Unlocking Phenom II 545

whitefang

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Feb 14, 2009
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What's up all. I bought a Phenom II 545 3.0 ghz dual core and I unlocked it. When I run prime95 I encounter no errors but my PC just completely loses all power and shuts down after about 8 minutes (right when it gets around 68C) which I'm guessing is obviously too hot.

I'm wondering if that means my unlocked dual core is no good or if there's some safety feature in the bios thats forcing my PC to shut down when the CPU gets too hot.

I have however played crysis, tf2, L4D2, and a few other games on all max settings for several hours with no crashes or anything wrong at all.

Here's my specs

Processor: Phenom II 545 3.0 ghz unlocked to quad
Mobo: Gigabyte ga-ma790GPT-ud3h
Ram: a-data 4GB DDR3 1600
psu: OCZ modxtreme pro 700W modular
case: Coolermaster scout
VideoCard: ATI HD 5850
HD: 500GB seagate barracuda 7200.12

am I safe to keep my quad? It's been stable for 3 weeks now without any problems, it just crashes on prime95 due to heat I think.

*EDIT* Oh by the way, the computer doesn't restart. It just shuts off.
 
Is it worth it to unlock those cores.? If you're rich and can't afford another cpu, I would run them locked. I'm not trying to scare you; just pointing out that if this cuts the life of your cpu short, it would have been far better to just get a quad core in the first place. The difference in performance isn't worth the risk. You may never know; it may run fine for years. But forget prime 95; just run it with your games for awhile and see how it does.
 

whitefang

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No I'm not rich =) I actually had a strict budget of $750 to buy the above system and going from a 545 ($70 at the time) to a quad was out of the budget.

I was hoping I could safely unlock the dual core so I could have a quad, but if you think that it's not worth it I could probably set it back to a dual core. I haven't had any problems at all in any games, stability is 100%, no crashes, no errors, no artifacts, nothing weird so far. And all I've been doing on it is constant gaming.