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I upgraded my motherbord and processor because my previous CPU (an AMD Athlon Phenom II X4 965 @4x3.4Ghz Black ed.) was not giving me the performance I need.

I am a musician and I need raw core power, so the 3.4Ghz was what is important to me. I was able to overclock it to 3.5ghz. Any higher and the system became a bit unstable. I tried overclocking it more, but was unable to. I decided to upgrade to the following components:

mainboard: MSI 970A-G43  
cpu:       AMD FX-9320E @8x 3.2Ghz
cooler:    Zalman CNPS 2X

If I set everything on Auto (multiplier = 16, bus = 200) with AMD turbo enabled, it will run on 3.2 Ghz and turbo will allow the CPU to go upto 4Ghz.

The problem is that with music, the delay for reaching 4ghz is giving me trouble, so I need it to be 4ghz steady, so clocking it would be ideal.

Reading about overclocking this CPU tells me I should disable the AMD Turbo function, then find a stable setting, increase with baby steps, and if the system becomes unstable, increase the CPU voltage setting by one.

I determined I can run the system pretty stable using a multiplier of 18, with a bus speed of 204, reaching a core speed of 3.661 Mhz per core. While doing nothing, the system restarted once, so I figure this setting is not a stable setting and I'll need to increase the voltage. According to CPU-Z, the Core voltage is around 1.15~1.16V. In the bios this is set to Auto. The problem is that I cannot set the voltage core to 1.16V in the BIOS. I can set it to 1.10 and 1.21.

Both settings will cause windows to crash directly on boot. If I place vcore back to auto, I can get into windows no problems. Multiplier and bus speeds are still unaltered.

I'm new to overclocking, but I really need to clock this, or the purchase has been for nothing, and I doubt I can return the processor with coolingpaste etc attached to it.

I can give more details about what settings the bios allows me if needed. Any help on how to continue would be really helpful.

EDIT: My question: How can I increase (alter?) the voltage of the cpu and boot into windows?

EDIT2: Also, the bios comes with its own overclock wizard. If I run that, it'll find a setting of 3,425 ghz.

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    Its not clear what your specific question is. You shouldn't expect to get more then a 10-15% overclock on air with your CPU. If you want a higher overlock switch to a liquid cooler. Outside of the physical restraints it sounds like your you have a physical software limitation with the voltage core, outside of switching more hardware, you won't overcome that
    – Ramhound
    Jan 2, 2016 at 18:52
  • @Ramhound according to many reviews, even with air cooling, I should be able to get 4,5 Ghz easily. I'm pretty sure if I manage to change the voltage, it will do just that, but I'm unable to find out how, and I'm pretty sure its not a hardware problem, but a human problem, as in: I'm doing something wrong. On water, this baby should go up to 5.2ghz. Also, I tried overclocking with my old mobo and cpu, and ran into the exact same problem. couldn't alter the vcore without causing windows to not boot.
    – LPChip
    Jan 2, 2016 at 19:04
  • Your system is crashing, because basically, your settings are making the CPU instantly overheat. As you are finding your motherboard's overclocking capability is as important as your CPU's capability.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 2, 2016 at 19:07
  • Zalman CNPS 2X is a mini-ATX cooler you are not going to get 30% overclock with it.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 2, 2016 at 19:12
  • @Ramhound so... you're saying, if I change my cooler to another one I should be able to overclock it well? temperature seems to be low though, around 40 degrees celcius according to Core Temp. Also, if I put the computer under load, it will hold very well. but the crashes appear random while doing nothing much. really.
    – LPChip
    Jan 2, 2016 at 19:19

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