The fx-4100 5ghz quest

I have a Xigmatek Loki as a cooler not the most impressive thing ever i know but i allso have 2 case fans pointing right at it so it stays very cool i think 5ghz may be possible with it. The motherboard is very solid and a fantastic overclocker and one of the best mobos i have owned so dont think thats a issue. My complete specs should be in my sig. The thing i really need help with the most is the cpu voltage.....

Ok so my specs are not in my sig apperntly.....

Fx-4100
Biostar TA990FX
8 gigs patriot ddr3@2000mhz
OCZ stealthXstream 600 watt
gts 250 1g
500g HD

Theres my specs.

Nope allso i was using amd pstate for allot of the overclocking and voltage changing is that ok?

Interesting.

i would start looking @ h20 cooling to get 5 stable, that could be too much heat for that cooler to dissipate.

I am not familiar with the biostar bios, but look for llc voltage (line load calibration). If its there, set it to maximum. Bulldozer is a variable voltge chip, and for overclocking, that's a bad thing, but great for servers and laptops. Also for me, bumping the cpu nb voltage slightly helped stability.

actually most heatsink go to a certin point in cooling then wont cool much more than they do if you go any higher id only go 100mhz at a time and monitor it well

rather be slow and stable then fast and burn no? gotta remeber if you burn up the cpu you also have a chance of burning up your mb that wouldnt be good $$$

If the point of this is to get it to 5ghz, then yes, watercooling is good. If the point is to get high performance, then no, dont waste your money, go get yourself an intel i5. Even at stock its faster than a 5ghz fx 4100.

Most folks have been getting their bulldozer CPUs to 4.6 Ghz. So I'm not sure what you are complaining about. The FX 4100 goes from 3.6Ghz to 3.9 Ghz turbo. So you are achieving over 1 Ghz overclock. The reason why it is so difficult should be apparent, the CPU was not meant to be run at that speed. And you are quite a ways north of what most experts have been able to reach; its clear that 3.9 Ghz is a fine achievement and you should be happy.

But it looks like you have a very OC friendly CPU on your hands. Try adjusting the CPU NB speed and voltage, .1 at a time. Yes, it is time consuming but most max overclocks are. Also, I don't think you'll get higher clocks with that cooler. In fact, you may not get higher under any circumstances. There's a limit to how much voltage you can apply to each CPU before it becomes unstable. Your mileage may vary as they say. So I wouldn't get too frustrated, you aren't doing anything wrong. But I wonder if you are talking about ambient CPU temps or core temps. Core temps are what you should be monitoring for OC purposes.

I have an X3 720BE, an unlocked CPU. It starts at 2.8 Ghz and generally can overclock to 3.8 Ghz. I hit a wall at 3.6 with this particular chip, no amount of cooling or (sane) voltage will budge it past that. In fact, it does not get very hot before reaching instability. I've never seen the chip go past 50C fully loaded, right now its at 3.6 Ghz with temps in the low 30s. I have a top of the line air cooler, Spire Thermax Eclipse II.
On the same equipment I was able to hit 3.8 Ghz with an X4 940. Same architecture, only difference was 4 cores vs 3 and the X4 started at 3.0 Ghz vs the 2.8 for the X3.
Each processor was capable of a 800Mhz overclock. But since the X4 was higher speed to begin with, it ultimately had a higher overall overclock. But in relative terms, they both overclocked by 800Mhz. Which is pretty typical of the phenom IIs.

Even more reason to be suspicious of what temps the system is reporting. You could have a very hot CPU on your hands..

Haha im not complaning about 4.95 i was quite happy but it is bugging me that i can achive that but 5 is just out of reach But in order to get 4.95 my voltage was at 1.55 which seemed a little high I guess if i want to get to 5 it would require lots of time and maybe a new cooler.........oh well i got it sitting at 4.7 which is good enough for me intill piledriver comes out.

AMD overdrive

Yeah, I think a stable 4.7Ghz 24/7 clock is very nice and a good achievement. A 1 shot of 3.95Ghz is great too! Yeah, you wouldn't want to run 1.55V for very long at all. I think anything over 1.45V is exorbitant, hopefully you are stable at 1.45 or less.

5Ghz may still be within reach, but it depends on how much time, effort and money you want to put in it. I agree with you though, I am interested in seeing what piledriver may bring.
I just got the FX 4100 for my wife so thanks for posting your experiences, I am psyched to see what I can do with this chip!

40 minutes tells me you may still have something left in the tank.
GL

BTW, I'll be showing off my wife's build very shortly here.

ok this is off topic buttttt how do you upload a pic from your desktop here? have a pic of all my voltages and stuff but i cant figure out how to get it up here?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47994 [...] hotostream

Ok lets see if that worked......before i did anything else i wanted you guys to take a look see what i should change

[img]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/47994515@N06/6809707263/" title="Untitled by nutmanmatt, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7002/6809707263_b6dbcc4628_b.jpg" width="1024" height="576" alt="Untitled"></a>[/img]

Ok how about this time.....

OK, I'm really tired...
Hit the "add a reply" button to open the html editor for the forum post.
Then use the picture icon to enter the "direct link" from your photo album:

Hmmmm i dont think my motherboard is a big problem its a fantastic motherboard and one of the best i have owned. Also i give up on the pic already tried that buzznut and it failed...again unless im just stupid....... Any way i had it at around 4.85 at 1.42 volts but i restarted and it failed to boot so ill have to play with it more.

Oh and the nb-cpu voltage was 1.304 i think.

Thanks for the support.....Ill keep trying!