Frustration trying to stably OC my rig.

[JBags]

Hey guys,

 

Sicne I've been home from Winter break from college i've been toying with my rig some more (hell, i have had plenty of time ) and I can't seem to get my x3 720 stable at even 3GHz with 1.38v...

 

So I'm thinking I may have gotten a bad chip... It wont even post with everything to default and Asus Unleashing Mode to enable 4th core..

but that's beside the point. However, i'm not sure if it's the chip or the mobo i got that just sucks at OCing. though i did manage to successfully stably "OC" my RAM to 1333mhz w/ 5-5-5-15 1T timings, 11 hour Memtest86+ stable.

 

If i run OCCT 1 hour test it fails 9 minutes in at these settings.

 

Anyways, I was thinking of trying to rule it out one way or the other, if it's the CPU or the mobo. I can get a Sempron 140 from newegg for like $40. I was thinking if I buy it, and see what I can take that chip to, it would give me the answer. If i run into the same issues, it would be the mobo sucks, if I can succesfully OC the thing (and possibly unlock it) it's my x3 720 that's bad.

 

 

What do you guys think?

[OwinC]

Maybe when you unlocked your 4th core everything went south. It could be possible that your processor was meant to be only 3 cores.

 

Did you ever try to overclock before you unlocked the 4th core? If so. How well did it do?

[Easeness]

Are you using AMD overdrive to overclock it or just going into your BIOS and like OWINC said if you unlocked the 4th core and its not a AMD black edition this is most likely the reason its doing this. Usually your only able to unlock the 4th core on the AMD Black Edition Processors.

[panjang110]

maybe it's just a bad chip, getting sempron140 will not help you find the culprit cause you need to overclock it by increasing bus speed instead of multiplier like you're doing now. about the ACC i suggest you try clearing the CMOS first and start over again without touching the ACC setting, i doubt the cpu temps is high cause you're not using stock cooler so maybe the culprit is ACC setting

Edited January 8, 2010 by panjang110

[JBags]

I didn't try to unlock it until Asus added Unleashing Mode to their BIOSes, and I have tried to OC beforehand. I can get it to 3.4GHz with 1.5v as you see in my sig, but that was not fully stable. I felt that 1.5v was way too much for only 3.4GHz so i brought it back down and started over, maybe finding a compromise or sweet spot in between stock and 3.4ghz...

 

I've essentially raised the frequency 200mhz and had to give it 0.05 more volts, that seems a lot to me... and it's still not stable.

 

And i'm using BIOS. I open AOD to check voltages and stuff, but I dont OC through it.

 

 

I've only tried to unlock twice, both times resetting BIOS to default first. and both times it didnt post, so I reset the CMOS jumper.

 

I normally keep ACC off.

 

and temps are fine. CoreTemp, Speedfan and AOD all report mid 20sC, but BIOS says mid 30s when i'm in there so i think there's a 10 degree offset to those temps, but I'm still not that high under load, mid 40sC taking the offset into account.

 

 

I was thinking by getting the sempron, If i can at least get a decent stable OC out of it, then the culprit in this case is not the mobo. am i right or is there some flaw in my logic?

[Skugpezz]

unlocking the core can cause problems