Unlocking 4th Core.. help

[Hecktor]

Hi, just finished building my first computer and so far things went off without a hitch. *knock on wood*

Everything is up and running and things look beautiful on my new 24" Samsung. However... I do feel like I could get a bit more out of my system, I don't want to do anything too drastic yet. For now I'd be happy trying to unlock the fourth core (and L3 cache?) Before I write my system specs I'll admit pretty much everything in my system is stock cooling so hopefully that doesn't immediately ruin my chances of having a stable unlocking.

So far the only test I ran was Prime95 blend test for a half hour, my CPU temp got to 47C.

Antec 902
Gigabyte 890FX UD5
Athlon II x3 445 Rana
G.Skill DDR3 1600 4GB
Gigabyte 5850OC

Forgive a newb, I installed the motherboard chipset driver... does that mean I've updated the BIOS? It's things like that you'll have to explain to me when you reply to this post when you refer to doing anything in BIOS heh. So far I checked around and saw there were options for CPU Unlocking and a couple underneath which seemed to pertain to unlocking your CPU but it didn't allow me to enter values it seemed to just change from disabled to enabled or auto... I was about to try and check CPUZ to see if that would confirm deny whether I changed the number of cores. However, since I never have done this before and really didn't manage to find a single tutorial that went over unlocking the core with my mobo I thought I'd just ask first.

 

[Hecktor]

Also the PSU is a Kingwin 850W Modular.

I'm sure most people are thinking this guy should search for the answer... and there seems to be the same question I'm asking even on this first page. But most threads have the exact same conversation it seems. Someone says they've unlocked their core or L3 cache, then someone else talks about the chip being deneb or propus and then people get into changing voltage etc.

No one ever mentions how to actually unlock the cores. I'm sure it's simple as changing a single setting but I'd just like to get confirmation before I try it.

 

[Hecktor]

I seem to be making some headway. I used EasyTune6's "CoreBoost" to unlock the fourth core.

However, now CoreTemp won't read my temperature at all (it has my chip as a athlon ii x4 propus), while cpuz and easytune have my chip as phenom ii x4 b45.

EasyTune reads the temp as 34C. I think that's a 12 degree jump though from when it was x3 (at idle). Any tests in particular that display the gains you are receiving from the two different core settings?

 

[Hecktor]

Damnit. My computer was acting fussy and turned on but the screen jumped between inputs and didn't do anything so I googled how to fix it on the other computer and think I acted before thinking and hit clear cmos and it worked... computer booted up again... but now Windows thinks my oem version of Win7 isn't genuine. Going to call and see if I can get it worked out...

This thread should be titled adventures of a noob.

 

[Hecktor]

The customer service dude was a noob too. Noticed the date was last Christmas changed it to the current date and it validated my key just fine. Weird.

 

[nielnield]

lol

 

[spaniel53]

haha all that happened in this thread is a kid talked to himself for an hour and a half. LOL.

 

[chrisiomuk]

I only know how to unlock on the Asus 8 series chipset boards, you press 4 on startup, thats it, does the rest itself, even reverts if unstable without CMOS reset. Not sure on Gigabytes though. Wasn't much help I know sorry.