114 replies to this topic

[Pteroduck]

I'm fairly new to the gaming industry and i bought myself a nice rig, decent enough to play, and i want to overclock it, can someone help? Im completely new to overclocking.

My specs are (1) GTX 460v2, 12gb ram G skill 1333mhz , 600w rosewill, AMD fx-8150 (awesome cpu and what im trying to overclock), and the Antec Kuhler 620 h2o

[Waco]

What motherboard? With that PSU you probably won't be able to overclock much without overloading it - the 8 core FX CPUs eat a TON of power when overclocking. Mine, for the brief time I had it, would pull nearly 400 watts for the CPU alone when overclocking.

[Pteroduck]

My motherboard is a gigabyte 990xa-ud3, what and how much power is recommended?
also, do you know if i can combine two different rams together? I have 4x3 ram(12gb) from g skill, if i bought an 8gb stick from g skill (all ripjaws) will it work and say 20gb?

[Waco]

It'd probably work, but you wouldn't be running in dual channel mode.

Overclocking an FX-8150 requires a hefty amount of power. I'm not kidding when I say you can see 400 watts going to just the CPU. Depending on which Rosewill 600w PSU you have, you may be okay or you may be skirting danger when you overclock.

[Pteroduck]

Sorry, im a bit of a noob when it comes to this, still fairly new to the PC gaming stuff.
What is dual channel mode? [RAM]--->http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820231313
This is my PSU-->http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817182032, Is it enough or am i skirting danger?
400w is alot?

Edited by Pteroduck, 14 April 2012 - 08:39 PM.

[Waco]

Hmm...I probably wouldn't try to push it too far with that PSU. It's an older design with split rails so you're probably going to be stuck with a single rail powering the CPU. With only 19 amps available on one rail, you're going to run into a wall very quickly when trying to overclock.


Dual channel mode is enabled whenever you have the same amount of RAM in both channels (IE: four 4 GB sticks, or one 1 GB stick and one 2 GB stick in each channel (for a total of 6 GB)). If you mix densities it won't run dual channel. It's not a huge difference performance-wise, but I'd get a fourth 4 GB stick just to keep things consistent.

[Pteroduck]

Oh ok, so what would be a limit?
oh ok so just keep it constant? 16gb and 20 gb, any noticable difference?
speaking of constant, how can i keep my cpu after i overclocked it running at OC speed constantly, meaning all 8 cores run OC speed, without any cores missing or dipping?

[Drdeath]

More memory will hamper your overclock. Just use 4G for overclocking. If you never max your memory, leave the system with 4G. More memory will only give better performance in some apps like rendering. If you max your memory on your system, just put in 8G. There should not be any need for more than 16G.

[Rofltroll]

You don't need more than 4 GB for gaming really. 8 GB is fine if you just want a lot of RAM but it's still fairly overkill for gaming and use the rest of the money to buy a better video card.

Here's how i like to explain dual channel memory to my friends: Imagine that instead of 4GB of ram you have 4 liters of water. Single channel mode means you have it in one 4L bottle while dual channel mode means you have it in 2 2L bottles. All these bottles have the same bottleneck size so when you want to get water out you will be able to do so faster through 2 bottlenecks (dual channel) rather than 1 (single channel) and same goes for getting water in. Basically you should have higher bandwidth but as I explained to you in another post (you sure started a lot of these in a lot of places ) DDR3 has quite the large bandwidth anyway and will never really be able to use all of it even in Single Channel mode. Someone correct me if I'm wrong

Edited by Rofltroll, 15 April 2012 - 12:18 AM.

[Pteroduck]

So 20gb is really not needed? 16gb is good?
Oh ok, so it's good either way?

[boinker]

not really. im going to mirror what alot have said and too much ram on newer chips is not exactly a good thing. you can use 8 gig of memory and the downside of that will be some if a little clock speed for the chip but what you are trying not to do is inhibit the IMC or Internal memory controller as you can only give so much voltage and so much ram to it before it becomes your instability issue. Its at your discretion though. If you do not Video edit or do alot of heavy photoshoping 4-6 gigs of ram will suit you wonderfully. 8 gigs will be excessive but it will be ok.

[Pteroduck]

Wow, well now i felt like i over did my ram. 8gb is far enough for gaming?