just increase the multiplier.
 
Bad batch? I just installed one on my brothers PC. 4.5ghz on a Hyper 212 at like 1.475 volts. Runs just fine with no temp issues. On an older Asrock 970 board too.
 
I tried to find out what batch I have but I don't really see anything on the AMD CPU box that would tell the batch number. I guess I have to take off the waterblock and take a gander.
 
Bad batch? I just installed one on my brothers PC. 4.5ghz on a Hyper 212 at like 1.475 volts. Runs just fine with no temp issues. On an older Asrock 970 board too.
Click to expand...

that is pretty high voltage for that overclock.

my 8120 does 4.9ghz at that voltage. Only takes 1.4 volts to get 4.6ghz
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Well... fuck
Click to expand...

Do you have any active cooling around the VRMs? That is the one downfall to using these AIO coolers, unless you have the H100 and/or a case where you can mount the radiator in the top of the case so some air blows down and circulates around the cpu socket and VRMS..I would try adding a 120mm fan blowing on the VRMs and see if that reduces your throttling and temperatures.
 
Well, remember that OC'ing is not a guaranteed process.
Some will hit 5 GHz others will struggle reaching 4.4 GHz.
 
ccityinstaller said:
Do you have any active cooling around the VRMs? That is the one downfall to using these AIO coolers, unless you have the H100 and/or a case where you can mount the radiator in the top of the case so some air blows down and circulates around the cpu socket and VRMS..I would try adding a 120mm fan blowing on the VRMs and see if that reduces your throttling and temperatures.
Click to expand...

I could try that, I did notice that the NB was very hot to the touch even at stock, and this was just a $100 board, so it's my fault for not spending a little more to get an enthusiast board that has heatsinks all over.

runs2far said:
Well, remember that OC'ing is not a guaranteed process.
Some will hit 5 GHz others will struggle reaching 4.4 GHz.
Click to expand...

I was expecting more out of a black edition chip that has unlocked multipliers to go at least 200-300 more MHz further from the stock speeds effortlessly. My Athlon XP 2500+ Barton was able to do this for crying out loud.
 
I noticed your NB temps go over the 75 degree threshold. That's when the board will start throttling your CPU.

What kind of case you got? It sounds like either your room is really warm or your case isn't getting very good airflow or both.
 
Last edited:
EPOQ said:
Bad batch? I just installed one on my brothers PC. 4.5ghz on a Hyper 212 at like 1.475 volts. Runs just fine with no temp issues. On an older Asrock 970 board too.
Click to expand...

Did it run stable on Prime95? A lot people just overclock and don't properly stress the CPU.

If you check out the giant thread on overclocker.net most people are using around 1.5 volts (but they are hitting close to the 5 GHz mark). On the 990FXA-UD3, I have yet to see anyone hitting close to the 5 GHz mark via the multiplier only.
 
Did it run stable on Prime95? A lot people just overclock and don't properly stress the CPU.

If you check out the giant thread on overclocker.net most people are using around 1.5 volts (but they are hitting close to the 5 GHz mark). On the 990FXA-UD3, I have yet to see anyone hitting close to the 5 GHz mark via the multiplier only.
Click to expand...

thats not true, there are quite a few with the ud3 over 5ghz

but for better advice than these boards can give with your board, join the OCN board club
http://www.overclock.net/t/1023100/official-gigabyte-ga-990fxa-series-owners-thread-club

There is also a 8320-8350 owners club
http://www.overclock.net/t/1318995/official-fx-8320-fx-8350-vishera-owners-club

Both of these places would be a good place to start, in your quest with your chip.

My Giga 990fx Ud3 is Rev 1.0, I don't even have llc, MY 8120 tops out at 5.2ghz with 1.6volts 24/7 stable. I run at 4.9ghz@ 1.475 volts for my everyday overclock. I would run it higher but there is no point, and it pumps out some serious heat. The heat coming off my XSPC 240rx radiator is unreal at those speeds. (like putting your hand over a portable heater vent) So i reduced the voltage and speed, so it wouldn't be a space heater. (it still is but no were near as bad)
 
EPOQ said:
Bad batch? I just installed one on my brothers PC. 4.5ghz on a Hyper 212 at like 1.475 volts. Runs just fine with no temp issues. On an older Asrock 970 board too.
Click to expand...

You're probably throttling too. I ran a Hyper 212 on mine when I first got it and at 4.4 at 1.35V I was hitting temps in the low 60's under OCCT and Intel Burn Test. Having a hard time buying that a midrange board and cooler could handle 1.47V on a power hog like the 8120.
 
MacLeod said:
You're probably throttling too. I ran a Hyper 212 on mine when I first got it and at 4.4 at 1.35V I was hitting temps in the low 60's under OCCT and Intel Burn Test. Having a hard time buying that a midrange board and cooler could handle 1.47V on a power hog like the 8120.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing..While I run an Intel rig, I personally still like the AMD cpus, and have been wishing I could afford an 8350 system to replace the shitty ION330 setup my dad uses..It would give me a chance to play around with one again..I had tons of fun overclocking my 1055T..I LOVE my 3770K, and de-lidding was fun, but it was so easy to get to 4.8Ghz lol..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top