The Little Athlon II that could :)

[Chrisslowness]

Hi new to the forum, well not really, I probably ha dan account when I overclocked my Pentium 3 600MHZ 100FSB to 150FSB, 900MHz....but that is another story.

My current system is below, Basically I am a purchasing manager where I work and I jumped on a deal where someone ordered a bunch of parts from Newegg and chose NOT to do combo deals, so for each of his parts, I ordered mind accordingly and here is what I ended up with

I have a few quiestions though as far as how far I can push this, and how. CPU-Z image is shown.


Basically I unlocked the Athlon, and its running fine actually Pime 95 is running as I type this at full load.

How should I test it further? At full load I am hitting 54C according to ASUS PC Probe which is pretty good I take it. From here, what should I up to test this bad boy?

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Motherboard: ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 AM3
Processor: AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana Unlocked to Phenom II X4 B45 at 3.48GHz (225FSB)
RAM: OCZ Gold 6GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 OCZ3G2000LV6GK
Video Card: ASUS CuCore Series EAH5770 Cucore/G/2DI/1GD5 Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Hard Drives: (3) Western Digital Caviar Black WD6402AAEX 640GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache
SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" – RAID5
Power Supply: CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-950TX 950W
Cooler: Thermaltake SpinQ CL-P0466
Case: Thermaltake Element V Black Edition VL200K1W2Z
Other: Logitech G35 Keyboard, G19 Headphones, G518 Mouse




PS: I cannot figure out how to edit my forum signature, can someone PM me on that please?

 

[trents]

Here ya go!

 

[trents]

Your HT Link speed at 2400 is way too high! That will probably give you instability under stress. Keep it between 1800-2000. Also, can you give us pics of CPU-z tabs "Memory" and "SPD". Please crop your pics so we see only the image and not the white background. The Windows 7 "Snipping Tool" has a built in cropper.

 

[Chrisslowness]

I dont have permissions to update my sig, that is why I couldnt find it LOL

 

[Chrisslowness]

OK this should be a little better, sorry about that guys. Thanks for the help, I will make changes accordingly.

 

[trents]

I dont have permissions to update my sig, that is why I couldnt find it LOL

Huh! Didn't know you had to have permission. Try this approach:

Under "Reviews" click on "user CP". A menu appears on the left hand side of the desktop. Under "Settings & Options" choose "Edit Signature".

 

[Trap05]

Also holy overkill on the power supply

 

[trents]

Does Asus PC Probe read core temps or CPU temps? Please run Prime95 blend for at least 10 min. with HWMonitor open and post pics. HWmonitor gives both CPU and core temps. Core temps are the critical ones and a max of mid 50s C is what most people around her recommend. Instability tends to set in after that when overclocked. Core temps and CPU temps can differ by 10+ C so if the 54c temp you quote is CPU temp we need to know what the core temps are to answer your question.

Note: CPU temps are taken from a sensor embedded in the CPU socket below the processor. Core temps are measured from the processor die itself.

 

[Chrisslowness]

Huh! Didn't know you had to have permission. Try this approach:

Under "Reviews" click on "user CP". A menu appears on the left hand side of the desktop. Under "Settings & Options" choose "Edit Signature".

Dont have the sig option, weird

 

[Chrisslowness]

Also holy overkill on the power supply

I know but it was the only one available for the combo deal so I took it, better safe than sorry I guess LOL

 

[trents]

Dont have the sig option, weird

Moderator, can you help here?

 

[Chrisslowness]

Does Asus PC Probe read core temps or CPU temps? Please run Prime95 blend for at least 10 min. with HWMonitor open and post pics. HWmonitor gives both CPU and core temps. Core temps are the critical ones and a max of mid 50s C is what most people around her recommend. Instability tends to set in after that when overclocked. Core temps and CPU temps can differ by 10+ C so if the 54c temp you quote is CPU temp we need to know what the core temps are to answer your question.

Note: CPU temps are taken from a sensor embedded in the CPU socket below the processor. Core temps are measured from the processor die itself.

Here goes, ran for a while:

 

[trents]

Several things:
1. Could you downsize those pics so we don't have to pan for side to side to see them? I use a handy freeware program called "PixResizer" for this.
2. Your core temps and your CPU temps are practically identical which may may not be trustworthy. Not sure if your were aware that when cores are unlocked, typically the core temp sensing function is lost. Your's is actually showing up but not sure how far I would trust it. However, since the CPU temp and core temps are so close on your system maybe its believable. One thing that would be smart is to remove the "unlock", put it back to an X3 and run the stress test again to check for temps. That way we would have a reliable indicator of the differential between core temps and CPU temp.
3. Your vcore is quite high at 1.536. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable with my vcore running that high. It will likely significantly shorten the life of the CPU. Is it necessary to run it that high to get the fourth core to unlock? If nothing else, with the vcore that high it is jacking up your core temps so that you really don't have anymore headroom from a temp standpoint to overclock any further.

By the way, to get a good idea of what max core/cpu temps will be it is handy to know that running Prime95 for 10 min. will get you within about 2C of what they would be after a longer run. However, to establish true stability of your overclock settings you would need to run a longer Prime test, at least 1 hr.

 

[CompuTamer]

You can't update your sig until you've had an account for a few days. It's an Anti spam measure that was put in. We had some sig spammers trying to advertise with their sig.

As for the topic at hand, i don't know a thing about AMD chips

 

[QuietIce]

(back) to OCF!


Those temps don't look so good, though they don't surprise me. The Spin-Q is pretty old and was never built to handle a quad processor. For something reasonably priced that works good take a look at the Hyper 212 Plus (and don't forget the "Plus") or the Sunbeam CCT 120mm (yea, the rebates are back!). If you'd like better performing, higher priced options we've got those, too, just ask.

In the mean time, does your vCore need to be that high for that overclock? Where is your cpuNB voltage set?

To go higher you'll need to decrease the HT Link (to maybe 7X), cpuNB speed down to 9X, and your RAM needs to come down another notch as well if you'll be pushing the clock higher. At this point, though, your temps will start getting in the way. I'm not sure how much farther you can go without a better CPU heatsink.

You can't update your sig until you've had an account for a few days. It's an Anti spam measure that was put in. We had some sig spammers trying to advertise with their sig.

I forgot we had done that - thanks for the reminder!

 

[Chrisslowness]

OK how is this now?

 

[trents]

Temps are much better and I'm much more comfortable with the vcore at 1.426. I would still recommend lower your HT Link speed to 1800-2000 mhz. You will not notice any performance drop and it will prevent instability.

From the pics, it looks like you didn't run Prime95 for more than one minute. Am I misinterpreting this?

Thanks for working on pic size. Much better but almost too small to read on my 19" monitor.

Looks like the moderator lifted the Sig lock hold for you.

 

[QuietIce]

The temps are better but your HT Link speed is still very, very high. Without the Memory tab I can't comment on other speeds ...

To go higher you'll need to decrease the HT Link (to maybe 7X), cpuNB speed down to 9X, and your RAM needs to come down another notch as well if you'll be pushing the clock higher.

 

[Chrisslowness]

The temps are better but your HT Link speed is still very, very high. Without the Memory tab I can't comment on other speeds ...

OK here is the latest, this is with auto overlocking set to 10%, not sure where to make the changes to match what you're asking for, I tried and for some reason the system stopped booting and reverted back to stock to try again....standard OC failure.

So from this screen shot blow, ran Prime95 for 6 hours, what to do next?

 

[QuietIce]

At this point you're more or less overclocking an X4. Have you read through the Phenom II Guide yet ...?

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023