G41M-ES2L mATX - E5450 Xeon (771MOD) - 4GB DDR2 - Upgrade Puzzle

[hBarcellos]

Hello all,

Wanted to share some concerns I'm facing when considering an upgrade for my elder's son Gaming PC.

Some time ago I took an old Gigabyte G41M-ES2L (which I used for a Hackintosh), 4GB (2x2GB Sticks), bought a cheap Xeon e5450, modded it with the special 771 to 775 sticker and bought a Gigabyte GF 660.

Nice Aerocool mATX case, fitted an old Cooler Master V8 and... = Kid happy!

Then GTA 5 came out. Everything seems to be fine, but, after a while game seems to start loosing some fps. To me, smells like some good & old memory leaks.

Well, the point is: Considering $$$ is an important issue (maybe you guys heard, Brazilian currency is going down hill), what should I do?
- I cant find a good mATX board with 4 slots of DDR2 memory (that can hold the Xeon)
- I cant find 4GB DDR2 Sticks (only ECC memory)
- I cant find a good mATX 775 board with DDR3 slots
I was considering an upgrade to AMD (AM3+ right?) (don't use AMD since my good and old days of Barton Mobile), but when I check this board:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html

Looks like the Xeon (which is similar to a Q9550) is already at the 4th layer...

So, TOMS Hardware community: What should I do???

BR,

 

[DonkeyOatie]

Could the power delivery on your motherboard be overheating from the intense stress from gaming (for which it is not really intended)?

 

[hBarcellos]

Could the power delivery on your motherboard be overheating from the intense stress from gaming (for which it is not really intended)?

You mean not enough power from the PSU?

About heat, I really don't believe that can be the problem as we're using an Aerocool XPredator Cube and the G41M has been modded to fit an additional fan on the NB. I also added an extra 120mm blower in the back. Processor runs on Gelid Extreme and a Cooler Master V8.

Do you know how can I go deeper on that investigation? HWMonitor shows 50c. Strangely its always @ 50c. Doesn't really matter if its @ full load or @ idle.
@ Bios, it shows way less than that. ˜30c.

 

[DonkeyOatie]

No. The power delivery components on the motherboard are overheating and throttling your CPU. The motherboard, not the CPU.

 

[hBarcellos]

No. The power delivery components on the motherboard are overheating and throttling your CPU. The motherboard, not the CPU.

Hmmm, how can I check that?

 

[DonkeyOatie]

Run with the case open and/or temporarily use a zip tie to move a case fan to blow on the VRMs, the components between the CPU socket and the I/O shield at the rear.

It might also be something else, but it's a cheap check to see. Memory leakage would be an OS/application issue and should have been there from the start.

 

[hBarcellos]

In the end EVERYTHING was extremely cool. The case is really well ventilated. As I said before lots of fans in the right configuration. VRMs were also cool.
temperatures on HWMonitor (51c) are wrong probably, as BIOS shows ~30 and the Cooler Master V8 feels like 30s.

I found a possible problem. The disk is an old 250GB hdd and we were using Windows 10 on this machine (Home Version). From time to time, CPU usage was going up to 100% due to the crappy Windows Defender. On this version we can only disable it temporarily.

Buying an SSD and installing Windows 7 64 would fix the problem?

BR,

 

[DonkeyOatie]

With the mods and older hardware, you've kind of gotten off the edge of the map. I don't know. If it's cheap enough, it probably won't hurt, W10 could easily have issues with really old and weird hardware. could even be a microcode issue.

 

[hBarcellos]

About Microcode, I got a pre-converted BIOS from here: http://genius239239.myweb.hinet.net/771/

Check this part:

Here are download links to LGA775 motherboard , that i injected stepping C0 、E0 、G0 771 microcode.
It can be used for X54xx 、 E54xx 、 L54xx 、X52xx 、L52xx or ...(C0、E0、R0) or other stepping G0 cpu(E53xx、L53xx、 Xeon 51xx or ...).
If your own cpu is other stepping,you can e-mail to me. I will help you out to modify.


I forgot to read that part! Maybe my E5450 has a different step...
Maybe CPU-Z...

 

[hBarcellos]

Shows C0, so, it should be supported.

 

[DonkeyOatie]

Like I said, you have gone off the edge of my map. Anything I can say now would be random guesses.

 

[junkeymonkey]

''Then GTA 5 came out. Everything seems to be fine, but, after a while game seems to start loosing some fps''

heck man, don't this game have issues with todays builds ??? seems I see lots of play issues on it overall ???

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/all.html?refine=gta-v