Easy Tune 6, AMD Tuban 1090T Black Edition & Gygabyte GA-890FXA-UD7

[Cess]

Hi.

I've just built my first PC for the release of Final Fantasy XIV.  I know the i7 is the preferred Core for gaming but I didn't want to spend the money so I bought the Thuban Black Edition with OCing in mind.

My setup:

Cooler Master HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Big-Tower
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, 3.2GHz, AM3, 6C/6T
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7, AMD 890FX, AM3, CFX, XL-ATX
Corsair H70, all-in-one CPU Cooler
Corsair TW3X4G1333C9A, 2x2GB, DDR3-1333, CL9 @1.5V
Sapphire HD 5850 Vapor-X 1GB Gamescom Edition
Western Digital Caviar Blue, 7200rpm, 16MB, 500GB, SATA-II
Thermaltake Toughpower XT TPX-875M - 875 Watt

I know nothing about overclocking at all but on the advice of some people on the AMD board I started by setting the CPU multiplier to x20, I've been told this CPU can reliably go to 4.2 on air cooling only so I decided to crank it up t 4 to start off.  Booted into Windows and started Prime7 with CPU-Z open.  An hour later and nothing, CPU-Z had the multiplier and speed at stock.

Fair enough, there is probably something else I need to do that I don't know yet. Then Easy Tune 6 caught my eye.  I opened it up and the help file and find that I seem to be missing some options on it, specifically something called C.I.A 2 and instead I have a button on the tuner tab called "Easy Boost,"  I try it an my PC ends up hanging after about an hour of being left in peace.  Not sure where to go from there I try the Core Boost feature on ET6, reboot my PC and as soon as it loads W7 the fan on my Graphics Card revs and I get a black screen, have to power down and reset the bios.

I'm feeling a little shredded here I spend a lot of money putting this together and I seem to be failing drastically - can anyone offer any advice on how I should go on?

All help appreciated, thanks.

[absic]

Hi there,

OK first off I should say that overclocking is a bit of an art rather than an exact science. What works for one PC won't necessarily work on another one. That said, I have the 1090T and have had it running at 4.2 on air so I know it can be done and also, it wasn't that difficult to achieve.

I would recommend that you  get rid of EasyTune6 from your system and also any of the Energy Saving software that you might have installed.

In BIOS under the M.I.T. section you need to disable the Core Performance Boost Option (if this is available) The Core performance  boost is actually designed to shut down a couple of the cores on the CPU and boost the frequency of the others, so not useful when you are aiming for a stable Overclock. Under the heading Advanced BIOS Features Disable the AMD K8 Cool&Quiet control. All voltage settings can at this stage be left to AUTO. The only thing to keep an eye on is the RAM settings and make sure that you keep them to 1333MHz. That should be all the changes you really need to do in BIOS at the moment, apart from the actually tweaking of the CPU.

When you Adjust the CPU Clock Ratio don't jump straight from X16 to X20 as 3.2Ghz - 4.0GHz is a bit of a large leap when it comes to O/C'ing. Go up a little bit at a time and see how the system responds, (X17, X17.5, X18, X18.5, X19.... ) Also remember to check what temperatures you are getting, with the H70 Cooler that you have 4.0 GHz should be quite easy to obtain but O/C'ing will produce more heat.

[Cess]

Thank you.  I'll try that this evening a post how I get on - I really appreciate your feedback.

[Dark Mantis]

By the way Cess, I forgot to warn you there is a ban in this forum on yodelling

[absic]

He's not yodelling. He's screaming in frustration!!! 

[Dark Mantis]

Fair enough then. No ban on that

[Cess]

Ha - funny ppls!  I'm actually Scottish, I moved to Switzerland 3 years ago!

OK, next set of questions.  I disabled the Turbo and Cool & Quiet and uninstalled ET6 and the Energy Saving software and turned the clock up to 16.5 (3.7).  All seems well so I began a stress test and literally within a minute I had a flame icon appear beside Temp 3 while running speed fan.



I don't really know what temp 3 is, or why Fan 1-3 is at 0 then it shows fan 1-5.  Halp!

[absic]

Hi Cess,

To be honest I don't use SpeedFan so I'm not sure what Temp 3 is referring to. For CPU temperature monitoring I tend to use CoreTemp which is pretty good. I also use AMD overdrive when doing any testing as this shows individual core temps and also provides good info with regard to voltages etc. but, as with all monitoring software it does have a couple of glitches that can be a little annoying especially when you see something like TMPIN4 @ -294.7 °C.

With the CPU the thing to bear in mind is that the Max temp is 62°C although you can go above that  briefly without too much worry.  It is the Core Temp that is the main concern on the Phenom and as long as that doesn't go above the 62°C then you are pretty safe. From the picture you have posted the Core is being shown as 34°C which is well within the thermal threshold.

If you find that temps are increasing too much then you will need to start setting the CPU and other voltages manually as this is the probable cause.

[Dark Mantis]

TMPIN4 @ -294.7 °C.

I would be really interested in how you managed that temperature....especially on air?

[absic]

That's my little secret! 

[Dark Mantis]

Hey, you should be over in the overclocking championships. You would win easy.

[absic]

I would but getting those kind of frosty temperatures is really not a BIG secret.........




Have you met my mother-in-law?

[Dark Mantis]

Is that what is termed a THIRD PARTY COOLER 

[absic]

Yes! 

[bytheway_r]

I don't really know what temp 3 is, or why Fan 1-3 is at 0 then it shows fan 1-5.  Halp!

Temp3 is most likely your motherboard's northbridge. That is, if you have a sensor for it. I don't and it shows 78-82 degrees all the time . I don't really get why it shows up as a flame as it doesn't seem that extreme a temperature to me.

The fan info is normal. It's the same way in my case. Just ignore the first 3 fans. In my case Fan1 ( the one with a speed ) is processor fan and the next 2 are system fans.

I'm actually more worried about your CPU voltage. AMD specification says 1.40v max but I have no idea how that translates to real reasonable max. Still, I think you must be pretty close to the limit of what's considered safe. I know that for Phenom II's with less cores the reasonable max seems to be 1.5v.

abisc115, you probably know more about this processor than me so go ahead .