Change AMD to Intel?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
S

shkaa887

Reputable
Jul 30, 2014
16
0
4,510
Hello!

I currently have a recent custom-built machine that has an AMD FX8350 CPU and a Sabertooth 990FX mobo, but it runs hot....and I mean very hot. I'm a gamer and I'm hitting temps of about 68C/70C sometimes, and I'm a little concerned. I've been thinking about this for a while, and my CPU currently idles with Chrome open at about 37C, sometimes 41/41C as it's quite hot here, even with the new Shadow Rock 2 cooling fan I bought the other day :??:

I've been considering sending back these parts under warranty and switching to Intel. I know I'd have to swap out the motherboard and I was looking at ASRock Z77 mobo and an intel i5 or perhaps i7 if I can stretch the money I get back from trading in the other parts. I've checked all the rest of my parts compatibility and they all work with the new parts no problem.
My questions are:

    Is this a good swap-over?

    How difficult is it to change over from AMD to Intel? As in what would I need to do?
    Is my current setup running too hot in the first place? I know that AMD runs hotter, but how hot?

    Can anyone recommend anything else I can do aside from swapping the parts?

Any help you can give would be much appreciated! Thanks! :)
 
Solution
DHFF
well you have what seems to be a fairly impressive cooler. I have never used it myself but from the design and specs it should be doing a fine Job. I have no idea what the fans are like so all I could do is suggest trying a Noctua fan on the cooler, Noctua is known not only for quiet fans but also fans that have awesome static pressure which is what you want in a cpu cooler fan, especially with a heat sink that massive :)

As to thermal paste, Artic silver is a household name, my preference is MX-2, MX-4 is a notch better but more troublesome to work with. When applying the paste just put a tiny drop in the centerr and let the pressure from the heat sink do the rest. The urge to put more on is great and for years I applied too much...
Sort by date Sort by votes
You should be concerned. Those temps seem high under gaming loads. Did you properly install thermal paste when you put the new cooler on? You could get some artic silver 5 and reinstall the heat sink again and see if the temps come down. I know those chips run hot but I did not think that hot. You may need to try another 3rd party cooler.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
How long has it been since your purchase? Some stores won't give a refund after 15 or 30 days. If you can get a refund then yes it would be a good idea to switch to intel but not with that motherboard you're looking at.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/x874Bm
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/x874Bm/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($234.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $374.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-30 14:05 EDT-0400

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Answering your questions:

Is this a good swap-over?

Sure, if you're willing to pay the extra money. It'll do better in gaming by a little bit.

How difficult is it to change over from AMD to Intel? As in what would I need to do?

Changing it all is just practically rebuilding it slight, swap out the motherboard and cpu mostly.

Is my current setup running too hot in the first place? I know that AMD runs hotter, but how hot?

AMD CPUs shouldn't run higher than 62C I believe. The fact that you're hitting ~70C is a bit worrisome. What cooler are you using and are you overclocking?

Can anyone recommend anything else I can do aside from swapping the parts?

Reseat heatsink like someone said. Or if you have the stock cooler, get an aftermarket cooler. Check voltages through CPU-Z or something and make sure its not in a ridiculous number. Stock vCore should be ~1.35v. +/- .03 or so (at least with my motherboard)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I admit I have little experience with recent AMD processors, but is 70°C really that high for an FX-8350? I guess it seems toward the higher side but its got 125 watts of heat to dissipate. Seems weird to me if its less tolerant of heat than an 84-watt Core i5.

Don't invest in a Z77 platform now, that's last generation and usually no cheaper than something current. If you're buying brand new Intel hardware, go with either a H97 or Z97 motherboard and a Core i5-4690 (-4690K with Z97 if you want to overclock). If it were me, I'd probably hang on to what you have until we know more about the Broadwell launch.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
that temp is on higher side....but it will probably handle it....Are you throttling at all? if not and it doesn't sound like you were....don't worry about it... any higher than that you probably would start seeing some noticeable throttling maybe...

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Its very unlikely the store will swap you out. many places will only give you an exact exchange for defective items on things like CPUs.
There are steps you can take to lower your heat. Check the voltage, make sure you don't have any Turbo or pre overclock settings in your Bios. If you go into the Bios settings, most give you preset profiles, select one that says Eco or something similar, this will lower the overall settings for the chip. there are also ways to lower the voltage ever so slightly, even a minor adjustment could give you huge drops in temperature.

As others have pointed out, IF you are using a stock cooler it might not be able to handle your chip. AMD's current generation of chips are heat monsters and the little 70mm cube of tin that the company gives you is not really up to the task. A big cooler like the Cooler master 212 is one option if you have the space, There are also closed loop water coolers to consider.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Stock vCore appears to be running at 1.368V when I'm idling, would that go up or stay relatively stable whilst gaming? I might have something setup wrong in the BIOS I did very little BIOS configuration when piecing it together...

No signs of throttling that I can see.

PSU is a CX750M (which I was told would be more than adequate). I've got two fans in the front, one on the heatsink and one on the back - airflow is from front to back of the machine. CPU cooler is a shadowRock 2 I believe. Case is a Corsair Graphite 230T.

I'm not overclocking no, which is mainly why I was concerned. I haven't got any spare thermal paste so I'll pick some up and then try refitting the heat sink later today and then I'll report back when I have some new temperatures. Thanks guys!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Get a better heatsink....or purchase some new/better thermal paste Arctic silver 5 etc and put some fresh paste on.....try undervolting some more too...you can easily lower your temps...you are not that high really.... add/get some better case fans/more airflow too wouldn't hurt...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I suggest manually going into the bios and double checking to make sure the vCore is actually on 1.35v. If it isn't and it's giving you like +50mV or some stuff like that then go down a notch and test for stability. Most of the time my 8350 sits around 1.32 when idling and I'm using an ASRock 970 extreme3. I don't think it's your PSU, though it is a lower tier PSU, it shouldn't be the problem. Your cpu cooler should be more than enough to get rid of the heat especially if you're not overclocking. It should be able to support the cpu even with a bit of a voltage bump. Like some others suggested before, you could also try reseating your heatsink and reapplying the thermal paste.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
How do I undervolt? I've looked in the BIOS and I have two modes, there was "Offset" or "Manual" however Offset doesn't allow me to lower the voltages and nor does Manual...any help?

Also I built the machine back in May so it's not even that old. Last thing I want to do is damage components this early on 🙁

I'll try thermal paste if the undervolting doesn't work.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You should be able to use either......said you were running at 1.368v? try 1.35....just keep going till you see lag/stutter/lock up etc you will know haha...... use offset to a value for cool@quiet/reduce clocks/Voltage in idle/low power states etc....
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
If I were you, I would try fixing the heatsink before undervolting.

Is it the stock heatsink?

If yes, and you don't plan on overclocking much, get yourself the coolermaster 212 evo, use the stuff that comes with it.

How do you normally apply the paste? Too much paste causes heat issues.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
well you have what seems to be a fairly impressive cooler. I have never used it myself but from the design and specs it should be doing a fine Job. I have no idea what the fans are like so all I could do is suggest trying a Noctua fan on the cooler, Noctua is known not only for quiet fans but also fans that have awesome static pressure which is what you want in a cpu cooler fan, especially with a heat sink that massive :)

As to thermal paste, Artic silver is a household name, my preference is MX-2, MX-4 is a notch better but more troublesome to work with. When applying the paste just put a tiny drop in the centerr and let the pressure from the heat sink do the rest. The urge to put more on is great and for years I applied too much. One time I dropped 10c just by using less paste.

If its still off the charts hot, you can try undevolting. it wont hurt the cpu, worst thing that can happen is the system hanging from too little voltage so drop it slowly. try dropping it 0.01 at a time until the temps are where you want them. with an FX8350 I probably wouldn't go below 1.3V

EDIT: If you don't know where to change this, boot to your BIOS and click on the AI Tuner tab then scroll down until you see "CPU& MB voltage" set it to manual then the setting directly below that should be the field to directly manipulate the CPU voltage.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
I attempted to undervolt and when I lowered the voltage to 1.31V I reset and got a black screen on startup - an interesting result of this though is that when I reset (held the power button as nothing was happening, bad move I know) I had an error flash up on the new startup saying that "Overclocking has failed" at the bottom of a chunk of text. Does this mean my machine is overclocked? I'm almost certain it isn't supposed to be!

I ran through the BIOS one more time, set the CPU voltage back to auto, and tweaked a few of the things that mentioned overclocked settings that were set to 'Auto' instead of 'Disabled'. Does this mean that perhaps my machine was overclocked without me knowing? I very much doubt this as I built it from scratch myself and did no sort of overclocking whatsoever.

My CPU idle temp after playing in the BIOS is now 38C (one degree higher than previously 🙁 ) so I'm a little lost. Are people still betting that reapplying thermal paste and reaffixing the heat sink is the way to go?

Thanks!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Your machine interprets any change to voltage or multiplier settings as overclocking even if you are lowering those amounts, all it knows is that the settings were altered so it assumes you were overclocking as under clocking is not typical.

you might have black screened because you had too little voltage. Try starting at your original voltage and going one step down. then if that works, go one more step and test it until you have a temp you can live with.

you can also try lowering the multiplier slightly, that will lower the stress on the system and lower your temps.

and if you are sure you set everything correctly the first time you set the heat sink then I guess you dont have to bother but if you used more then a drop of paste then you might want to try using less. having too much paste is the usual culprit when it comes to overheating.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom