Crosshair V Formula & AMD FX-8150 CPU Overclocking Guide

[X-ROG]

http://rog.asus.com/81732012/guides/crosshair-v-formula-amd-fx-8150-cpu-overclocking-guide/

AMD FX CPUs overclock well if you know the right settings, and the CrossHair V Formula motherboard is ROG’s 5th Gen AMD hardware, so the team behind it has plenty of experience under their belts. As supplementary reading, we strongly recommend you reading a very good article titled the CrossHair V Formula Oveclocking BIOS Guide, written by Raja.

With that in mind, I am not going to go into too much depth about those aspects here, instead I’ll be aiming at getting you directly up, running and overclocked by providing clear steps to follow in order to achieve a solid all round overclock with your new AMD FX processor. From here, and with Raja’s guide, you experiment to fine tune your system and learn more.

The AMD FX Processor: AMD FX-8150 Specifications

Native Frequency: 3.7GHz
Turbo Frequency: up to 4.2GHz
Manufacturing process: 32nm
Number of cores: Eight physical
Memory controller: Dual-channel DDR3
Cache: 8 x 16KB L1 data, 4 x 64KB L1 instruction, 4 x 2MB L2, 4 x 2MB L3
Socket: AM3+
Thermal Design Power (TDP): 125W
Features: SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, 256-bit AVX, AESNI, PCLMULQDQ, AMD64, Cool’n’Quiet 3.0, AMD-V, MMX, FMA4, XOP

The Motherboard: ASUS CrossHair V Formula
Specifications

Chipset: AMD 990FX
CPU Socket: AM3 and AM3+ processors including Sempron, Athlon II, Phenom II and FX
Memory support: 4 slots, max 32GB DDR3
Expansion slots: four 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots (two 16x or one 16x, two 8x and one 4x), one PCI, one 1x PCI-E
Sound: 8-channel HD Audio via Creative SupremeFX X-Fi 2
Networking: Intel 82583V Gigabit Ethernet
HTT frequency overclocking range: 100 – 600MHz; max voltages, CPU 2.1V, CPU NB 1.875V, Chipset 2V, HT 2V, RAM 1.8V, Southbridge 1.8V
Ports: 7x SATA 6Gbps, 1x PS/2, 14x USB 2, 6x USB 3, 2x FireWire, LAN, 4x surround audio out, line in, mic, optical S/PDIF out, eSATA 6Gbps
Dimensions (mm): 305 x 244 (ATX)

And The Rest:

CPU Cooling: Mainstream performance air cooler
DDR3 Memory: Geil 2GB x 2 DDR1600MHz
Graphics Card: ASUS Radeon HD 5870 2GB
Power Supply: Corsair HX850

Tools

It is up to the individual to select the CPU/Memory stress test tool of choice. But please be aware of the following, previously on AMD platforms Prime95 was the most stressful tool, and it historically stressed the northbridge and memory more than Linpack, however the gap has narrowed between the two. The difference between the two outcomes for maximum Overclock using Linpack and Prime95 was less than 100MHz at the same settings. Remember a stability tests is an artificial exercise and the proof of the pudding is in the eating if you never crash your system.

LinX download http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1902/LinX_v0.6.4.html
Prime 95 download http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/
Memtest download http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

Using a windows based overclocking utility makes the whole overclocking process so much simpler and saves time if you are in a hurry to play with your new toys. You can also use ROG Connect if you have a spare rig, or a Bluetooth device such as a smart phone or tablet. Personally I really like the ROG Connect utility and can recommend it to anyone. The only problem that I noticed is the temperature reading can differ between the board and the ROG Connect by a margin of difference of nearly 10C, now that could just be because the motherboard OS based utility and the ROG software is not yet optimized for the AMD FX. Not critical, but worth noting.

AMD OverDrive download http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/amd-overdrive/pages/overview.aspx
ROG connect download http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/Crosshair_V_Formula/#download

A easy work round to changing multiplier in OS is to simply use k10stat, the update will be available soon.

K10 Stat ( when updated ) http://www.softsea.com/review/K10Stat.html

Monitoring utilities are a must and the reviewer pack I have linked too is very handy as a all-in-one download for AMD FX.

CPU-Z AMD FX reviewer pack download. http://www.cpuid.com/news/47-cpuid_reviewer_kit_for_amd_fx_bulldozer.html

Applications

Cinebench and Hyper Pi are the 2 main applications that I use for a rough and ready test just to find the upper limits of the system and get a ballpark figure for voltages needed. Plus they help me get an idea on how to approach the higher clocks. It’s always handy to run benchmarks like this throughout testing to make sure your performance is going in the right direction. Think of it as a auto-regulation feedback loop.

[Aokiji]

What also helps if u put a fan behind this board to cool the cpu bracket and vrm heatsink on the backside, notice a stable reading of volts and a nice temp drop, not sure why but the back side was way hotter (burn) than the actual heatsink near cpu , this solved a temp problem for me on 4.8Ghz with this chip, its on 59 +- about on load , with no fan there it went over 68C

[alanmaiax]

I have a strange problem, my oc is stable 4.6 mz vcore 1.4 cores under 50c , but this is my problem when the overdrive finish to stress the cpu, after stress i shutting down my computer windows close fine but i have no video signal and all the hardware keep working, wtf! I hope someone can help me.

Sorry for my bad english, i am from Mexico

[FlanK3r]

Marshall: u are so lucky....With middle air performance cooler and 1.52V ! Impossible for me. I have highend aircooler, 1.44V is my limit. My chip is hot as hell, But beyond 1.44V for 4800 MHz stable :).

[AMD_Man_Clav]

I highly recommend verifying your voltages via Probe IT instead of software, my C5F at least is off by a significant margine.

[FlanK3r]

volotage is +- right...I have 3 pieces of FX, only this one is so hot. But looks the best from all three in OC and voltages scaling. Validation 5400 MHz with 8 cores and 1.55V 🙂