Hi all! Put together a system for my younger brother a while back with a Phenom II X4 955 in a Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H motherboard. After it was finished and installed I ran a stress test to check everything was stable and noticed the temps were a little on the high side, getting up to around 60c at full load. According to AMD the limit for this chip is 63C. Anyway, I noticed that the BIOS automatically set the voltage to 1.4V which I thought was quite high for a non-overclocked chip. In the BIOS, it even says that 1.4V is the 'normal' voltage for that chip on the 'Auto' setting. I tried setting to optimised defaults in the BIOS but this made no difference so in the end I decided to manually set the VCore value. I stepped down in small increments and stress tested at each setting. At the moment, I've left it at 1.3V but it doesn't seem to be stable at anything lower than this. Stress testing at this setting gives much better temperatures - they now only reach about 52c at full load which is more where I'd expect the figures to be on the stock cooler. Basically, what I'm wondering, is does this VCore setting seem about right for his chip? Is 1.3V the norm at stock or should it be able to drop a little lower?
I understand that this is obviously a budget board - it's his first system and we were on a tight budget and I just wanted to show him how to put a system together so he did most of the work under my supervision! I'm not sure why this board set the VCore to 1.4V automatically, maybe to ensure stability? But I've never had or used a 955 before so was wondering whether running stock at 1.3V is about right? If anyone with a 955 can give any feedback on that I would very much appreciate it! Cheers!
I understand that this is obviously a budget board - it's his first system and we were on a tight budget and I just wanted to show him how to put a system together so he did most of the work under my supervision! I'm not sure why this board set the VCore to 1.4V automatically, maybe to ensure stability? But I've never had or used a 955 before so was wondering whether running stock at 1.3V is about right? If anyone with a 955 can give any feedback on that I would very much appreciate it! Cheers!
That's the reason I wanted to make sure this was all ok beforehand. I've shown him to build a system now, so time to show him how to overclock it! I'm buying him a tidy cooler for Christmas to replace the stock one. We won't be pushing it too far though with that motherboard, as I said it's a budget board and particularly with the lack of VRM coolers, I don't feel completely confident in it's overclocking ability! It runs everything he throws at it fine at stock so in honesty, we'll probably get it to a good overclock and then step it down a little to be on the safe side.