# Overclocking FX 8320 on MSI 970A G45



## Darren

In order to scratch my expensive upgrade itch I decided just overclocking my CPU would suffice for now. 

I've attempted this in the past using Prime95 and simply locking the multiplier to 4.1GHz as that was the highest I could go before I'd get instability in Prime95. My motherboard has crappy power management and the mosfets overheat if you try and pull too much power, preventing me from going  higher. I'm aware of this and simply trying to get what I can out of it. This is well documented if you Google about the MSI 970A G43/G45/G46 coupled with an 8320/8350. 

This time around I'm going a different route and using CPU-Z, which apparently has a bench feature built in that I didn't know about. Instead of disabling Cool 'n Quiet, I opted to leave it on and instead simply crank up the Turbo Core multiplier. Now I still get my CPU dropping down to 1.4GHz at low utilizations to save on power and heat. Now I'm able to get 4.3GHz with stability using CPU-Z, I think. It appears from HWMonitor, that not all of my CPU's are staying at 4.3GHz, but are bouncing around between 3.5GHz (stock) and 4.3GHz. Is this a result of instability or the Cool 'n Quiet function performing poorly? Am I really just shooting myself in the foot and forcing it back to stock clocks? Is there any other way to make my CPU downclock when idle, but ramp up to a set speed when needed without it dropping down to "normal" clocks? 

I'm using a CM 212+ with stock paste (got AS5 though) and it didn't even break 41 degrees according to the package temp on HWMonitor. Temperatures don't seem to be a concern here, just power.


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## johnb35

You will get a better stability with cool n quiet disabled, basically  bios settings C1E and C6 you want disabled.  

@StrangleHold 

He can help you better then me.  He has been helping me with OC'ing when I ask.


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## Darren

With Cool and Quiet disabled, am I still going to produce much difference in heat or energy? I don't know how much impact your multiplier has on that if you're not actually stressing it. I've had it off essentially since I got the chip, but my room is always hot and anything I can do to minimize that is good right now in August. Given how Vishera handles their idle temps, I don't have a good way of testing this myself. I'll disable all of those though and keep it at 4.3GHz and see how it does.


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## beers

What kind of voltage are you using at those clocks?  Probably your best bet is testing stability at the lowest voltage you can get away with (as that's the largest influence of additional power consumption).

Turbo might give you a lower net TDP but you'll also see those downclocks as the CPU exceeds it's 'turbo threshold' and backs off a bit based on higher demand.


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## StrangleHold

Don't know much about your board, from the looks it only has a 3+2 power phase. Which means the CPU cores only have 3 phases/chocks. It actually has 4 mosfets on each phase, but they are the older style. Has 13 caps, cant really figure that one out? Seems it would have 20. But maybe they have less on the 2 phase that run the NB. I would not have cool n quiet and C1 and C6 enabled. Might bring down the clock at idle, but it really doesn't pull that much more unless its under load with them disabled. I would just leave the CPU Voltage on auto and start upping the X. When it gets unstable, back the X down or bump up the voltage by .25/.50. See what happens, check your temp. Then start upping the X again. Keep doing this till your happy and it stays cool or it sets on fire.


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## C4C

With my 212 and everything else (power saving) disabled I idle around 30-35C but I'm also up at 4.6GHz right now..


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## StrangleHold

That's not bad, what it doing under load and whats the Volts set on?


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## Darren

C4C said:


> With my 212 and everything else (power saving) disabled I idle around 30-35C but I'm also up at 4.6GHz right now..



I really doubt I'll be able to go past 4.5GHz, probably 4.4GHz is out of reach too. I still haven't gotten around to it yet, classes just started up for me. I want a 990FX board to play around with, but AMD isn't getting another dime out of me on the CPU front unless they get their game together.


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## C4C

Darren said:


> I really doubt I'll be able to go past 4.5GHz, probably 4.4GHz is out of reach too. I still haven't gotten around to it yet, classes just started up for me. I want a 990FX board to play around with, but AMD isn't getting another dime out of me on the CPU front unless they get their game together.



Yeah.. For me it was effective since I only spent $456 on my build with the 860K. Sold that for $100 and my upgrade was $220.


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## Darren

I do want to get an i5 set up, but it's probably not worth the price for the performance at the moment. My 8320 only chokes up on games that use only one cpre. I get framerate drops into the teens and 20's in simple games like Torchlight 2 because it only uses one core and can't keep up. Meanwhile GTA V never drops below 30 FPS nearly maxed out, and usually is around 60.


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## Darren

I did some more research and got curious as to what I could get my 8320 up to. After some fiddling I'm running at 4.5GHz. I'm not entirely sure what all these settings accomplish, but I disabled pretty much everything that would save power. Apparently bumping your NB voltage helps with stability as well. The Cool 'n Quiet is actually still on and functional though, which is nice.

I still don't entirely trust it and have yet to do a long stress test, but it seems to be holding up. Previously I'd not been able to pass 4.2GHz with a manual OC without instability and crashing. I opted to just bump the turbo clock speed instead to make it easier. CPU-Z benchmark would get me scores around 5100 with the Turbo set to 4.4GHz. Now with it manually overclocked to 4.5GHz, I'm getting about 8400. That's quite a difference. I did notice with the Turbo set it would just drop certain cores in speed, which makes it pretty useless. Hopefully my performance in games actually benefits from it now.

I could still bump my voltage a notch or two, but if I get any instability I'll probably just drop it to 4.4. The bench scores were pretty much identical between 4.4 and 4.5 anyway and this board was only 80 bucks in 2011 and is known to have issues with the 8320/8350 chips at higher speeds.


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## Darren

4.5 started giving me instability, as did 4.4GHz. Once I was at 4.4 I was able to bump the voltage enough to keep it stable, but doing that caused my board to eventually overheat and downclock itself. Sitting at 4.3GHz now and I made a few changes to try and alleviate the issue, notably undervolting the RAM from 1.65 to 1.5v to reduce the board temperature and turning off CPU Smart Protection to prevent it from downclocking. We'll see if it holds. I'm really pushing this board, but I feel like I'm doing it relatively safely because I still have yet to exceed 1.42 volts. I set the NB voltage back to defaults, and it dropped my board temperature a bit too.

I'm keeping a very close eye on my temperatures, and learning a lot from the whole process. Makes me really want a better board, but spending money on this platform is not something I want to do anymore.


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## C4C

I think you're doing well and I guess if that mobo fries you be gotten your money's worth..


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## Darren

4.3GHz still couldn't handle itself after a while. Bumped down to 4.2 and voltage down a bit more. Numerous hours of GTA V and it handled it. I guess I'll be content with this.


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## Jiniix

Love your signature 
I've bought a few MSI boards (Z77 G41 and G45, X79 G45) and they've all been rubbish. At that price point ASUS and Gigabyte delivers a much better product.


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## Shlouski

Darren said:


> 4.5 started giving me instability, as did 4.4GHz. Once I was at 4.4 I was able to bump the voltage enough to keep it stable, but doing that caused my board to eventually overheat and downclock itself. Sitting at 4.3GHz now and I made a few changes to try and alleviate the issue, notably undervolting the RAM from 1.65 to 1.5v to reduce the board temperature and turning off CPU Smart Protection to prevent it from downclocking. We'll see if it holds. I'm really pushing this board, but I feel like I'm doing it relatively safely because I still have yet to exceed 1.42 volts. I set the NB voltage back to defaults, and it dropped my board temperature a bit too.
> 
> I'm keeping a very close eye on my temperatures, and learning a lot from the whole process. Makes me really want a better board, but spending money on this platform is not something I want to do anymore.



You have probably tried this already but I will suggest it anyway. Remove the mosfet and NB heatsinks and put some good new thermal paste on there and then strap fans onto the heatsinks. I have done this a few times with success, but you often need to use a couple of small nuts and bolts for the mosfet heatsink so it will sit down properly onto the mosfets. Just make sure its non-conductive paste or you might go BOOM


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## Darren

I don't want to go ripping apart my board for a few hundred MHz. I just left it at 4.2, and it's stable after playing GTA V for multiple hours on end, I'm happy enough with that. 

MSI board aren't inherently bad I don't think, this one in particular is just pretty garbage. It even says that at stock voltages and clocks that the 8320/8350 aren't recommended since they pull "too much power". Yeah okay MSI, just because you cheaped out on the cooling it's AMD's fault. Oh well.


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## Shlouski

Darren said:


> I don't want to go ripping apart my board for a few hundred MHz. I just left it at 4.2, and it's stable after playing GTA V for multiple hours on end, I'm happy enough with that.
> 
> MSI board aren't inherently bad I don't think, this one in particular is just pretty garbage. It even says that at stock voltages and clocks that the 8320/8350 aren't recommended since they pull "too much power". Yeah okay MSI, just because you cheaped out on the cooling it's AMD's fault. Oh well.



Removing 4 screws is hardly ripping apart your motherboard  and it may also decrease thermal stress, increaseing the life of your motherboard.


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## Darren

True enough, but it's 4 years old and will be replaced probably within a year. I just can't be assed to do much with it.


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## Darren

I stole a Gigabyte 970A UD3 board from a friend that didn't use it anymore. I haven't done much with it yet but even right now I'm sitting at 4.2GHz and running at stock voltage and it's stable. I'll have to see what I get out of it.

Are stability issues that are fixed with increased voltages dependent just on the CPU or also the motherboard? Meaning will my 8320 run at higher speeds at lower voltages compared to the MSI board or will I just be able to take the voltage higher on the better board...?


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## beers

Good....good....

Let the clock speed flow through you..


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## Okedokey

Ensure you cool the mosfets though brother...  Anyone smell burning>? lol


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## beers

Okedokey said:


> Ensure you cool the mosfets though brother...  Anyone smell burning>? lol



Eh, he's a lot better off with the UD3, more power phases, actually heatsinked VRM, no big warnings everywhere about the board catching fire from being 4+1/125w like his old one


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## Darren

beers said:


> Good....good....
> 
> Let the clock speed flow through you..



You don't know the power of the ... clock side?


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## mtb211

4.4 Ghz huh? I wasnt going to open a thread to see if I could get my pc to 3.0 Ghz on stock cooling but I am now


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## Darren

Well the Gigabyte board definitely made a difference now that I got around to pushing it. I'm now at 4.5GHz with a 1.3875 voltage and it seems to be stable so far. Temps are getting close to 60 at load. I ran it for 2 weeks or so using the automatic voltage at 4.2GHz, which was the max I could get on my MSI board.


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