Have i mucked up before i start

Hi all, thanks for a great forum. Due to my age and heart attack some years ago my PC overclocking and enthusiasm came to a bit of a standstill.

Being happy with my old water cooled Opteron 180 system (running on a DFI ultra board at 2.8 with 8800gt graphics) till my neibour decided to sell his PC as he changed to a laptop, i bought it cheap,about $200 as i thought it was a bit of an upgrade to my opti.
Asus n2m68-cm board
phenom 4 9500
4gb kingston 800
500gb sata2
2x Sata optic drives(mine were IDE)

I gave my opti setup to my son as he doesn't play many games just uses the pc for contact with friends and a bit of surfing.
Anyway, down to buisness. This sistem is crap, i don't notice any difference at all in anything. Having kindled the old bug i decided to do a bit of research to get some more speed out of this jaloppy. Pennies being limited i went for a phenom II x4 965BE (en route)rather than the newer 6x, with the bios update it will work in this board.
Lancool k58 case
Ek extreme block for cooling
I then decided what the heck and get a new Am3 mobo and ddr3 too, and went searching i had decided on a Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H with 4gb kingston hiperx 1600 ram(just within my budget) as it has sata 3 and usb3, when in the shop the guy in front of me got the last one and i was told i'd need to wait a week at least for a new order, well you guys know what its like when your decided and with money in hand burning a hole you dont want to go home empty handed especially as i have to travel 100kilometer round trip, i was offered a similar board, the ASus M4A87TD EVO at a better price than the giger board so i got it thinking that being an Asus board it should be good.
When i got home i searched the net for reviews and all i find are problems, is this a dud crap asus board or will i be ok, i havn't tried it yet as i'm still waiting for the 965 to arrive, the weather here in europe added to christmas has been playing havoc with deliveries but i should get it tommorow according to the tracking info.

Anyone here using this MB?

Sorry for the long winded post, i couldn't find the usual introduction thread so you get mine here as an added new year bonus
TIA

to OCF!


As a former owner of an OC'ed Opty 180 (HDD's died a few weeks ago after 4.5 years of 24/7 use) I know exactly where you're coming from. Normally the ASUS would have been a good plan but the quality of ASUS's mid-range boards seems to have dropped the last year or so. (High-end ASUS is still good.) If you're in a mid-range budget Gigabyte and Biostar tend to be better choices. If you can post a couple of links to places you would buy from - and give us some kind of budget - I'm sure we can come up with a better solution for a good OC'er. The Gigabyte you linked is actually a pretty good choice - too bad they ran out.

On the up side, your RAM and CPU choices are good and I hope you got a good PSU to go with them. When you get the 965BE you might check the top row of coding. Look for (and hope) it ends with BK4DGM. That 'M' is the important one and shows it's the newer C3, which overclocks better than the older C2.

If you find you can't switch boards the ASUS you have will still OC, but you may have problems at the higher end. Keep us posted and when you've got it all together we'll be here to help!


BTW - Here's an OC'ing Guide you might want to browse through while you're waiting on your hardware. Not too much has changed since the Opty except the cpuNB with it's L3 cache has been added and, of course, DDR3 is different than DDR.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023

Yes its the hdz965fbk4dgm, C3(first thing i looked for)
the PSU i have is the In Win Commander 750 its been running 24/7, almost, for more than 18months no problems(touch wood)

The mobo is still unopenned so i'll give them a ring and ask if its possible to change, if not, no big deal as long as its stable with minor tweeks as i don't do heavy gaming, more into RT strategy, Civ V, C&C and the likes.

Memory problems seem to be the main issue with this board in the problems i found but what i bought was on the mem spec sheet so that should help for starters, i like to walk on a steady base before i try to run

Thanks for the link i'll give it a read before i start with any O.C. and i'll keep you posted on the build, maybe even take a few shots although looking at some of the nice cableing i've seen on here maybe not

You folks on the other side of the Atlantic commonly use a lot of different brand name PSUs than us in the states. Many of them I have never heard of but yours gets good reviews by the testers. Initially, that was my main concern as I read your posts.

Its the best PSU i've used so far and would recomend it, the big names over here are expensive, change the $ to € and add a bit to get the price here, same with other components too ie MB's graphics etc a $100 mainboard is like 110-120€($145) here even if you shop arround. Buying from USA doesn't help either as you get hit for taxes on import, here in Spain in particular postage is expensive too, postage from UK is usually cheaper than buying here but you have to watch the exchange rate also as they still use the pound rather than the Euro.

to the Forum.

The RAM may or may not clock up to 1600 when you first install it but no big deal there since as I am sure you know its just a simple walk through the bios to change that. I actually have 1600 RAM in mine but find I get just a bit better performance running it at 1333 and lower timing. You will have to play around with it to see.

Still waiting for the postman, damn cpu package is still in customs somewhere and being a am3 mb, the old phenom 1 i have am2 wont fit to test the MB, patience i suppose

Tks CgS i'll bare that in mind when i start

All up and running, added an ek supreme water block(mk1 not HF), eheim 1046 pump and a 120.2 rad from my opty and getting 19º idle and 33º after 10minutes prime 95(64) with only one fan on minimum, all stock settings including cool'n'quit so i should go pretty well on an overclock once i get 2 new fans on the rad(these thermalintake typhoons sound like a typhoon when on full)looking for something quied put powerfull.
I'll let the mx-2 settle a week then see what gives.

That good to hear keredg, what ambient temps do you have?

17-18º here at moment and temps are up to 22º at idle after leaving on idle overnight, 1 rad fan still on minimum, i left the rad fans off for 2 hours while surfing to see what happened and the temps reached 27º just by natural convection and the case fans.
I've also oc'd the ram to 1600(thats what its rated at) and doing fine but i'll drop it back for any overclock to improve stability. i did try an overclock as is using AMD overdrive and got just over 3.8 before i cut it back to stock the mem dropped to 1156, still just feeling my way arround. Any ideas what the multiplier is marked as in the bios?

OK in bios go to AI Tweaker, then scroll down to AI Overclock Tuner (change from auto to manual) then to CPU Ratio (change from auto to manual) this should allow you to enter the sub sections and adjust the cpu multiplier and FSB. Pages 2-11/2-12 in the manual.


Under Advanced tab in bios then CPU configuration look for C1E and Cool n Quiet and disable then. Page 2-16 in manual.

thanks will give it a look, stock is 200*17, being the 965BE(edited my sig and forgot that bit) i should be able to just change the 16 to more for a start if i am understanding things correctly from Dolk's guide

in at the deep end


201*20 booted into windows no problems, 27- 28º while i'm writing this on idle i'll give prime a shot later on and see how things go

Ya, right now the only thing I have done with my 955BE is push up the multiplier, once I get done working a couple of AM2's then I will start in on my AM3 and start using the FSB more to try to get it higher than 4ghz. I have to start pushing the voltage up when just using the multiplier and I am hoping by using some FSB that I can drop that back down to keep the temps down some when on Air.

Your VID looks good with only 1.4 do you have it locked in at that or auto? if auto then keep a close eye on that and the temps as you push with prime they will jump fast.

Welcome! Nice temps!!

CgS Drone said:

Your VID looks good with only 1.4 do you have it locked in at that or auto? if auto then keep a close eye on that and the temps as you push with prime they will jump fast.

Click to expand...

thanks, got that just too late, did 9 minutes of prime95 and just when i was about to save the screenshot it bsod'd on me.
39º with the odd flicker to 40º during the run, the voltage was on auto so that might have been the cause, bit pushed for time but i'll have another go at weekend, this time i'll set all manually