any OC experts care to share some advice?

Specs:
AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE
Noctua nh-d14 cpu cooler (changed out 1 fan)
M4A785TD-EVO
4GB GSkill DDR3 1333
XFX 4970
Corsair 750w psu
Antec 1200 case (changed out all fans)

so i just got my new cpu and cooler, and i thought i would try OCing (first attempt at ocing a processor) and here are my results:

3.9 Ghz and stable after 3 +hours of Prime95 ( only changed the multiplier and cpu voltage )







temps after 3 Hours of Prime95:



air flow not an issue (sorry shitty cell phone camera)





now the problem: once i got 3.9 Ghz stable nothing i do will get it to go to 4Ghz stable, no change in cpu voltages or HT ref. clock, everything i try fails after a few mins in prime95.

thoughts on how i can get to 4ghz? i thought i was doing well for my first OC

with my temps at 47c i thought i could push it just a little further and join the 4ghz club

also i noticed i left my NB to default, would that change the stabilty at 4ghz?

if so what should i set/start it at?

Darryl Licht said:

Make sure you have the latest BIOS

i do, had to update them for my mobo to support the 965

Product FRED said:

Holy crap that's a lot of fans.

and its still almost silent. Only time i hear my pc is when the gpu fan speeds up.

treachery said:

also i noticed i left my NB to default, would that change the stabilty at 4ghz?

Seeing as you linked to this thread, I looked.

And to answer your question, yes it will. Had a quick look at the manual for your board and I would bump up both the "HT Over Voltage" and the "Chipset Over Voltage" settings one notch each, and then test. If that doesn't do it work on the Chipset voltage, one notch at a time.

To give you an idea how they can help, I had to raise all of them on mine (the two above, plus a couple of more than are in my bios but not yours) to get mine stable at stock speed, never mind overclocked. Seems my board is one of those that with everything at default settings, it just wasn't stable at any speed (stop 124 errors for no rhyme or reason). Once I bumped the extra settings up, it has been stable as a rock.

treachery said:

with my temps at 47c i thought i could push it just a little further and join the 4ghz club

also i noticed i left my NB to default, would that change the stabilty at 4ghz?

if so what should i set/start it at?

You could try to bump the NB voltage up a little. It can help stabilize a temperamental overclock for some boards. I have to do that to get mine past 3.5.

Btw, this is what you modestly can do with a NON Black Edition.





This is my every day stable running system. I was able to get it to 3.65, but it got too hot for my taste.

In the second pic, Temp1 is the CPU, Temp 3 is the NB, and the Core temp is obvious.