Help with overclocking

[RaceRX]

Alright I'd like to avoid a repeat of a few days ago. Can someone explain to me how to overclock in the bios? I turned on overclock function.

There's two options of overclocking, overclock and boost. Boost is turned off... I turned it on when it crashed. Would that have made it crash being overclocked .6ghz over and boosted at .7ghz over? The boost had never been on before but why would they offer a non functioning item with my cpu? (I specifically bought it because of the option)

Also, anything else to do?

[Hobo]

What CPU do you have?

[Dr_dog]

Classic generally "safe" way is CPU clock modifier. It generally is same and its been there for decades.

if your FSB or Base Clock is say 300Mhz. your clock modifier might be 10.0 (300Mhz x 10.0 = 3.0Ghz)
Increasing it like 1 step up or half step (if you can) up usually nets you 0.3-0.8Ghz overclock.. Intel CPUs you can generally safely increase by 1 or 2 steps without having to increase CPU voltage. Which gets to a point where heat and dead hardware chances increase exponentially.

Since i havent touched at modern AMD CPU for years I have no idea about their life how they work.
I just assume the Boost is like intel turbo boost where it adjusts its clock speed and power usage depending on CPU usage. This feature is on usually by default when you buy CPU off the shelf. If this is custom built system. It should be on already. But if this is some prebuilt package, it might been turned off due to instability with the hardware or something.

How is your CPU cooling handled? is it the stock toyfan or some block of copper and aluminium or water block? with Stock cooler, Dont even look at overclocking, or maybe your boost glitch is the inefficient stock cooler...

Needs moar details generally if you want detailed help

[RaceRX]

It is a stock cooled 960t amd. I wasn't really worried about possibly hurting it unless it's a sure thing and would rape it right away lol

[Dr_dog]

Quick sweep on google..
Phenom X4 960T? is it that? It seems to be overclockable, also seems to be locked 6 core.. Since its one of those strange AMD's creations. Absolutely no overclocking with stock cooler, I wouldnt even unlock the 2 extra cores with stock cooler. they generally start to heat up lot more when you unlock locked cores..

[RaceRX]

Quick sweep on google..
Phenom X4 960T? is it that? It seems to be overclockable, also seems to be locked 6 core.. Since its one of those strange AMD's creations. Absolutely no overclocking with stock cooler, I wouldnt even unlock the 2 extra cores with stock cooler. they generally start to heat up lot more when you unlock locked cores..

alright. Sounds fair enough. Can I use my old motherboard, get a new cpu and gpu and basically build a new computer? Obviously I'd have to stick to amd processors but will it work? I have a gigabyte 990x I'm almost 100% sure. And is worth getting more ram? I have 8gb of the black rip jaw sticks. Keep in mind I built this bitch in like 2011 so everything is probably outdated but I figure with a new cpu and gpu, and everything is fine it wouldn't make any sense to build a whole new computer

[Dr_dog]

As long as socket matches on motherboard with the CPU's socket, Google the motherboard model, usually there is full details of what socket, memory type and speeds supported etc available online. Just make sure the parts you want to use on it are supported by the motherboard. If its anything withn like 6 years.. It should support just about any DDR3, most likely up to 32GB max.
New CPU and GPU will do wonders. in terms of GPU.. motherboard shouldnt be bottlenecking it, neither the CPU if they both are similar age, give or take few years. in 990x case socket is most likely AM3+
Just remember to use same type memory for each channel to maximize performance. Usually the averige consumer board has 2 memory channels which are marked with different colors. Put matching sticks on same color channels.