Winter Fun with Phenom II 1090t

[RichM499]

Hello all! It has been a while since I posted anything so I figured this winter I'd have a little fun.
I woke up this morning to discover that my room was freezing so I checked my CPU temps and they were in the 10-20c range! I was kind of surprised because I've never seen my temps that low before so I opened both the windows and aimed a box fan at the system and this is what I came up with: (the 28c temp is running Prime95 on the "max heat" setting )

I am going to try and push for a max overclock now that I've got some decent temps.
This is a CPU-z screenshot to show you what CPU and MB I'm working with. Unfortunately I can't seem to get Cool n' Quiet turned off in Bios. No matter what I do it seems to want to throttle down to 800mhz.

From what I've observed these are the settings.
CPU Stock Freq: 3200mhz(3600mhz turbo)
CPU Stock Volt: 1.4v max
CPU/NB Volt: 1.15v
HT Volt: 1.25v

Please correct me if I'm wrong about CPU/NB and HT because I'm not even 100% sure what those are.

I am going to try to hit 4ghz (something I've never been able to do with this setup for some reason. I've got a Corsair TX850w PSU so I doubt power is the issue but it may be the mainboard. I only noticed 5 chokes on the board which tells me it's 4+1 phase.)

When I simply bump the Multi up to 20 for 4.0ghz I get BSODS unless I raise the CPU Volt up to a crazy 1.65v which I'm just not comfortable with. Also I don't think I should need that much voltage because a lot of other people are getting 4.0ghz on stock volts.

Any help or clarification on the HT Volt and CPU/NB volt is welcome and much appreciated.

 

[PP Mguire]

HT and CPU/NB shouldn't need to be raised too much to make 4GHz because like you said that is attainable usually on stock volts all the way around. You could always raise them to 1.3v to be on the safe side.

 

[RichM499]

I was able to get it to 4.0ghz stable at 1.475v in bios (it fluctuates up to 1.504 and down to 1.43v. all 6 cores running at 4ghz stable with Prime 95.

CPU/NB volts: 1.3
NB volts: 1.31v
IGP Freq 750mhz (400 stock)
HT Volt: 1.3
CPU-NB Frequency. AUTO (what is this? should I raise or reduce it??)

What can I get to get 4.2 out of it? What do you guys think??? Also what's CPU-NB Frequency? It says Auto and gives me options of 2x to 18x. Thanks again!

 

[steve10765]

I was able to get it to 4.0ghz stable at 1.475v in bios (it fluctuates up to 1.504 and down to 1.43v. all 6 cores running at 4ghz stable with Prime 95.

CPU/NB volts: 1.3
NB volts: 1.31v
IGP Freq 750mhz (400 stock)
HT Volt: 1.3
CPU-NB Frequency. AUTO (what is this? should I raise or reduce it??)

What can I get to get 4.2 out of it? What do you guys think??? Also what's CPU-NB Frequency? It says Auto and gives me options of 2x to 18x. Thanks again!

wow man, you have so much headroom, I accidently overclocked my cpu to 3.9 GHZ when I increased my FSB speedn. I only had a 1C difference. NOrmally at 3.4ghz I am at 62 when maxed out for over an hour, and at 3.9ghz i get 63c for over an hr.
my idle temps are usually 27c-31c

MAN you could go higher I bet, since I only had a 1C difference when I overclocked 500mhz
TRY IT!

BTW I have the stock cooler, and yours seems to be a bit better

 

[RichM499]

4.2 !!!! Seems ok in Windows and Super Pi

Going to try running Prime95 for a while and if it's stable I'll bump it up to 4.4 Getting excited! That super Pi time is beats my all time best Super Pi record for top 10 AMD Super Pi by 0.2s !!!!!!!! Woohoo. OK
I'm gonna stress it and see if stable, then do another run for 4.4 and see if I can shatter my old Super Pi recrord or maybe try to set a new high! (pipe dream I know but it's down to the wire.

Any suggestions are helpful. Also what is CPU / NB Frequency.. should I change this?








--------- UPDATE-------
I cut a half second off my Super Pi time.

Anything above 4.2 and I have issues but I'm going to see if I can push to 4.4. Testing 4.2 stability now.
4.2ghz @ 1.5v
NB 1.31v
HT 1.26v
CPU/NB 1.3v
STABLE (so far.. 30~min running prime95. Gonna let it go for a few hours but it's looking promising. If it's stable here I might be able to squeeze 4.3 out of it!! 4.4 was a bust though it needs more voltage somewhere. We'll see! Any suggestions?

 

[PP Mguire]

CPU/NB frequency is HT. Should be between 1800 and 2400.

 

[RichM499]

CPU/NB frequency is HT. Should be between 1800 and 2400.

Cool. Good to know. That means the stock would be 10x right? The options it gives me in bios are 4x to 20x so I'd assume if HT is stock 2k then the CPU/NB multi would be 10x stock. I might bump that up one. to 12.

4.2 GHZ is stable in Prime (still running) so I'm going to let it run a bit longer and make sure before I push to 4.3

What do you think of my load temps? They pretty good??? I think I'm going to hit a ceiling pretty soon. 4.4 was way unstable before. Any of my voltages seem too high or like they might be danger areas??? all the help is appreciated guys. Gonna go push for 4.3

 

[PP Mguire]

Your HT link states in CPU-Z 1800, so I would leave it at that.

Voltages aren't too high, but I wouldn't try pushing it further. I wasn't kidding when I said your power phases can barely give what your CPU requires. Pulling 4.4 could cause your motherboard to pop confetti at any minute. Asus make decent boards so it'll last but there is no telling for how long. Honestly, your temps are the only reason why it hasn't done so yet.

 

[RichM499]

Your HT link states in CPU-Z 1800, so I would leave it at that.

Voltages aren't too high, but I wouldn't try pushing it further. I wasn't kidding when I said your power phases can barely give what your CPU requires. Pulling 4.4 could cause your motherboard to pop confetti at any minute. Asus make decent boards so it'll last but there is no telling for how long. Honestly, your temps are the only reason why it hasn't done so yet.

Well I'm happy with the 4.2 stable I just want to try and push it 1 farther to 4.3. If it's not stable then I'll keep it at 4.2 because that's rock solid.

I agree that the mobo may have issues. I installed some MOSFET heatsinks and have a 9mm 12v fan blowing over them so that should at least help a bit. I have a strong feeling I'm not going to be getting much more out of this machine though.

Anyway! Just exploded my old Super Pi 1m AMD record so I'm gonna go post the update over there and test a few games out before I try for 4.3. If I try 4.3 I'll update this post.

Thanks for all the advice and help.

 

[PP Mguire]

Actively cooled at those temps, should keep it going for a long while if they used quality parts on that board. So then 4.2 should be sustainable. 4.3/4.4 might require the 1.55 cap to be stable.