AMD PII X4 955 Cooling

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10 Dec 2009
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I recently decided I'd try to overclock my 955, which is where my issue arose. I downloaded cpu-z and found my chip to be the c3 variant, great I thought. Until I had a look at the temps it runs at..I idle in windows at around the 45 mark and was breaching 60 degrees whilst gaming. Which is very close to the 62 recommended max. It's not been overly hot the past few days which would indicate the chip has been running over 62 at some point in its life without any problems (so I would hope no damage has been done). It does however leave no room for overclocking. If I'm right I should be looking at a possible 4ghz?

This is on auto volts (1.344) and clock (3.2), with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2.

My question is, would undervolting make much of a difference or am I better off buying a brand new cooler?

If reseating the cooler is a suggestion I'm probably better off spending some money on a brand new one instead of wasting time. Any suggestions? Needs to fit in an Antec 300 case, which may limit my options, but budget isn't too much of an issue.

Thanks!
 
Manually set your v core, I dropped my 965 down to 1.275v and it never goes above 48 degrees with a small Zalman Heatsink (Upgraded to a BeQuiet SR1 now).

Auto V core sends much more than 1.344v when its under load.
 
L0rdMike said:
My 965 idles at 0.96v and 33C
Click to expand...

My vcore doesn't drop at all even with C&Q. Sitting in the mid 40s with nothing running. It's definitely enabled in the bios though.

Would you guys suggest getting a new cooler anyway? I'll be purchasing a new SSD when they're in stock so it'd be the ideal time. My current HSF isn't ideal for oc'ing anyway after reading up.
 
you need to drop the Vcore in bios.
what temp monitor are you using? you should also know that 99% of the temp you get for a phenom2 are wrong(high) i found my old phenom2 to be 10c over what it was really sitting at. the only way to get a true temp is bios or a program that reads bios. some programs give you the socket temp and some give you the socket pcb temp.

running an x4 @ 4.1GHZ with prime i got 95c.... the phenom2 would shout down at 90c.

but anyway forget temps if your OC'ing you need a 12cm tower cooler. push the chip to 4ghz then test and drop v core until it runs stable for 2hr under load (prime or LinX).

then test with gaming i have had systems 100% stable then had a crash after 5min gaming, gaming is the best test.

Good Luck, Have FUN
 
Used both HWMonitor and AMD Overdrive, both report the same temps. Thanks for the suggestions. How would a Be Quiet! Shadow Rock Pro SR1 CPU Cooler compare?

Also looked at Phanteks PH-TC14PE, but guessing that might be overkill? Ideally looking for something easy(ish) to fit as well..
 
Ended up going for a NH D14 and prime hasn't sent it above 45 yet; I stopped prime at 58 with the old cooler. Seems like it did the trick :D Guessing that's a pretty decent temp for my set-up on stock?

Can anyone recommend a decent OC guide to get me started please?
 
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Check your case airflow, and perhaps re-paste the heatsink. I had 3.9GHz at 1.475V on my 955BE with a freezer pro 7. This is with a 1.4 VID piece of crap C3 955 as well, so obviously there's something wrong with your configuration and it isn't the CPU or heatsink. I also have an Antec case of similar size, so perhaps you want to try adding a case fan in the rear 120mm slot.

Also if you want to get the best out of your HSF either disable the smart fan control in the BIOS or configure it with speedfan properly. The issue I found was that with Gigabyte and Asus boards at least is they don't max out the fan speed using the Smartfan/Q-fan functions enabled. You will however need to enable them to control the fan speed with speedfan. Depends how bothered you are about the noise.
 
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Still early days on the stability front..but for anyone who questions the usefulness of Ocing...Merely changed the multiplier to 18 for 3.6ghz and I've seen a ~15FPS increase in one game. (GPU 7850) Running a degree or two hotter seems to be the only side effect so far. :)
 
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