AMD Phenom II 965 Be Stock Cooler Max Speed

[HDN]

I'm in the process of a minor overclock to my Phenom 965 BE, and I have a stock cooler right now. I hear that it's a good cooler, but it gets noisy at higher speeds.

However, through HWInfo, I find that the stock cooler speed never breaks 3100 RPMs. I've read posts saying that the fan can hit at least 6000 RPM, but gets noisy (that's not a concern of mine). I'd like to get some more air flowing on my processor so I can adequately cool the CPU while I'm waiting to upgrade my mobo and cooler.

So what could be limiting my fan's speed?

Specs:
AMD Phenom II 965 BE @ 3.4 GHz
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-m68MT-S2P Micro ATX
RAM: GSkill Ripjaws DDR3, 2 x 4 GB
OCZ 600W PSU
MSI/NVidia Twin Frozr GTX 260

Cool 'n' Quiet is enabled, as well as Smart Fan.

In addition, can anyone recommend an ATX mobo that's well-suited for running this processor at an overclock, as well as a cooler to go with it?

EDIT: I guess a companion question would be: Should the fan really be spinning past 3100 RPM?

 

[laviniuc]

yes. i had one too and it got to 6000rpm. it was horribly loud. try to set it to max in bios (disable smartfan). cool and quiet will throttle the cpu to 800mhz when on idle and on idle it will stick to about 2000-3000rpm to keep it cool.

personal suggestion... i undervolted mine and kept it at 40 C under load without overclock. and with the fan not so loud. eventually i got a vertical cooler for it and i can't begin to express how happy i was.

it;s one of the best cpus i had btw. really like it even now.

 

[HDN]

I did drop Vcore down to about 1.35 from the 1.475 the mobo put it at. That dropped my temperatures from about 59 degrees C to no more than 51 while playing MechWarrior Online (a CPU-heavy game right now). I figured that the board was keeping my CPU from going above 60, the temperatures have never gone over 59.5, though my understanding is that the 965's max safe temperature is 62 degrees C.

In addition to dropping the Vcore, I also boosted the multiplier to 17.5, so I'm running at about 3.5 GHz, and it seems pretty stable. However, when I bump it up to 3.6 GHz, I run into major stability issues, blue screening while having MWO and a browser open. I figure this is because the Vcore is too low for that speed, but I'm afraid if I push the Vcore back up to around 1.4 volts, I'll run into cooling issues at that speed (not very happy that my CPU was near 60 degrees while playing MWO, would be more comfortable if the temperatures were 56 and below).

So, I'm hoping there's a way I can squeeze more speed out of my CPU fan so that it'll cool better while I'm trying to find a replacement mobo and cooler. So you're saying that disabling SmartFan and Cool 'n' Quiet would do the trick?

 

[laviniuc]

no, it will make it even worse. by forcing the freq at 3.5 and the fan speed to max. i just remembered there's also a switch between pwm and dc on the bios for the fan. try it too. eventually you can force it to 6000. but it's unbearable. i suggest you do this just to test out that everything is fine in case you're worried about the 3100rpm.

what you should do is to drop the overclock the speed increase isn't so great anyway and just drop the vcore as much as possible and leave cool and quiet and smartfan on until you get an after market cooler. that's what i did to make it bearable. (granted, i was having airflow issues in the case too)

 

[HDN]

Fair enough. I think I'll return my CPU to stock clocks and just undervolt for now.

So the second part of the question: Can anyone recommend a good ATX motherboard and CPU cooler for my two year-old 965? I prefer an air-cooled solution, as opposed to water cooling.

 

[schmuckley]

Crosshair V Formula. +
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835214023&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-CPU+Cooling-_-Enermax-_-35214023

M5a99x is OK, too...m4a89gtd-pro..Crosshair 4..Ta-890-990FXE.

 

[HDN]

I'll take a look at those. Thanks!