I3 530 4gig stable stock cooling

[csfaith]

Hello all, long time reader 1st time posting.

Have just made the jump from my old 4800x2 duel core amd rig to my new bang for buck cheap gaming system. So after some reading it was the i3 Duel core over the 550 BE AMD duel core. So for my 400 NZ dollars i managed to pick up a P7P55LX Motherboard, 2gig of Corsair ram, and my i3 550 processor.

Now i did get abit of a shock when i first went into my bios settings. Got a huge WTF. So back to toms forums and reading away on the 3 step guide to 13,15,17. Thank god for that

Now I have my rig running 24/7 365 type thing as I am a heavy gamer and also use my pc for videos ect. I have to say i am extatic over the preformance of my i3 duelcore. This chip bang for buck is still blowing me away. Still yet to fine tune settings, but have had this running stable for 4 weeks, no crashes or extreme temps on stock cooling.

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Memory running at 728.1mhz ratio of 4:16

Am i dreaming or have i really got a free 1.1 gig out of this CPU with minimal effort ?

 

[Lmeow]

Nice. Those Core i3 500 and Core i5 600s overclock very well.

Great. But why on earth would you upgrade from a dual core to another dual core?

It's still a dual core and today's games use more than 2 cores. It's a shame as a "heavy gamer" you would not have moved on to a triple or quad core.

Still, a Core i3 would be a great improvement over an Athlon 64 X2 4800+, and also consider the fact that the Core i3 is running at 4.0GHz on stock, and the HyperThreading helps with some media encoding too. I personally would've got a Core i5 750 or Phenom II X4 955, but down here in NZ, prices are jacked up pretty badly, an example is HD 5970s costing around $90 more than GTX 480, and GTX 470s costing the same as HD 5870s.

The next thing that I suggest OP should buy is another 2GB stick of RAM. Just make sure that your temperatures don't go above ~ 73°C during Prime 95 load testing.

 

[csfaith]

Thanks for your reply, and yea the quadcore option was just still abit out of price range. I do have to say though even with the small upgrade bundle moved from a bottleneck system (in BFBC2) of 25 - 50 frames on full low settings, to a 60+ frame on full

 

[fisshy]

^ Cool stuff, It seems Like you are happy With your New System, Enjoy

I looks stable to me But as Lmeow Says Maybe when Budget Permits another Stick Of ram would help (I know what you are going through Prices here [SA] are also pretty Jacked up)

Try running a Small FET's PRime 95 Test For about 12 Hours (Feel free to correct me , just my personal preference)

Make sure to watch temps Doing this, Good Luck!

 

[HenryW]

"Try running a Small FET's PRime 95 Test..."

I ran 'blend' and my i3 530@3.69GHz w/stock cooler got up to 100C (RealTemp) pretty quick. CM 212+ just arrived and will be installing shortly.

"Core i3 would be a great improvement over an Athlon 64 X2 4800+"

In my experience with AMD dual cores like that max was about 3.2GHz for the best of them and for the most part about 3.0GHz stable. I had X2 4200+ at about 3.0-3.1GHz stable f@h 24/7 and that was above the 2.7-2.8GHz average of most the AMD 64 X2's. You also need to consider the L3 cache and with that the i3 530 even at stock speed will run rings around any of the X2 CPU's with no L3 cache.

"...Budget Permits another Stick Of ram..."

Actually I would recommend what I have 'Crucial 2x2GB CT2KIT25664BA1339' 1.5V kit. Price about $112 USD. OC's up to about 1500@1.5V stock voltage and from what I've read beyond 1600@1.65V. So far mine's been a bit past 1400@1.5V but that was just fooling around last week. Now that I have my new cooler it's time to get serious.

 

[csfaith]

In regards to running prime 95 ect, is there any chance to fry my cpu with extreme temps ? Or will it be the case of a usual auto shutdown (system protection ) if the cpu is gona head for an early grave ?

 

[Lmeow]

Well, you can't really fry the CPU because it will throttle the speeds down if it gets too hot. However, running it consistently at near max temperatures will probably make it die quicker more than anything else.

 

[cromedome]

csfaith.. Maybe you should drop the voltage to 1.30 vcore to get better temps. I run my i3 530 at 4.0ghz and 1.30 vcore and get temps in the 50's at full load. btw, i have a Hyper 212+