FX 6300 overclock on AsRock 970 Extreme3 Mobo

chococobs wrote: »

I built my first PC about a month ago without really having overclocking in mind but now I want to overclock both the CPU and GPU. Only thing is I've heard the 970 chipset isn't great for overclocking and that I should've got a 990 board. Is this true? Would I be safe to overclock?

It is perfectly safe to do so. There really isn't much difference between the 970 and 990 chipsets except that the 990 ones have additional PCIe lanes for crossfire/sli etc. Now some of the more expensive 990 board may have some additional features that help achieve very slightly higher overclocks (better heatsinks etc) but that has nothing to do with the chipset, and you should be able to get a very healthy overclock using a 970 board.

chococobs wrote: »

What you're saying is definitely more reassuring than what I've heard elsewhere (overclocking forum on reddit). I was told that the VRMs of my board are 4 phase and that 8 phase are better suited for overclocking. I don't really understand this... care to explain?

VRMs are what convert 12V power to the much lower voltages required by the CPU. The TLDR version is that the less phases, the harder each individual VRM has to work, so there will be less strain on each module in an 8-phase design than a 4-phase design. The other main factor that affects the strain put on the VRMs is the amount of power that the CPU draws (which depends on the number of cores, frequency, core voltage etc).

However the quality of the components used in the VRMs ais an important factor as well, so a good quality 4+1 design would be just fine for a decent overclock. The Extreme 3 is a solid board and the VRMs appear to be of good quality (inc heatsinks to dissipate heat), so I wouldn't be at all worried about overclocking the FX-6300 on that board.

For the Extreme 3 you would only need to even start thinking about VRMs if you are pumping extremely high voltages into the 125W FX-8320/50s, and pushing them to the absolute limit.