AMD 955 Black Edition Phenom II

[onyros]

Hi guys, great site and forums, my first post

So!

I acquired one of these and coupled with a CoolerMaster V8 and MX2 thermal compound when viewing webpages/doing office work my PC idles at around 40c-43c...

(Ambient temperature is around 22-24c by the way)

This is at stock voltage and clocking (3200mhz)
CMV8 fan spinning at 2000rpm... I also have a Scythe Kama Flex fan capable of 87cfm at full speed... (also 2000rpm)

It's quite noisey at this speeds but aren't my temperatures kind of high ? What do you think ?

Info taken from SpeedFan

Full details:
HDD temp 27c
MB temp 41c
GPU temp 49c
CPU temp 41c
Core temp 43c


Now, I just switched it to Turbo mode (3.7ghz) and gonna let it idle for 10 mins...

Full details after 10mins @ 3712mhz

HDD temp 28c
MB temp 42cc
GPU temp 48c
CPU temp 41c
Core temp 43c


Now considering the overclock shouldn't it go lower?
Also if it can sustain these temperatures on 3.7ghz shouldn't it go lower at 3.2 ?

I'm kind of buffled here

Do you find these temperatures good or do you think there's something wrong here ?

Thanks !
(I'll run 20 mins of Prime95 in both modes and let you know in a subsequent post!)



Also want to add my case is an Apluscase El Diablo (without the sidepanel fan)
For those unfamiliar with it -> Here it is

 

[onyros]

at 3.2ghz after 10mins of Prime95 Small FFTs on all 4 cores:

Core: 50-51c (fluctuates every couple of mins)
CPU: 48c
GPU: 49c
HDD: 28c
MB: 42c



at 3.7ghz after 10mins of Prime95 Small FFTs on all 4 cores:

Core: 52c (fluctuates every couple of mins)
CPU: 50c
GPU: 49c
HDD: 28c
MB: 42c


Should I be happy or should I be reinstalling my CoolerMaster V8?

 

[OvrClkr]

Your post is kind of confusing.... Anyways your temps are fine, as long as you don't hit 60c (load) you have nothing to worry about.....

 

[onyros]

I'm sorry for my confusing post

In short I am saying that I get same temperatures at 3200mhz and at 3700mhz

Anyhow since then I updated my BIOS as well to latest version. Seems that my VCORE was set higher with supplied BIOS!

Using Prime95 again with Small FFTs:

My new results are:

For 3200mhz (stock): Idle - ~36c Prime95 for 5min load - ~45c

For 3712mhz (18x206): Idle - ~39c Prime95 for 5min load - ~52c



I guess nothing will stress the CPU as much as a torture from Prime95 game or application wise meaning I'm safe I suppose

 

[renegeek]

Thoes temp look really good... i see no problems... it all looks normal.

 

[mindless728]

you really should do more than 5min load, go for something like, 8hrs to figure out max temp

 

[onyros]

My max was 1 hour long for Prime95 and still stays at 52c.
I'm going to do an overnight one when I'm done working on PC

 

[onyros]

Bah won't let me edit !

Anyhow,

I just started a small FFT test and put SpeedFan on my autoconfig to see where it will stabilize. I made sure the fans will go 100% if it goes over 55c.


I'll let you know in approx 10-12 hours on how it went

Thanks for your input so far !

 

[OvrClkr]

One thing you have to remember is that when you test for 10 min you really ain't doing much to the CPU.... Try testing for at least 8 hours and then you will get accurate temps....

What is your CPU and NB voltage?

 

[onyros]

NB voltage is set to stock/auto I didn't mess with it.

CPU voltage is reported as 1.392v in CPU-Z and SpeedFan but Asus TurboV says it's 1.45v

I did 18x206 and set ram voltage to 1.9v

I've managed to go up to 4ghz with this voltage but it's not very stable. I'm kind of worried to push voltage further since I don't know the 955 Black Edition's safe VCORE limit (meaning, not to burn my motherboard / CPU etc.).

 

[OvrClkr]

Yea, 1.45v is way to high for 3.7Ghz....

1.392 is normally what the mobo will pull at 3.7Ghz, so in all go by what speedfan is telling you.....

As far as pushing the volts.... Just go by what your temps say and you will find out how far you can go... On my board i can go up to 1.53v before it hits 60c (AIR)....

 

[onyros]

Problem is I had an ASUS M3N and a 955BE... It burned up on me due to VCORE tweaking on my side. I had a 600W PSU at the time. Nothing else got harmed just motherboard + CPU.


Anyhow, I got an ASUS M4N72-E now and another 955BE and also the OCZ Fatal1ty 700W SLI PSU just to make sure everything gets enough power.

I'm also running at 8GB 800mhz ram and a GTS250 1GB...Which I'm going to SLI soon

I'm wondering if the performance gain from 3.7ghz to 4ghz is worth the effort/risk tho ? I see you're at 4ghz so maybe you can enlighten me ?

 

[OvrClkr]

You can try running your CPU @ 4Ghz but don't expect a huge gain in performance... I would rather you run it at 3.7Ghz and make sure your temps stay low..... The temps will tell you if it is worth it or not... If your temps at 3.7Ghz do not exceed 48c then yes go ahead and try 4Ghz, if not then leave your CPU at 3.7Ghz and focus more on the GPU....

Another tip is to have the best cable management possible in your case, you want to make sure all that heat is exit'ing the rear and of course this will help overall temps....

 

[onyros]

Well 2 hours into Prime95 torture and I'm at 48c in CPU sensor of motherboard and 50c at the Core sensor at 3.7ghz

I pretty much have the best cable management I can here. Strong intake fan in front 250mm and strong exhaust of 120mm... Coolermaster V8 on CPU...Heatsinks on all four sticks of RAM and my sidepanel is meshed so airflow is indeed good.

All my cables were passed on right side of the case and streamlined, lock-tied and wrapped in UV piping for effect and management

Anyhow I'll stick to 3.7ghz for now since I can keep it running with fairly silent fan operation at 48-50c when gaming and SLI my GTS250

Also I made another post for my HDD setup i'd be glad if you dropped by and helped there


Thanks for your help guys!

 

[onyros]

Alright guys 11hours of torture in Prime95
At 3712mhz it actually stabilised at 50c at the core !

Think we're safe

 

[OvrClkr]

Do you have a link to your new thread?

 

[onyros]

Here

However I'm kind of wondering if I *REALLY* need a RAID0 setup with 4 disks (or even 2)...

I am still considering SSD however cost to size really puts me off plus some horror stories when using an OS on them


Let me know what you think !

 

[OvrClkr]

It looks like that thread was posted on Tom's/UK's website.....

Anyways your hard drive will not bottleneck you 250's in SLI... I used to have dual 250's in SLi with a single 640Gb drive and it was stupid fast...i would even get high frames on Crysis with some eye-candy... You can get an SSD if you want but don't expect your games to run any faster.. An SSD can speed up your boot and loading times but that is about it..... As far as Raid0 goes I have dual 640's in Raid0 and they are hella fast trust me... I only had to spend 150.00$ for both with free shipping...For dual drives that run faster than a stock raptor I cannot be happier...

 

[onyros]

Hmm wondering if a RAID0 with 4 of my Samsung Spinpoint F1s would be worth it then

Good thing with RAID0 you get full capacity...And disk failure...I don't care, first of all it's a Samsung which is reliable, second of all I'm backing up on external source/online so...

Wonder if my ASUS M4N72-E can handle 4 disks in RAID0 efficiently tho (Nvidia 750a SLI chipset)

 

[OvrClkr]

You really need 4TB's of storage?

 

[onyros]

Don't NEED but if 4 disk RAID 0 is blazing fast, I'm sure I can fill them up. I archive all of my games on my PC and keep a database of my DVDs also

It's also a HTPC since it's hooked on a 27" 1080p LCD so it helps !

 

[OvrClkr]

WoW... that is quite a library.. I have a little over 1TB and I have only used 15% of disk space....Well I am using a 780a Sli chipset and as far as the raid array goes i see no flaws, don't really know anything about the 750a since I have never worked with one....Should be more or less the same...

 

[onyros]

I'm at 1TB and got...120gigs free

 

[pr0phet129]

Hey guys, just a quick query, what kinda scores are average for the 955 on 3d Mark Vantage, im gettin 12600 for the cpu with stock coolin o.c. to 3.6.

oh n also, i struggle to get stability over 3.7Ghz, is this normal or do u recon ma overclockin methods are screwed?



__________________

955 @ 3.7
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO
4GB XMS3 DHX (Dominator Fans)
Saphire 4870 @ 810\1050
1.2 Tb HDD

 

[onyros]

How do you reach 3.7 ?

I used 206x18.5 and 1.392 for VCORE

Also using 1.9v for RAM voltage (my default is 1.8v).

Other than that cooling wise I used a CoolerMaster V8 with MX2 Thermal Compound and I use a Scythe Kama Flex (massive CFM 120mm) fan as exhaust for my temperatures ! If PSU matters, I got an OCZ Fatal1ty 700w SLI approved.

Good luck!

Note that with my previous Asus motherboard (M3N-HD/HDMI) I couldn't go this far and ended up frying it and the CPU.