Overclocking on M5A97 R 2.0, need help

I'm trying to overclock an FX-8320 on an Asus M5A97 R2.0 motherboard and it's driving me insane. 

First off, I'm trying to overclock to a stable 4.2 GHz for starters so I can match an 8350. Turned off some settings such as EPU, AMD Turbo CORE, Cool n quiet, C1E and C6 state. Voltage tuner is set to manual with 1.325 as stock Vcore voltage. 

Now, one of my problems lies somewhere with LLC. There is only three settings here: Auto, Disabled, or Enabled. Leaving it on Auto at 4.2 GHz leads to some serious Vdroop, going down to 1.24 and then failing the OCCT test within 20 seconds (which I would assume is to be expected at such low Vcore). Enabling it leads to a lot of system instability. It keeps the Vcore at 1.3-1.33, but it crashes either on boot or after some time. Though, good news is the OCCT test seems to be stable. I dunno what to do from here.

Another thing is the clock doesn't seem to be wanting to go down from 4.2 GHz and I'm not sure what option to enable to bring it back down. 

And finally, temps: my core temperature rises pretty fast to 60 C and then I stop it when it goes above 63 C. I'm going to guess my application of thermal paste could be at issue (I don't believe I did it very well and the block came off at one point when figuring out how to screw the 212 EVO in). 

...Halp?

lower your cpu multiplier to change it back down from 4.2 i think stock is 20?

4.0 GHz is non turbo, 4.2 is turbo. 

you may find good improvements in your ability to hit your target clocks by bumping up the cpu fsb clock. On my mobo this is labeled as blck clock or something similar to that phrase, in the amd cpu performance tuning guide (<- google that, found on amd website). This is the numbr your cpu clock multiplier is multiplied by to get your cpu frequency, this also increases your memory frequency so make sure to check that before you boot, this also boosts your mobo chipset northbridge and your ht link freq marginally, i have the ht link frq and mobo's NB on auto in the first place. i have a 235mhz cpu fsb with a cpu multiplier that brings my cpu freq where i want it. You may also have to bump up the cpu NB (cpu fsb) voltage to accomodate the higher freq... I have mine at +0.075 offset.

i have the amd 8350 on a gigabyte 990fx ud5. The amd performance tuning guide really helped me out, along with a common thread found on google for bulldozer overclocking... What helped me the most was just applying the concepts to my mobo's settings. Good luck. Im quite new at this so if anything doesnt seem to be lining up to some of the vets, please correct me...

i also wrote this on my samsung brightside with the shitty barebones opera browser, so forgive the lack of formatting and links.

the cpu fsb offset im using might be +0.125 idk ive been mesing with it, but it increments and decrements in .025 marks so anywhere below .125 has seemed fine to me.

the benefit to fsb overclocking vs raw cpu multiplier overclocking is you will get a system performance boost from multiple areas of your cpu and mobo

I actually found out the hard way that I was looking too hard... The LLC setting is not working correctly for whatever reason and causes instabilities and the CPU heats up faster than water poured into a hot frying pan. Did a BIOS reset to default values and worked from there. To compensate for the Vdroop, I just have to up the main Vcore voltage. 

Problem solved. Well almost...

I've determined my settings are stable with 10 minutes of OCCT. Upped the voltage to 1.3675 V and now at 4.2 GHz with the hottest the CPU core gets is 47 C and the socket is 63 C (I think I need to re-set the heatsink as I believe I have put too much thermal grease and there are air bubbles).  Doesn't droop below 1.3 V now, which is what I want. Now, though, I can't seem to get the settings to stick in BIOS with the manual voltage adjustments; it wants to stay at the stock 1.3325 setting. Will troubleshoot a bit more; temporary solution for right now is to use AOD to set the default on startup (ugh). 

Additionally, with the cores running on 4.2 GHz with that low of voltage, I wonder how much I could get out of this if it weren't hampered by a mid-range MB and, well, me. :P

Yeah, tried messing with the CPU bus speed setting and it upped the base clock as well as the memory clock. Though, the memory didn't like that as OCCT failed with a general Error failure. Guess I don't have much of an overclocker memory-wise.