Safe temps and voltages for an Opteron 170

[Pez D Spencer]

I have an Opteron 170 and will be getting an A8N32-SLI board next week. I had one A8N32 already but the CPU fan header didnt spin the fan right off the bat so I had to RMA it.

Anyway, Im pretty new to overclocking but I've been reading all I can and am getting a pretty firm grip on how it all fits together. My question is about safe temps and voltages for the CPU.

The A8N32 supports voltages up to 1.5625 by default and up to 1.7625 if the Over-Voltage CPU Vcore option is turned on. So what is the maximum voltage that would be safe to run at? If I understand right then overvolting provides the greatest chance of CPU damage and I surely do not want to destroy this CPU. Do you think that I would even get to 1.5 voltage on air cooling?

Also what is the max safe temp with these CPU's? I have a Zalman CNPS9500 heatsink.

Thanks for any help on this.

 

[amt]

max operatiing range as specified by AMD is 65C

 

[Munky]

1.45v should be reasonably safe for a dual core opteron/A64, and the zalman cooler is good enough to keep it below 50C load.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: munky
1.45v should be reasonably safe for a dual core opteron/A64, and the zalman cooler is good enough to keep it below 50C load.

Reasonably safe? No kidding! It should be absolutely safe!

I'd say limit your voltage to under 1.55V, if preferable below 1.5V.

Stock is really low on those chips, like 1.375V, meaning they don't need as much voltage to overclock, so test it out at between 1.4 and 1.45V initially, as more voltage above 1.45V is probably diminishing returns.