AMD Phenom II X4 965BE 4.0Ghz Air Cooled - First Time Overclock

[Mandrake4565]

QuantumHC, I feel your best upgrade path is this and to answer a few questions:

1. What are you using the computer for?

2. A single higher end gpu will always be recommended over XFire/Sli due to the inherent issues that sometimes occur with XFire/SLI. I feel your best path would be sell the 7850 and get a 7970.

3. Why are you planning on going XFire, what screen resolutions are you running?

4. For your upgrade path, I would start with the Motherboard. I wouldn't even consider running a Fx 8350 on that Asrock board at anything other then stock clocks, if it will run at all. The MSI 990FXA-GD65 you mentioned, I believe I have seen one person come to this forum with that board and a FX-8350 running on it. I cannot recall whether or not they had any issues overclocking on it. I do know in the past, MSI has had issues with the VRM section of their motherboards. That is why most of us here running these Fx-8/6xxx series processors are not running MSI boards. Once you do replace the board, you can continue to run the 965be on it, go XFire if you choose and then upgrade the processor when you're ready.

5. The PSU you have is fine for your current setup. You could probably get away with a quality 650w PSU the 965be and 2 7850's. Though you will definitely need at least a 750w PSU if you plan on running a 8350 and 2 7850's overclocked. I found out the hard way that I cannot run my 8350 and my GTX 580 at really high overclocks on the 650w psu in my sig.

6. Cooling on a Fx 8350, if overclocking is your goal, how hard you want to push is in direct correlation to how much you will need to spend on cooling. Mild OC's 4.4-4.5 a good high end air will probably do. 4.6-4.7 you may be able to do on a quality AIO water setup. Anything higher you're probably going to need a full custom setup. This will also cause another issue for you. Your case is probably going to be too small for a anything other then a decent Air Heatsink, unless the AIO/custom water is mounted outside.

 

[Zebodog]

Go with the upgraded board and GPU. If you game at 1080p or less, a single card solution will work fine. If you like to game at higher resolutions than SLI/Crossfire might be the way to go.
A caution about Crossfire. Most reports I've seen indicate that micro stutter is still a significant problem with Crossfire; not so much with SLI. I can comment on the smoothness of SLI. If you can find a single card solution go for it. Far less headaches than SLI.

 

[Johan45]

A lot of good points have been raised in the last few posts Q_H_C.
Mandrake mentions the case being small and tight. He couldn't be more right on that note. If you're going with the FX8350 and if you're going to OC it because as Rgone said to see much bebefit over your PII you will need to OC it. So all the statements follwing are if you're OC'ing.

For a case get something like this, not necessarily this one but something that will give you the ability to mount some kind of radiator inside it. The AIO's as Manny mentioned don't mount too easily on the outside since they're all one unit. The H/S is semipermanently attached. Also with the Xfire solution you are going to need alot of breathing room when combined with the FX. case

I would stick with this Sabretooth Mobo r2 but not the GEn 3. It's robust enough to handle the power draw of the FX and the 2 cards attached to it. Has decent spacing of the PCIe slotas so your cards will breathe and it's not an MSI! MOBO

This brings me too the PSU I'd go in the 850 range at minimum, that FX pulls alot more power than people realize and if you catch the OC bug you're gonna need some headroom to push the CPU and GFX at the same time. As Manny learned from personal experience, he tried to OC thr FX with a GTX 580 on his last PSU and it would just cut out on him, mind you thr GTX 580 is about as thirsty as the FX PSU

I stated earlier that if you intend to OC you're going to need some decent equiptment to go with that FX processor. I make these recommendations to save you the buyers remorse of putting it all together and saying to yourself" I should've spent the extra $50 Plus this gives you some room to expand your cooling etc. If you decide to later.

 

[QuantumHackCode]

This machine is being used primarily for gaming. To specify, my main interest is a supreme gaming rig, not an overclocking beast. I considered the xfire for better graphics in the long run, i.e. not having to upgrade it anytime soon. My main goal with my build is to make a machine powerful enough to handle anything on the market at maxed settings and last me several years without a NEED to upgrade. The resolution I typically use on my games is 1600x900 or whatever the max usually is, also I'm using a 42" TV for a monitor.

What got me into overclocking was my 3.4ghz cpu wasn't capable of playing ArmA 3 on maxed settings even though the rest of the machine could handle it. I kicked it up to 4.0ghz and saw an immediate 20+ increase in my fps.

So in my line of thinking, if I had 4.5ghz of processing power, I won't have to worry about a damn thing. A friend of mine has mimicked this build except for his mobo and cpu, he chose the ASRock z77 with an i5. He was capable of running the same game on maxed settings at a higher fps with an oc of 4.2ghz.

My concerns are budget and capability. I have to sacrifice capability in a short term purchase, but I'd rather hold out and get what I really need. Water cooling is out of the question anytime soon, so I'm stuck with air cooling for now.

After absorbing this wealth of knowledge, thank you all btw, I think that if I simply replace with the sabertooth/8350 I should be rock solid until I decide to upgrade my gpu. Which also leads me to ask, will my Cooler Master 212 Evo do the job for cooling? I have 4 120mm fans dedicated to it with a single 160mm for intake.

Currently I'll only have enough to purchase 2 items from all the ones suggested here, and from what I can tell, it should be the mobo/cpu.

 

[Mandrake4565]

This machine is being used primarily for gaming. To specify, my main interest is a supreme gaming rig, not an overclocking beast. I considered the xfire for better graphics in the long run, i.e. not having to upgrade it anytime soon. My main goal with my build is to make a machine powerful enough to handle anything on the market at maxed settings and last me several years without a NEED to upgrade. The resolution I typically use on my games is 1600x900 or whatever the max usually is, also I'm using a 42" TV for a monitor.

At those resolutions you should be able to play most games at high settings with the 7850, if you really feel you need more FPS I'd just sell the 7850 and get a 7950, it will take anything you can throw at it at those resolutions. Is ArmA 3 cpu or gpu based I'm not familiar with the game?

So in my line of thinking, if I had 4.5ghz of processing power, I won't have to worry about a damn thing. A friend of mine has mimicked this build except for his mobo and cpu, he chose the ASRock z77 with an i5. He was capable of running the same game on maxed settings at a higher fps with an oc of 4.2ghz.

There is a problem with that thinking, a 965be will probably not run 4.2 24/7 unless you're really cooling it well. A 4.5 oc on a 8350 is not the same as a 4.5 oc on a I5-2500k/3570k/4670k. If gaming is you main concern, if you choose to upgrade and overclock. An Intel rig may be a little less expensive in the long run. Why I say that, if you go with an Intel rig you will not need a massive Heatsink to overclock it, you could get 4.2-4.5 on an I5 with the CM 212+ you have now. You will also only have to spend $130.00 or so dollars to get a decent motherboard to run/overclock it on. You'll also not need to spend as much on a power supply, you will be able to run an I5 3570k/4670k with a 7950 on a quality 650w PSU no problem, you could even run it on the 500w unit you have now, to an extent.

 

[Johan45]

I'm with mandrake on this one. In the long run it would probably work out better for you to go the intel route. All you need is the mobo and cpu and you'd be rocking.

 

[RGone]

Best thread I think I have read in at least 6 months. When you speak to ONLY pure gaming, the whole scenario changes. Then when you throw an FX-8350 into the mix of cpus, the whole thing gets to heavy duty requirements. I can only imagine what it will look like the first 9590 some user gets his hands on. My hOTTie.

If the OP had not gone with the under-manned Asrock 970 EXT4, the whole conversation would have been different but that cheap foundation is always a come back and bite thing with the FX processor.

There certainly are situations where Intel seems the best route to go. For sure if gaming is the ONLY consideration.

RGone...

 

[Mandrake4565]

Best thread I think I have read in at least 6 months.

Taht's bceuase we smaat

 

[Johan45]

That's why Mr. Clean shaves his head. Less hair = less heat so he can OC his brain just that much more

 

[RGone]

Taht's bceuase we smaat

mE thunken U beez jus bout ratton. Hehehe.

Bobert...

 

[manu2b]

Well, regarding your upgrade OP, you won't see a huge improvement between your Phenom II X4@4GHz and the 8350. You might see no increase at all...

You need to take it to 4.5GHz or more to see the same perf per core, and most games use 4 cores max.

And to take it to 4.5GHz, you need a beefy MoBo like the Sabertooth ($180), and an all-in-one liquid cooling solution like the H100 ($100).

 

[manu2b]

EDIT2: I think I've found the board, the MSI 990FXA-GD65

Bad choice: the FX will downclock in order to preserve the VRM's section.

 

[QuantumHackCode]

So the i5 is better for gaming than the 8350? I know games now are optimized for 4 cores, but what about the future of gaming? That was the idea behind the 8350, I wouldn't have to upgrade it anytime soon.

 

[Johan45]

Well if you're really serious about sticking around with the AMD Start with a good Mobo like the Sabertooth and keep the 965 maybe even upgrade your cooling now to get abit more from it. Then upgrade slowly after that , you know the card then the case sometime ............ stretch it out over a few months.

 

[Mandrake4565]

So the i5 is better for gaming than the 8350? I know games now are optimized for 4 cores, but what about the future of gaming? That was the idea behind the 8350, I wouldn't have to upgrade it anytime soon.

The differences running a GPU based game between an I5 and a 8350 isn't going to be all that dramatic with one card. When you start to add second and third cards it starts to become apparent. The FX 8350 is more marketing hype then anything, people can say they have an 8 core chip. Don't get me wrong I have both an I5 and the 8350 in my signature and it's a great chip. Though when it comes down to brass tacks, you can run and mildly overclock the I5 off less expensive hardware. Unfortunately the Fx 8350 requires a stout motherboard and ridiculous cooling in order to keep it cool. They also use more power when overclocked. It seems as if you are trying to do this set up on a budget. With that in mind, as I stated before I feel the an I5 combo will be less expensive as a total package.

 

[manu2b]

^Agreed!

 

[QuantumHackCode]

Would the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 Socket AM3+ ATX w/ 8350 be a good idea? EDIT: Nevermind, it's still a 970. but I did find a good bundle deal on a sabertooth 990 with the 8350. The only thing that would stand in my way then would be cooling. Would the cooler master evo still be effective enough to run a mild clock? I have 4 120mm fans pulling on it atm.

EDIT2: After some google searching, it appears the hyper 212 evo will do the job up to a 4.5oc with default vcore. It seems like all you have to do to kick the ghz up is increase the multiplier, if thats so, why mess with any other functions? I mean, thats all i really did with my current cpu, all i did was leave the vcore at a 3.8 clock and jump the multiplier up.

EDIT3: Just for ****s and giggles, I kicked my multiplier up to 21, pushing it to 4200mhz. I'm currently about 30mins into Prime95 and I'm actually running cooler than my 4.0 OC, im holding stable at about 56/57c. What the hell??? I'll post more info later after a some more time in this run.

EDIT4: After about 40-ish minutes I noticed a visual anomaly at about 60c, so i immediately shut it down and reverted to the 4.0 oc. I don't know if that was something to worry about or not, but I'm not taking any chances. I simply don't understand what differences my nb vid or vcore make. im not even sure if amd overdrive is the right program i should be using. I tried reading Dolk's guide, but it may as well been written in spanish.

 

[Zebodog]

^^^^^

I'm running 4.6GHz with my 8350 on a Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 and Hyper 212 EVO+ Anything higher than 4.6GHz is going to require better cooling.

There is some merit to increasing the FSB as a method to overclock as well as it can provide better performance than just increasing the multiplier. Obviously increasing FSB frequency also impacts other operating parameters such as HT Link, DRAM speed, etc...

The information in this thread is near gospel when it comes to choosing a motherboard for a high TDP FX processor. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=727263

 

[Johan45]

EDIT: Nevermind, it's still a 970. but I did find a good bundle deal on a sabertooth 990 with the 8350.
I simply don't understand what differences my nb vid or vcore make. im not even sure if amd overdrive is the right program i should be using. I tried reading Dolk's guide, but it may as well been written in spanish.

Make sure the Sabretooth is a R2 but not gen3.
Your OC'ing should be done in the bios for the most part.

 

[EarthDog]

2 x 7850 = Max of 250 watts full out gaming.
Mobo including chipset and other power consumers is roughly 120 watts this includes ram.
Cpu full on, WFO probably about a true 125 watts at a MAX.
Fans and hardrive you show = about 30 watts MAX.

So what is that total based on what I see in your signature?
415 watts. When we used to spec systems all the time we would adjust the power supply watts rating upward by 10 to 20% to account for upgrades later and for the fact that a power supply is only X amount effecient. The better (read more expesive) power supplies are generally more efficient.

So 10% would be an added 41.5 watts to the 415 watts.
So 20% would be an added 83 watts to the 415 watts.

Since the whole schmear rounded up would be a shade less that 500 watts and you have
a Bronze Strider you might be exactly at the break over/out/even point.
RGone...

EDIT:
If I were thinking to move to an FX-8350 you need to add about 100 watts to what the power supply would put out. So about 600 watt g00d power supply in Silver or Gold rated. I have not seen many flat out g00d 600 watt supplies that I remember so I certainly would get a good 650watt one that has very good effeciency rating. The Silver or Gold rating refers to effeciency at X temps.

I would not go FX-8350 unless you want to spend a good bit more to get a good board like an Asus 990FX Sabertooth R 2.0 non-GEN3 so far. And to make moving to FX really worthwhile you will need a really good water cooling setup at a minimum. The mini-loop H100 was the very smallest mini-loop most of us recommended for a max of about 4.6Ghz. You can spend time to tweak a mini-loop and add to it and tweak it and they just do only fair.

That should give you plenty to absorb when thinking to overclock an AMD FX 8 core processor.
END EDIT.

A motherboard uses 120W? Whoa... only in AMD land I guess?? For intel, nobody puts a motheboard over 40-50W and that is overestimating too.

(sorry for the OT)