Possibly Upgrading CPU

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The9KGamer

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Mar 17, 2015
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My current CPU is an AMD Phenom II X6 1055T with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO cooling it, overclocked to 3.4 ghz. I recently came across some extra money and would be able to upgrade to one of these 5 FX CPUs, preferably not the 8350 unless it's really that big of a difference to the other ones I'm listing.

FX-6300: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd6300wmhkbox
FX-6350: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd6350frhkbox
FX-8320E: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd832ewmhkbox
FX-8320: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd8320frhkbox
FX-8350: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd8350frhkbox

I'm looking to overclock these as much as I can with my cooler and as for what I do with these it's mostly gaming on my 1080p primary monitor and I like to multi task a lot on my secondary monitor. I was wondering would upgrading be worth the money for my CPU atm or should I just save up?

inb4 "Get an intel u pleb" (The dang intel mobo would cost me as much or more than most of the CPUs im looking at here in Canada atleast, i'll pass.)
 
Solution
damric
The Haswell Xeons are basically Haswell i7s without the IGPU and they have a couple other workstation features, but the main selling point is that they are cheaper than the i7s.

Get the full ATX sized board instead:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($306.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($103.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Total: $410.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-19 19:57 EDT-0400
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Save your money. None of those are worthy upgrades to your Thuban. I'd overclock that thing to about 4GHz and 3GHz CPU-NB.

Edit: Actually, since Phenom II hexacores still fetch a lot for resale (over $150), you could easily build a Haswell platform. I wouldn't go for anything less than the 8 logical core Xeon.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($306.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($96.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $403.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-19 19:44 EDT-0400
 
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Save your money. None of those are worthy upgrades to your Thuban. I'd overclock that thing to about 4GHz and 3GHz CPU-NB.
Click to expand...
I wish I could overclock it further, I'm afraid the OC gods did not bless my CPU 🙁
This is the max I could get that's actually stable 24/7

Hmmm never really thought about (or heard about the Xeon) would this board be able to fit into a Cooler Master Storm Stryker Case and be capable of housing both a Sound Blaster Z sound card and PNY GTX 770 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133495)???

Also why Xeon vs AMD or Intel Core? Sorry if this sounds stupid, not really sure what the difference is since I didn't put much research into Intel because of the price difference.
4670K For the same price: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54670k
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The Haswell Xeons are basically Haswell i7s without the IGPU and they have a couple other workstation features, but the main selling point is that they are cheaper than the i7s.

Get the full ATX sized board instead:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($306.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($103.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Total: $410.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-19 19:57 EDT-0400
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
Alright will definitely look into that if I decide to upgrade.

As for my current CPU it stays around 42-43*C and may occasionally jump to 44-45 for a second or two, after 5-10 mins in prime95 according to OpenHardwareMonitor. My Core Voltage is set to 1.475V, the multiplier on my mobo will only let me go to 14 even though CPU-Z says 16.5 is the max and my bus speed is set to 243.80 MHz.

Also if I were to sell my CPU and Mobo if I replace them, do you think 200$ would be an okay price?
 
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Would be a great help if I could push it that little bit more, what are your suggestions?
 
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I'm going to walk you through the right way :)

The locked Phenom II's are very fun and I haven't been able to work on one in a while so I look forward to this.

I'll be available tomorrow afternoon to get you started (in about 14-15 hours from now).
 
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Ok so the goal will be to get your CPU core to ~4GHz using base clock of 285. Usually the main problem with doing that is RAM instability.

1) Give your baoard a CMOS Clear to get everything running at stock. Then go back into the BIOS and manually set your RAM frequency to DDR3-1600 but keep your timings in auto. While you are at it, turn off all of your power saving features like cool and quiet, C1E, ect. Save and exit BIOS.

2) Then, we will lock your RAM down by following this mini-guide I wrote in 2012:

Your RAM timings are set to auto. Every time you lower your RAM multiplier it attempts to automatically tighten timings, causing instability when RAM frequency is increased again via base clock. You need to keep all of your timings loose as if you were actually going for DDR3-1600 even though you set your RAM to 800, 1066, or whatever.

Now instead of playing the timing guessing game. the easy way to do this is to get all of your clocks back to stock, everything auto, restart, then set your RAM to the highest frequency that it will boot. Try 1600, if not then 1333. Restart. Now go into AMD Overdrive and pull up the timings page. Write all of these down, even the secondary and tertiary timings. Restart. Now manually set all of your timings to the numbers that you wrote down. If you are unsure of any, just leave it pretty loose for now. Restart. Now drop your RAM frequency back down to1066 and get back to tuning your overclocks. Make sure you followed those instructions exactly including when to restart.

^^That might sound like gibberish. Let me know if you follow.

3) The next thing is to open up some headroom on HT Link and CPU-NB frequency. Since we will be raising base clock up from 200, it's going to automatically raise HT Link and CPU-NB. I'd like you to always keep HT Link at or below 2000MHz. CPU-NB can be a little more, but don't push that yet. We will fine tune CPU-NB later. So go ahead and drop both of those down to about 1400MHz (or x7 multi) for now.

4) Now you should be ready to start the CPU Core overclocking by raising HT Reference clock (also known as base clock or FSB). Raise it a little bit at a time, save to BIOS, raise it again, ect until you start getting unstable. When you get some instability, raise CPU-Vcore up to 1.55v if needed. My 1090T actually needed almost 1.65v to maintain 4GHz for Folding at Home. Check for quick stability using Intel Burn Test, 10 passes in standard. We will do more in depth stability testing later.

Are you at 4GHz yet? Let me know when you get this far, or if any of the steps above resulted in failure.
 
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The max I could get it to pass the standard BurnTest with 10 passes was at 3.85GHz (275x14) at 1.6V, I was unable to raise the voltage any higher because the PC wouldn't boot due to overvoltage and it failed the high burn test.
My ram, HT and CPU-NB are still lowered, now what???

I may have a water cooler somewhere in my shed that I have forgotten about and can use for this so I may be able to bump up the numbers slightly later on yay :)

Also I think if I do end up going for a new CPU i'll probably get the 4690K, I feel like for what I'm doing the 4690K will give me the most. Do you know what may be the least expensive mobo that would work with my situation and be able to OC?
 
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Yeah ASUS boards will do that. It's an extra protective feature for the VRMs. No worries. Dial back to 270 and we will start CPU-NB.

Same here, raise the CPU-NB multi gragually until you fail the standard IBT (don't bother yet with the high). Mine needed 1.4v for 3GHz, but I've seen between 1.2-1.5v needed. Be ready for some CMOS clears if your board totally fails to POST (can't even get into the BIOS). You might even max out your multiplier for 2700MHz, in which case we will go back and drop the CPU multi a bit to open up base clock for more CPU-NB. Let me know exactly what happens.

The next step is RAM freq, then RAM timings, then HT Link, then overall long term stressing.
 
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Got the CPU-NB to 2700 on auto voltage, passed standard IBT and 30 mins of Prime95 SmallFFTs test, likes to sit around 50*C.
I'm guessing I continue on the same with the RAM and HT Link? Any numbers I should avoid?
 
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For the RAM. it's worth a try to see how high of frequency you can get. Don't expect much. And be prepared for some CMOS clears.

After you find your maximum RAM frequemcy, then comes the hard part, tightening RAM timings one by one. The theoretical best the Thuban can do is DDR3-2000CL7 (remember the G.Skill Flares?). Something more realistic to shoot for is 1600CL7.

For HT Link. It's of least concern. Most people just leave it at or just below 2000MHz. Tune it higher if you want.
 
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You could leave it as is and be done with it. When you overclock the platform as a whole, it's all the little 3%s adding up that makes a difference. Does your system feel much more responsive now? If you want, you could try taking your CPU-NB further, since that actually has more effect on latency than timings (on the Phenom IIs).
 
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Uh oh, found that liquid cooler I was talking about, didnt work so I just swapped back to my old cooler. Now the PC won't boot to bios, I see the very first screen (PNY GTX 770 Text) and then nothing. I've tried both removing the battery for 30 mins and this method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up9dSobkgf8 using what asus labeled as "USB Flashback" in the diagram on this page http://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/M5A97_R20/ but still nothing happens past the GPU text screen.
All the fans/led's work, the MEMok! is lit up red and the SB_PWR+ is lit up green.
Any ideas?
 
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Nothing worked :l gonna try leaving the battery out over night and see if that works but if not I'm going to end up upgrading anyways since I just got accepted into a computer class at my college so my parents will help me invest in a i7-4790k and an MSI Krait mobo because i'll probably need it since ill be doing a wide range of things on the pc now :) hopefully it does work so i'll atleast be able to get some returns haha 😛 I'll let you know.
 
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