Phenom II x4 965 125W mother board issues

[mephage]

I have a Phenom II x4 965 BE 125W that is in a mobo that only supports CPUs up to 95W (M4A78LT-M LE). It has been running fine for a year but that is probably because it has been sitting idle as a linux server.

The CPU will now be under heavy load more often and I need to somehow ensure that the CPU never goes over 95W.

I can enable or disable all 3/4 cores which means I can literally turn the CPU in to a Single, Dual, Tri or Quad Core. Will this lower the TDP to below 95W? Or is there another measure that I need to take.

I did find this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/312198-28-underclocking-reduce

What would be better, lowering the number of cores or the Voltage?

 

[Baralis]

I would first try to undervolt the CPU to the lowest stable (under stress test). If that does not lower it enough I would disable a core.

 

[truegenius]

use pcwizard and cpuz
whenever you change clock or voltage or enable dissable cores these softwares can tell you the tdp limit of the cpu
also some 125w rated cpu are infact around 115w use pcwizard to check this
also you can use this link (extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp) to check how much clock is needed to run this cpu at 95w on this board

also boards can tolerate 10-20% more tdp than recomended

 

[esrever]

try it under a stress test like prime95, if it runs, it will be fine.

if it won't run you will get a bsod because of insufficient voltage.

 

[guskline]

I have this Asus mb in the classifieds for sale. AM3 MB that supports up to 140wattCPU and runs solid.
ASUS M4A77TD AM3 Includes Original box, backplate and driver disc $50 shipped.

 

[mephage]

Thanks for the help.

In the BIOS settings, under Jumperfree Configuration, I'm trying to lower the Voltage, however no matter what I do, the CPU Voltage setting remains at 'Auto' as if it is unchangeable. This said, in the description it lists the options such as Standard, Min, Max and also mentions using +/- to increase/decrease by increments of 0.06V. Neither using +/-, typing an option or entering a value seems to change the Voltage.

 

[truegenius]

if you cannot change voltage then you can downclock to 2.8ghz

have you tried pcwizard, its free

 

[mephage]

I managed to adjust the CPU Vcore Voltage in the BIOS. I had to use + on the numpad to make it work, rather than using the + and - keys beside the '9' key.

I took it down to 1.28V in the BIOS settings but the actual Voltage seems to be between 1.17V and 1.20V which is fine. I also underclocked to 3200Mhz. I stress tested the CPU using 'stress' as I'm running Linux. Seems to be working well.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[mephage]

Best answer selected by mephage.