[Build Log] AMD FX-8320 - pics included

Well, I finally got around to putting my new rig together and I thought I'd share for those who enjoy watching computers being built.

Parts list:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 Rev. 1.2
CPU: AMD FX-8320
RAM: 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1600 (2x8GB)
PSU: NZXT Hale82 750w (overkill, I know)
GPU: XFX 9600GSO (only temporary)
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar SE 300GB
Case: Cooler Master RC-690 II Advanced
Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus (2 fans push/pull)

Here are all the components minus the HP DVD-RW and WD Caviar I pulled from an older build.


External boot test. I also had to flash my motherboard to the latest bios for Vishera support. I know it's ballsy to do an external test on a carpet floor. Went without a hitch, though. I just kept discharging whatever static I may have had every time I touched something.


External test was great and everything seemed to be working fine so I got the motherboard/cpu//ram/heatsink/psu installed.


This shot shows the second fan that I installed on the top of the case (120mm) and the second fan that I installed on the heatsink (also 120mm).


Installed the GPU.


Back side of the case with some cable management going on.


Finished product.


This is easily the cleanest looking PC I've built as far as cable management goes. It's super tricky trying to pack away all the extra cables on the back. At some point I would like to get some more blue LED fans and possibly a blue 24-pin Bitfenix cable extension to make it look nicer.

I will come back tomorrow with some updates and hopefully some overclocking results. I'm still trying to figure out which values are which in HWMonitor. I can't figure out which reading is for the CPU.

Daang thats clean.Props on the wire management in the front. (not so much in the back XD)

Wow the box for your case is way nicer than both of my 690-IIs and one of mine was the nVidia special edition. Nonetheless its looking good sofar! One of the things you can do to clean up the back of your case is to grab some zip ties and pull the slack out of all those cables across the back of the motherboard tray and secure them out of the way. It will help with opening/closing the back case panel.

ssjwizard said:

Wow the box for your case is way nicer than both of my 690-IIs and one of mine was the nVidia special edition. Nonetheless its looking good sofar! One of the things you can do to clean up the back of your case is to grab some zip ties and pull the slack out of all those cables across the back of the motherboard tray and secure them out of the way. It will help with opening/closing the back case panel.

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I'll have to do some tinkering with those cables. I tried to zip-tie one bunch of cables but it actually made it harder to close the back panel. When they are spread out a little and laying flat it seems to close better. I might have to zip-tie a couple of small bunches.

Got a couple of hours of folding in to check stability and temps. Everything is looking good.
I believe the TMPIN1 reading on HWMonitor is the CPU and TMPIN2 is the Northbridge. So the CPU maxed out at 39c and the Northbridge maxed at 46c. I also folded on the CPU as well and that maxed at 43c. That should leave me a little room for overclocking. In the near future I might be added 2-4 more 140mm fans which will probably give me even more room for overclocking. Eventually I might make the switch to a closed loop water cooling unit.

I got around to doing some overclocking tonight. After disabling C6, Cool & Quiet, Core Boost, etc. I noticed a temperature drop. I'm still trying to figure out which TMPIN value is the CPU and which is the northbridge. I would assume that the northbridge would get hotter than the CPU, so I'm thinking the TMPIN1 is CPU and TMPIN2 is northbridge, but I could be wrong.

Here are my temps and SuperPi results at stock (my RAM was running at DDR3 1333 speeds at stock).


I got it up to 4.5ghz at stock voltages long enough to fiddle around and run SuperPi, but it wasn't stable. I have a feeling that the instability was caused by the RAM, and not the CPU, but I'll have to test that out tomorrow. Booting into windows at 4.5ghz and stock voltages made me happy


After checking my max OC with the multiplier I got it up to 4.44ghz at 240 HTT. Once again it was stable long enough to run SuperPi and mess around, but blue screened after folding for a little while.


That's where I'm going to leave it tonight. It looks like I should be able to hit 4.5ghz on air no sweat but I might have to mess with the DRAM voltage or CPU NB voltage to make it stable. I'm a little skeptical of my ram. It wouldn't even post at 800mhz until I manually set the timings. I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

Well, after hours of overclocking I think I found the most stable setting with my air cooling. Looks like it's running stable at 240 HTT and 18x multiplier, for a 4.3GHz overclock. I was able to boot at 4.5GHz with a .05 CPU voltage increase, but my temps skyrocked to 58C at full load and then it BSOD'd. I'm assuming I hit the temp threshold. I was able to get into Windows at 4.5GHz just OCing with the multiplier, and I hit 260 pretty easily. Unfortunately, my RAM doesn't seem to want to budge past 800MHz, so that restricts me with what I can do OCing the HTT. With the HTT where I have it now at 240 I can keep the RAM right at stock 800MHz and can run the CPU at 4.3GHz on stock voltage with load temps around 48C. I could try to fiddle with the the CPU NB link and HT link speeds but I'll save that for another day. When I get a few more 140mm fans in my case I might be able to hit 4.4GHz, but it looks like 4.5GHz may not be possible without a better heatsink or water cooling.

Here is my stable OC for the time being.


For those who are interested, I decided to do a little test to check performance with a multiplier only OC vs. an HTT and multiplier OC. I just ran Cinebench at a 4.4GHz multiplier OC and again at 4.4GHz HTT OC. I kept the RAM and link speeds the same. Looks like performance is slightly better with a combination of HTT and multiplier increase to accomplish overclocking than it is with a multiplier increase only.

might want to lower your cpu/nb Frequecny from 2200 to 2000 and keep its voltage around 1.25 made a world of difference for my 8320 temp wise. ans 58c is fine. 65 is not.

Thanks for the tip Nax. I will have to give that a try. I've been thinking about experimenting with some of the voltages to see if I can drop the temps a bit. For the time being I'm running at 4.3GHz with tops out around 48C. With the right tweaking I should be able to get it up to 4.5GHz without getting too hot. I also have another 140mm case fan on the way so that should also help with temps a bit.

Try raising the CPU-PLL voltage up to 2.675 and lower the vCore 1 jump. There have been four of us on Gigabyte motherboards running these chips hear at OCF to test this sofar with good success. The lower vCore should shave a good 5C off your load temps.

nice tip!

im running the 8320 in a M5A99X Evo on the stock cooler @ 4.2 1.3825Vcore
2200 fsb @ 1.2125v
2600 ht temps are 20c idle 58c load prime95 1hr burn in.
Gskill 1600Mhz 8-8-8-24

my bottleneck is now my EVGA 560Ti SSC. @ 932c 2120m

Well I proved myself wrong. I didn't think I would be able to hit 4.5GHz with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus but I did. I found out that the stock fan that came with the 212 plus was not running all the time. I have that fan in push configuration and a second 120mm fan in pull configuration. The fan pulling air was running full speed all the time but the fan pushing air was not. I found a setting in the bios to keep the stock fan running at full blast and that has made a big difference in my temps. I was able to get it stable at 4.5GHz with a .075 vCore increase and CPU temp topping out at 54C. I can live with that. I might fiddle with the CPU PLL voltage to see if the temps drop but I'm a little nervous to run 24/7 with the CPU PLL voltage so high because it appears that no one really knows how that will affect the lifespan of the CPU.

Nax Rydan said:

nice tip!

im running the 8320 in a M5A99X Evo on the stock cooler @ 4.2 1.3825Vcore
2200 fsb @ 1.2125v
2600 ht temps are 20c idle 58c load prime95 1hr burn in.
Gskill 1600Mhz 8-8-8-24

my bottleneck is now my EVGA 560Ti SSC. @ 932c 2120m

Click to expand...

I would like see that with a stock cooler
Mine hits 65 on stock clocks and stock cooler

Well I was doing some SuperPi 32m benchmarking yesterday and got my FX-8320 up to 4.8GHz on 1.5v. I didn't do any stability testing and I didn't check my load temps, but it was stable and cool enough to run SuperPi for 20 minutes. I'm sure with the right cooling I can get it up to 5.0GHz, but that will have to wait. For now I need this thing to be my everyday PC and 4.2-4.4GHz is more than enough for what I'm doing with it.

Nice clean build .
( I am one that always enjoys seeing builds )

||Console|| said:

Nice clean build .
( I am one that always enjoys seeing builds )

Click to expand...

Me too. I like browsing the forums for build logs and project logs to see other people putting their systems together.

My new 140mm fan should be coming this week which I will mount on the top of the case, and then the 120mm fan I put up there will get moved to the bottom. This will also give me the opportunity to open the case back up and try to tidy up the wiring behind the motherboard.