Power Consumption: Overclocking To 3.5 And 4.0 GHz
AMD FX-8370E At 3.5 GHz
The first step in our exploration is increasing the FX-8370E’s frequency by just 200 MHz. All of the basic BIOS settings are left alone otherwise.
Core Voltage
The core voltage curve is now smooth. Also, it drops to 1.14 V with a Vcore setting of 1.1850 V manually set in the firmware.
Power Consumption
Power draw measured directly from the PSU is 78 W, representing a meager 3 W increase. This proves two things. First, the motherboard’s automatic regulation isn't well-optimized, since all other settings are the same as they were during our stock 3.3 GHz testing. Second, this CPU is a lot more efficient than its predecessors.
Temperatures
The temperatures don’t rise in spite of the higher clock frequency, which is probably due to the lower core voltage.
The AMD FX-8370E remains easy to cool at 3.5 GHz. A sub-$20 cooler should suffice.
AMD FX-8370E At 4.0 GHz
Let’s take a big step up and push the FX-8370E all the way to an even 4.0 GHz.
Core Voltage (Vcore)
An average of 1.17 V is good enough for stable operation, and we had to change the BIOS setting to 1.2125 V to achieve it. The curve continues to look very smooth.
Power Consumption
We measure 90 W at the appropriate rail, which should work out to somewhere between 80 and 82 W for the CPU alone, once the losses due to the voltage regulator are subtracted. Nice!
Temperatures
The thermal readings remain in a range that could be handled by AMD's reference cooler without forcing its fan to spin uncomfortably fast. Our third-party cooler's heat pipe only climbs to 35 degrees Celsius.
The FX-8370E can be overclocked stably with a minor voltage increase. It stays well below its official TDP of 95 W, even at 4 GHz. If relatively mainstream performance is acceptable, you can get it from this economical CPU that's easy to keep cool. Still, we can't ignore the fact that lower power consumption is enabled by a reduced clock rate compared to AMD's higher-end models.
