AMD's Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition

By Tom's Hardware News Team
published

Compatible Boards Starting At $48

The 5000+ allows you to build an affordable yet powerful computer. Compatible boards using AMD’s 690G chipset or Nvidia’s 6100 chipset can be found for as little as $48.

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Affordable Boards for AM2
ECSAMD690GM-M2$70
FoxconnA690VM2MA-RS2H$69
GigabyteGA-M61SME-S2$48
MSIK9AGM2-L$51
GigabyteGA-MA69VM-S2$59
MSIK9AGM3-FIH$69
MSIK9AG Neo2-Digital$75

You can out together a well-performing basic system with 2 GB of RAM (PQI Turbo PC2-6400U CL5, DDR2-800, ca. $60) for about $240. You don’t even need a dedicated graphics card if your board of choice comes with integrated graphics, which is sufficient for office tasks and even Vista’s Aero Glass user interface. Decoding and playing back HDTV and Blu-ray movies on integrated ATI graphics solutions is also not a problem, since most boards using them already come with an HDCP-compliant HDMI interface.

2 GB of RAM is very affordable these days.

Tom's Hardware News Team
Tom's Hardware News Team

Tom's Hardware's dedicated news crew consists of both freelancers and staff with decades of experience reporting on the latest developments in CPUs, GPUs, super computing, Raspberry Pis and more.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gowens
    what kind of cooling system is needed to overclock to 3.1 Ghz? I'm buying a barebones kit with this CPU but no heatsink/fan.
    Reply
  • Cursedeyes
    this article is very helpful, but my bios lets me increase the cpu voltage in increments of 5 mV up to 600mV . so how much to i out it up in order to equal 1.450 V?
    Reply
  • falchard
    1000 milliVolts = 1 volt

    1450mV is my guess.
    Reply
  • what heatsink fan was used for this? stock X2?
    Reply
  • Koshi
    This article was helpful in making my decision to buy this processor, but I have a problem when overclocking it (first time overclocking). My pheonix award bios on my m2n sli board wont let me increase the cpu voltage past 1.325, and I want to know if there's anyway I can increase it. I can only get to 14.5x multiplier at this voltage.
    Reply
  • Hi,

    Great article. I am new to OC, and have the 5000+ Black Edition and I am running it in an Asus M2N-SLI with a Zerotherm Butterfly CPU cooler. CPU according to HWMonitor, Core 0 is running at about 18C and Core 2 is at about 19 so heat shouldn't be a problem. Memory currently is Patriot 1GB PC2 5300 667mhz but in a couple days I will be adding 4 GB of OCZ SLI Ready Edition Dual Channel DDR2 800 Mhz . My question, is will the 667 Patriot memory that I currently have work if I overclock to 3.0, and would the OCZ 800 be adequate to OC to 3.2 ?

    Second, I've not done this before, from what I can gather here I can just change the multiplier in BIOS without messing with voltages if I don't go beyond 3.1 which would be achived by using a 15.5 multiplier.

    Thanks for the information here and any tips...

    **agroberts@knology.net**
    Reply
  • hellspawnpr
    I have this CPU , been very happy with it so far. I have it at 3.2ghz running smoothly. I put a gigabyte GIGABYTE GH-PDU22-SC EVR Sleeve CPU Cooler only cost 23.00 has my cpu at 32c idle
    Reply
  • Skiscola
    I can only get mine to a 14.5 multiplier I have a M2N-SLI Deluxe MOBO,CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory X2 for 4 GB, Thermaltake CL-P0075 80mm 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink. How can i get it higher without it crashing
    Reply
  • Darkerson
    And to think i passed this one up for a 5200+, for some god awful reasoning at the time. Ah, the good old days!
    Reply