Why overclock ?

[LTC8K6]

I got my G3258 to 4.8ghz. It was a blast.

Then I realized my i3-4360 still toasted it to a golden brown at stock speed.

 

[rjk44]

I'd be interested in taking it off your hands.

Hi,

Sorry, but, I literally chucked it into big black rubbish bin, (fished out by parents who got up the pole as this sort of waste has to be handled separately at recycling site).
There were two E???? and a Q???? cpu's chucked, selection of mem.modules etc out along with it. I remember thinking, "prob. not even worth advertising on ebay..."
Obviously I was wrong. Thinking about it now, with hindsight, I should have advertised it free+postage perhaps, and the more I think about it, I should have hung onto in case someone asked for it, as you did.
Very short sighted of me, you would have been quite welcome to it.
...hindsight's a wonderful thing !

regards, Richard

 

[rjk44]

...+ FX8320+2x4gb Tactical Ballistix+Kingston KC300 60gb SSD+Seagate Barracuda SATA III 500gb 7200 hd etc.

In case anyone's interested,
...after taking my time to build them into Antec Solo case, so as to route all cables tidily, making sure none were under strain etc.,
the time came to prod the power button, which I did, ...nothing ...no response !
Quickly pulled it all apart and during problem finding, Antec PSU tester "fault" LED came on. Located problem to where a 4pin Molex split off to two small 4 pin connectors, (floppy drive type), ...off to two 90mm case front fans - somehow another Molex was involved and feeding power back to psu, I think ! Quickly double checked all was going to where it should, (ended up with a surplus power splitter - male Molex to 2 small 4 pin plugs !)

So now all is lovely. Tactical Ballistix's SPD chip 1866 XMS timings were not properly set on automatic, had to do half of them myself. Wading through tRC, tRAS etc. references to match them up with some of the silly Labels in Asus's bios memory timings.
Then I noticed that cpu temp. was averaging 38-53degs.C
so Arctic Freezer 7 Pro seemed not up to the job.
Put a new Arctic Freezer 13 on it when it arrived, (not the Pro version with the tiddly little extra fan on the base), and got a rather drastic 10-12degs.C reduction.
HWmonitor logged, (over an hour making it do some hard work), 22-38 degs.C. and CPU fan never went over minimum duty cycle, 60% I think it's set to. Perhaps the pre-applied MX2 thermal paste and/or the extra heatpipes helped. Didn't spot that the pre-applied thermal paste was MX2 till after I'd ordered a 30g tube of >3.5 WmWhateever it's called...(thermal conductivity rating) !!!
I bought the Arctic Freezer 13 after several hours wading through HUGE cooler reviews,
and even Frostytech's review of Freezer 13 Pro didn't convey to me well it would perform. In other words I was not tempted to spend tons of money for a 1 or 2 degree improvement over an already pretty good cooler !!
So now I've got all lovely white Arctic PWM fans, 120mm case rear fan, 2 x 90mm case front blowing over hard disk trays.
The twinkly green LED's that zoom back and forth along the top of the memory modules are very pretty, (wasn't expecting that), though that seems a little redundant inside a case without a see-through side panel !!!

The cpu seems to briefly step itself up to 4ghz now and again, so here's hoping it won't fry itself !

regards, Richard

 

[soccerballtux]

Hi I spent all day yesterday transplanting M3N78/955/4gb ddr2 Ballistix from Antec Solo case into Lian-Li case. After a heart stopping few minutes when it refused to boot, and Antec PSU tester showed "fault," tracked it down to a Molex to small AMP 4 pin adapter lead - to one of two case front fans.
Then, Logitech M305 mouse wouldn't work !
After stabbing around for an hour, penny finally dropped - I've got 2 M305 mouse's (mice !), and I hadn't swapped the nano receivers over, (both plugged into case front USB ports).

So, now about to fit M5A97 EVO into Antec case, (cpu arrived yesterday).
Yesterday, lapped copper base of Arctic cooler 7, (rev-? ...white fan on it), on fine'ish wet and dry paper for perfect flat finish with very fine score marks, (my preference!), ...and it looks GORGEOUS :-

regards, Richard

wow, good work. that must have been scary lol

 

[rjk44]

I must have been getting bored,
...bought a new "Zalman CNPS10X Extreme" hs/fan and just fitted it onto FX8320. (took Arctic Freezer 13 off of it, and put that on Phenom II x4 955). CNPS10X looks lovely but, they put in a trick syringe/tube of thermal paste "ZALMAN - Super thermal grease-ZM-STG2 !"
I'm sure it was a joke 'cause I would have had to have used a rolling pin to roll it out, and cut out a piece to fit !
...and the little bit I squeezed out onto the base of CNPS10X just slid around all over its' shiny nickel plated face. And the tiny little bit I squeezed out, and got rid of with a piece of tissue, somehow got EVERYWHERE, (outside of PC case btw), but, it was like something from a sci-fi horror film !
Never let "ZALMAN - Super thermal grease-ZM-STG2" out of its' tube - you'll NEVER control it ! 🙂

So, as I have a gi-normous 30g tube of Halnziye, I used a little bit of that. So did a really thin layer + small blob in the middle. Less is more with paste, as you know ! I'm sure I read that Hanziye is non conductive, (in case over zealous applications get plastered all over the place, and ooze out and drizzle all over mobo components adjacent to ziff socket - and I've seen a few of those in my time !, but, while spreading a thin layer with finger in latex glove, there looked like thousands of shiny coppery coloured particles in it.
Anyhooo, I only applied a very thin film of it and didn't over do it.
Cleaned off Feezer 13's MX4 and did same.
Zalman could have mentioned, (in CNPS10X Extreme's little booklet), that the "paddle switch" that cycles unit through Auto-low/mid/full speed/Manual settings, is remembered by the thing during pwr off ! Had to check that for myself.
Very pleased with how it's all gone.
Now I've got a hankering to put a heatsink on old M3N78's Mosfet's !!

regards, Richard

 

[rjk44]

First of all, in case anyone's still in here, and in just in case I don't get around to making a key
point until later on, that could be missed if someone is just casting a quick eye over this post, I
have a few questions to do with the overclocking facilities on my Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 with a FX-8320
+ 2x4gb Tactical Ballistix on it, (which I've fiddled with), but, am NOT interested in pushing
board/cpu/ram to absolute limits.

However, I couldn't resist running the "OC Tuner" in BIOs to see what it would do. I'll sprinkle in
my few Q's below :-

In BIOS | "AI Tweaker" page at the top, it lists 5 current speed/frequencies in yellow :-

Current CPU Speed : 3820Mhz
Target CPU Speed : 3780Mhz
Current Memory Frequency : 1439Mhz
Current NB Frequency : 2376Mhz
Current HT Link Speed : 2376Mhz

Ai Overclock Tuner : Manual
CPU Ratio : Auto
AMD Turbo CORE technology : Auto
CPU Bus Frequency : 216
PCIE Frequency : 100
Memory Frequency : DDR3-1439Mhz
(first Q. or two - why are there peculiar mem. freqs. on the fly-out for this setting e.g.
864,1151,1439,1728,2015,2303 and 2592 Mhz, when I have ddr3-1866 modules ?) ...also noticed that
bios "DRAM Timing control" has gone to SPD standard | Jedec timings, and dropped the XMS timings
that I so laboriously put in !

The bios "monitor" page shows cpu at 21degs.C. and board is 21degs.C.
and HW Monitor in W8 shows :-
CPU (internal sensor ?) 22degs.C. (after cores have stepped down to 1517Mhz (1507min / 3812max btw)
...put Zalman cnps10X Extreme on it several days ago, set speed range to red LED - (should it ever
need to go that fast.).

Prime95 torture test pushes max. temp. to 46-47degs.C

So, would it be best to put it back to stock settings so as not to stress it at all beyond stock ?
Considering that the core boost feature seems to zoom it up to 4ghz in short bursts, does that mean that, that feature will not shortens its' life ?

any thoughts appreciated,

regards, Richard

 

[DrMrLordX]

You aren't pushing the chip very hard. That being said, you could probably get your temps down if you did your overclocking by hand. OC Tuner and other forms of automatic overclocking tend to use more voltage than necessary for a given clockspeed.

 

[rjk44]

Since letting Asus OC tuner do it's own thing again, Prime95 torture test (max heat) pushes cpu temp. from 22degs.C. idling/1512mhz all cores, to 46-47 @ 3792mhz on all cores. (I have max.duty.cycle 90% for cpu fan set at 46degs.C) ...so cpu fan starts to yo-yo between 1440 and 2064 rpms 🙂
...so as cnps10x Extreme seems to easily keep cpu temp below 47 I think I'll leave it at that.
Normal cpu usage, it stays at around 22-24 degs.C.

regards, Richard

 

[DrMrLordX]

Hey, whatever floats yer boat. Enjoy!