Are my Overclocking settings safe?

H

Hiberna

New Member
Hi, I'm completely new to overclocking (as of yesterday) and wanted to get somebody who actually knows what they're doing to confirm I've done it safely.

I have overclocked my ATI Radeon HD 5570 1GB GPU using Catalyst Control Center, so I'm pretty sure that's safe.

Also, I have overclocked my AMD Athlon II x2 250 CPU from 3.0GHz to 3.4GHz. I did a stress test using Prime95 for 9 hours or so and didn't get any crashes, so I assume that is stable. Although, when I woke up to check it in the morning the CPU temperature was at 70C from the stress test. It sits around 45-50C now.

And lastly, I overclocked my Kingston DDR3 2GB RAM x2, this one confused me the most. In the BIOS, I set it from Auto to 800MHz and upped the voltage from 1.5v to 1.575v, hoping it would set the DRAM Freq to 1600MHz. CPU-Z says I am only getting 900MHz though, as shown here:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/842/ramspecs.png/

Is that normal? Can my RAM actually handle that?
Here is the SPD tab of CPU-Z:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/811/ramspecs2.png/

Everything seems to be running fine at the moment and I haven't ran into any problems yet. I just want to make sure I haven't done something which is going to come bite me in the ass in future.

Would appreciate anybody who could help, thanks!
 
Hiberna said:
Hi, I'm completely new to overclocking (as of yesterday) and wanted to get somebody who actually knows what they're doing to confirm I've done it safely.

I have overclocked my ATI Radeon HD 5570 1GB GPU using Catalyst Control Center, so I'm pretty sure that's safe.
Click to expand...

As long as you are not getting display driver crashes or artifacts (snow, screen tearing funky colors, etc...) you should be fine.

Hiberna said:
Also, I have overclocked my AMD Athlon II x2 250 CPU from 3.0GHz to 3.4GHz. I did a stress test using Prime95 for 9 hours or so and didn't get any crashes, so I assume that is stable. Although, when I woke up to check it in the morning the CPU temperature was at 70C from the stress test. It sits around 45-50C now.
Click to expand...

70c is way too high for that cpu. You need to drop it down now until you get a better cooler. What cooler are you using?

Hiberna said:
And lastly, I overclocked my Kingston DDR3 2GB RAM x2, this one confused me the most. In the BIOS, I set it from Auto to 800MHz and upped the voltage from 1.5v to 1.575v, hoping it would set the DRAM Freq to 1600MHz. CPU-Z says I am only getting 900MHz though, as shown here:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/842/ramspecs.png/

Is that normal? Can my RAM actually handle that?
Here is the SPD tab of CPU-Z:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/811/ramspecs2.png/
Click to expand...

That can be confusing. DDR3 or Double Data Rate 3 has (hopefully I get this right) basically 2 clock cycles in one clock cycle. So your RAM that is clocked at 800MHz is effectively running at 1600MHz. That will show up in CPU-Z as DDR3 clocked at 800MHz but it is really DDR3 1600. Just take the real clock speed and multiply it by 2. So currently you are at 900MHz effectively at 1800MHz. I hope that make sense.
 
Thanks for the quick reply.

I am using the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 CPU Cooler.
Even though the CPU was at 70c after a 9 hour stress test, It never reaches that temperature otherwise. Should I still drop it down and do another stress test? what temp should it be at after a stress test?

Regarding the RAM, is it safe to run at 1800MHz with the type I have? The average (that I've read) is 1600MHz. Also, is 1.575v safe for that? does it need more/less juice? The timings are all set to auto (since I didn't have a clue what I was doing) is that ok?
 
Can you give me the voltage of your CPU and a link to your RAM?

I feel like something is not right with your cooler. With those temps I had guessed that you were still using stock cooling. You should not be idiling at 45 to 50 with that cooler.
 
Ok your CPU voltage needs to be taken off of Auto. in most cases that will use more voltage than is needed. The best way would be to set the voltage manually to 1.35v in the BIOS and set the FSB back to 200. work your way up again on the FSB and only raise the voltage when you have instability. When you do have to raise the volage be sure that you only do so in the smallest increments that you can. This will be a time consuming process but you will have better temps because of the lower voltage. Also be sure that AMD Cool and Quiet is disabled in the BIOS as well as any throttling features. I don't remember if the Athlon series has turbo core or not.

The RAM would probably be fine but without heatspreaders I would try to keep the voltage as low as possible. I would take it down to 1.5v and DDR3 1600. That is plenty fast for your system.
 
Ok, so I've been playing around with the settings. I've managed to get my CPU up to 3.4GHz on 1.35v with no problems so far, debating whether I should try get it higher or not.
The temps haven't dropped that much, the CPU is on 44-45c now.

I'm trying to get my DRAM Freq to 800MHz but can only seem to get it to 756MHz. I set it to one lower than 800MHz in BIOS (533MHz I think?) and kept increasing the voltage the smallest increment I could at a time. Should I set it to 800MHz and lower the voltage below the standard?
 
Only take your cpu as far as your cooler can handle. I was looking through the reviews of your cooler and I saw a lot of complaints coming from the AMD side. There might be a reason, other than the voltages, that you are not getting good temps. Reseating the cooler and testing it at stock might not be a bad idea. Just to give you a limit. I know that a lot of AMD CPUs are not designed to be over 62c. That is where the danger zone is.

The reason that your RAM is not letting you get to 800MHz exactly is because the clocks of the RAM are tied to the FSB just like the CPU freq is. So stock for your FSB is 200 and you run your RAM at 800MHz so that has an FSB of 200 and a RAM multiplier of 4. when you change the FSB to get a better CPU OC it will change the speed of your RAM as well. Like 225 x4 will be 900MHz for your ram.

You can change the multiplier (also called dividers I believe) of your RAM. That is why you have choices like 533MHz, 667MHz, 800MHz, 900MHz etc... but they will all be changed based on what FSB your system is currently running off of. So when I said go for 800MHz on your RAM what I really meant was someplace around 800MHz and 1.5v

Sorry that was long. Just wanted to get all of it explained.
 
I reset my CPU to stock (3.0GHz) I'm not sure what the default voltage is.. when I put it to 1.35v, the text turned yellow? not sure what that means, so I set it to Auto. According to SpeedFan, the Vcore1 voltage is at 1.39v on Auto.

The temp is still 44-45c for the CPU. It has a tick next to it though, so It can't be too bad. Perhaps I could manually increase the fan speed or something?

Oh, and the RAM is at 800MHz now after setting the CPU to stock.

Edit: I should note that temperature is from regular tasks, not idle.
 
Last edited:
Hiberna said:
I reset my CPU to stock (3.0GHz) I'm not sure what the default voltage is.. when I put it to 1.35v, the text turned yellow? not sure what that means, so I set it to Auto. According to SpeedFan, the Vcore1 voltage is at 1.39v on Auto.
Click to expand...

I looked it up in a review of the chip. They said that it was 1.35v I would start there and move up when necessary.

Hiberna said:
The temp is still 44-45c for the CPU. It has a tick next to it though, so It can't be too bad. Perhaps I could manually increase the fan speed or something?
Click to expand...

You should be able to set it manually in the BIOS. It might be under something called Q fan control? Alternatively, you could plug the 4 pin into a 3 pin header. That will operate the fan at 100% I think

Hiberna said:
Oh, and the RAM is at 800MHz now after setting the CPU to stock.
Click to expand...

That makes sense since the FSB would also be reset to 200MHz.
 
I couldn't edit the fan speed manually in BIOS. However, I enabled the Smart Fan option, I couldn't set the full fan speed to come on at any lower than 51c though, so the temp is still 45c.

I'm fiddling around with the settings in SpeedFan to control my fan speed.
 
Just a quick update.

After turning the computer off overnight, the temp of the CPU for general tasks is now 35-40. I've taken the side of the case off in hope that it will let heat escape better. Probably not the wisest decision, but it seems to do the job.
 
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