Overclocking Phenom II 965 BE, some basic modern advice ?

[Fif23]

Hey there !
Just got myself a used P2, 965 BE, with a new Gigabyte 990XA board, and 8gb of Vengeance 1600Mhz.
On top of the 965 stands an NDH-D14 Noctua cooler.

Around 32C, as of now it's all stock.

I'm looking for a safe long term OC, and was wondering what other people with similar setups have achieved.
What were your settings ? I understand that with this 1600 ram I don't have to use 20x200. I can go to 250 right ? Anyway, any tips would do. It's been a while since I OC'ed, so just trying to save trial and error time with what other people have already achieved.

Thanks for looking

 

[brandonwh64]

some 965's were good and some were just terrible. I got 4ghz at 1.5V on mine but was too hot than I wanted it to be.

 

[Aquinus]

I have one of the 140-watt 965s and as @brandonwh64 has also said, I got it to 4Ghz on about 1.5v, but man does it run toasty. My personal experience has been that 3.6-3.8Ghz is pretty normal for Deneb cores and some will do 4Ghz, maybe more. I used to have a 940 that didn't like going over 3.7Ghz. You also don't need to use the bclk to overclock. The multiplier should give you flexibility to get to at least 4Ghz. You'll need to adjust you HT link speed and maybe your NB speed and/or voltage.

 

[m&m's]

It depends of the CPU revision, if you have a C2 you can expect a max stable overclock of ~3.7-3.8GHz and if it's a C3 expect a result in the range of ~3.8-4.1GHz maybe more if you have a very good chip. To know your revision download CPU-Z.

Since it's a unlocked CPU, you should increase the multiplier. You should never exceed 1.55V for a day to day overclock. What I would do is set the V-Core to 1.45V and find the highest stable overclock.

 

[Vario]

My old 965 BE C3 hit 4.0ghz at 1.38v. Temps maxed at 55*C but I hit the wall at 4.0 and couldn't go higher. 20x multi * 200mhz bus, ht link I think was 2400?

 

[Fif23]

Thanks ! I just checked and I have the C3.

I set HT Link to 2000, NB to 2400, and ran a 19.5x200.
3.9Ghz at 1.45v (could be one notch higher) and it seems stable. Lowering the voltage one notch isn't stable, and upping it to 4ghz, even with increased voltage, doesn't work anymore.

Feels good, should I just leave it that way ?

Temps are around 40-42 loaded. Although the Coretemp stopped working and is now showing 0 all the time.. Not sure why. I can only check in BIOS now.

 

[micropage7]

Thanks ! I just checked and I have the C3.

I set HT Link to 2000, NB to 2400, and ran a 19.5x200.
3.9Ghz at 1.45v (could be one notch higher) and it seems stable. Lowering the voltage one notch isn't stable, and upping it to 4ghz, even with increased voltage, doesn't work anymore.

Feels good, should I just leave it that way ?

Temps are around 40-42 loaded. Although the Coretemp stopped working and is now showing 0 all the time.. Not sure why. I can only check in BIOS now.

just test it for several hours,
just push it little by little and personally i wont worry bout the sensor, sometimes it just mis read, just touch the heatsink, is it hot enough or not

 

[m&m's]

Download HWMonitor, you'll see your voltage in load and cpu temp. If your cpu is running at 40C loaded, I can only say WOW because that is pretty low. Did you stress test it? With what program?