Ordered operton165, arctic silver?

[hmillhouse]

Ordered operton165, arctic silver? -Arrived

After a bit of a rash decision, I ordered the Opteron 165 retail package for £120ish.

I'm replacing an Athlon64 3000+, only o/c'ed to 2.1ghz. Obviously, to be of any benefit, I'm gonna need to overclock fairly heavily. I heard the stock heatsink isnt too bad?

Question is, should I be buying some Arctic Silver 5 to apply to the stock heatsink, or just leave it as it is? OR should I be buying a completely different cooler?

Finally, my mates got me a X1950Pro pci-e card. Only got a 430w Levicom PSU. Anyone know if the Thermaltake 250w Gfx only PSU would be useful? Think i'm on the limit, and the opteron needs higher wattage (110w?)

Thanks 4 listening, 1st post n all.

 

[decto]

Power usage

Hi,

I have an OC'd 165 at 2.5 - 2.6Ghz depending on the day, with a plug in power meter and a 7800GTX I rack up around 230W in FEAR so I'd say 400w+ should be fine as long as you have plenty of Amps on the +12v line. My 460w enermax has around 32ish ... don't remember and it's in the bottom section of an Antec P180 case so I can't look !

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[Ronaldo]

i'll be honest the stock cooler and paste is pretty good. if you are going to use stock cooler then dont bother with AS5

 

[locutus12]

After a bit of a rash decision, I ordered the Opteron 165 retail package for £120ish.

I'm replacing an Athlon64 3000+, only o/c'ed to 2.1ghz. Obviously, to be of any benefit, I'm gonna need to overclock fairly heavily. I heard the stock heatsink isnt too bad?

Question is, should I be buying some Arctic Silver 5 to apply to the stock heatsink, or just leave it as it is? OR should I be buying a completely different cooler?

Finally, my mates got me a X1950Pro pci-e card. Only got a 430w Levicom PSU. Anyone know if the Thermaltake 250w Gfx only PSU would be useful? Think i'm on the limit, and the opteron needs higher wattage (110w?)

Thanks 4 listening, 1st post n all.

3 things,

firstly power consumption, its a common misconception that PC`s are power hungry, in truth most peoples PSU`s can supply far more juice than they will ever use.

for example:

i ran for over a year:
X1900XT 512mb (they use more juice than a X1950Pro)
2 gig corsair XMS over volted
opteron 148 @ 2.95Ghz 1.425v
2X DVD drives
2X internal hard drives (one a western digital raptor)
4 usb devices (1 an external hard drive)
water cooling systems
2X 120mm LED fans
UV lights

all on a 400 Watt Akasa Pax power. The only reason i changed the psu was because i thought it was causing an issue with my system which later turned out to be something totally different so i think its safe to say your PSU is fine, its even safer to say that separate "GPU power supplys" like the thermaltake one your mentioned are nothing more than a marketing gimmick designed to pry money from your wallet.


secondly the CPU your replacing, Athlon64 3000+, if that was a venice core then you must have been doing something totally wrong as there wasnt an AMD 3000+ Venice core made that didnt LOVE overclocking, they all reached 2.55Ghz minimum on air.


third and finally the opteron 165 and 170 coolers work as well as an XP90 cooler, they are extremely good coolers and should allow you to overclock a fair amount with them.


p.s. welcome

 

[hmillhouse]

Checked the PSU, it only gives 22A on 12v line, not sure if thats peak or sustained. I've also got 2 DVD-RW's, 1 PATA HD and 1 SATA HD connected.

I've never seen the 12v line drop below 12.10v under load.

Guess I'll wait and see if there are any issues with power. Just dont want to stress the psu or components.

Are there any recommended hs/coolers for the opteron if I should want to ignore the stock route?

Cheers.
H

 

[locutus12]

Checked the PSU, it only gives 22A on 12v line, not sure if thats peak or sustained. I've also got 2 DVD-RW's, 1 PATA HD and 1 SATA HD connected.

I've never seen the 12v line drop below 12.10v under load.

Guess I'll wait and see if there are any issues with power. Just dont want to stress the psu or components.

Are there any recommended hs/coolers for the opteron if I should want to ignore the stock route?

Cheers.
H

if you ignore that stock cooler youd be silly, it outperforms many coolers of the £20 to £30 range. but if you must you could try a scythe ninja, or Arctic freezer pro, or Thermalright XP120 and fit a fan of your choice.

 

[iCe-BLaZeD]

Checked the PSU, it only gives 22A on 12v line, not sure if thats peak or sustained. I've also got 2 DVD-RW's, 1 PATA HD and 1 SATA HD connected.

I've never seen the 12v line drop below 12.10v under load.

Guess I'll wait and see if there are any issues with power. Just dont want to stress the psu or components.

Are there any recommended hs/coolers for the opteron if I should want to ignore the stock route?

Cheers.
H

what psu is it? does it have dual 12v rails?

 

[hmillhouse]

oh the 3000+ was a winchester core. Didnt bother with oc'ing much beyond 2.25, it seemed to get pretty hot.

And, heh, you're making me think I should have gone for the X2 4600+ oem here for a bit more cash.

I'll stick to stock and will post back if I need OC'ing help to get full potential.

iCe-BLaZeD - It's a Levicom 420W PSU. Doubt it's dual rail, as it's nearly 2 years old. It says 12V - 22A on the side of its casing

 

[hmillhouse]

OK, it arrived. I got a LCB9E 0646RPMW. A few searches seem to give a confused impression of it, but some say its a decent overclocker.

However, I've tried at OCing from around 2.4 to 2.7ghz. The temps ok, idle around 41c, full dual load at around 58c @ 2.7. Volts from 1.35 to 1.45 tested

Problem? Lockups. Normally after about 5mins of dualcore prime. I havent had much time to investigate, as im writing an essay at the moment. Sometimes it wouldnt even boot into windows at 2.4, or 2.2.

Ram dividers and the HTT multiplier have been used to make sure ram is 190-220mhz and HT link is between 800-1000.

So, to finish my essay, I put everything back to stock volts @ 1.8ghz. Now, for the 1st time in the PC's 18month life, it's now locking up even in Word 2003 at default stock everything. Would this point to underpower psu (opteron more juice than A64 3000+? and x1950pro pci-e), or a faulty cpu?
Abit AN8 board btw. Under load, the PSU temp (PWM) seems to climb to 60+C, idle at 38C.

Thanks

 

[locutus12]

OK, it arrived. I got a LCB9E 0646RPMW. A few searches seem to give a confused impression of it, but some say its a decent overclocker.

However, I've tried at OCing from around 2.4 to 2.7ghz. The temps ok, idle around 41c, full dual load at around 58c @ 2.7. Volts from 1.35 to 1.45 tested

Problem? Lockups. Normally after about 5mins of dualcore prime. I havent had much time to investigate, as im writing an essay at the moment. Sometimes it wouldnt even boot into windows at 2.4, or 2.2.

Ram dividers and the HTT multiplier have been used to make sure ram is 190-220mhz and HT link is between 800-1000.

So, to finish my essay, I put everything back to stock volts @ 1.8ghz. Now, for the 1st time in the PC's 18month life, it's now locking up even in Word 2003 at default stock everything. Would this point to underpower psu (opteron more juice than A64 3000+? and x1950pro pci-e), or a faulty cpu?
Abit AN8 board btw. Under load, the PSU temp (PWM) seems to climb to 60+C, idle at 38C.

Thanks

have you uninstalled the AMD cpu driver and installed the dual core driver ? have you ran windows update as there are a couple of windows updates to stop system lock ups associated with AMD dual core.

 

[hmillhouse]

I did uninstall and reinstall the latest x2 driver. I've not done any windows updates as of yet.

I tried boot Windows Vista beta and it seems to work fine and run prime for much longer than Xp without lockup. So maybe there is a solution.

 

[decto]

Hi,



I have the same stepping, 2.65Ghz at HTT295 though I have DDR500 GSkill HZ so use the 166 memory divider at 1.4v.

At stock 1.35v I can get a little over 2.5Ghz

Can get to 2.78Ghz HTT309 again on the 166 divider with 1.5v but I can't get 2.8Ghz stable without taking the voltage higher and I think I've hit the limit of the onboard regulators as setting it at 1.55v still shows the same volts in CPUZ as 1.5v

I find Orthos easier to used than prime, it performs the same stess test but it defaults to the dual cores so it's click and test as opposed to setting up to instances of prime.

The AMD OEM cooler, if it's the heatpipe one with a speed controlled fan is very good. My Big typhoon is only a little better at cooling but is a lot quieter. The OEM one gets noisey. Make sure you don't have any fan speed control enable in the BIOS and that you don't have any of the overclocking consoles loading. MSI core cell used to load and apply it's own settings which would screw up my overclocks.

It's also worth checking your BIOS is up to date for maximum dual core stability.

If you over clock it's best to do it mainly in the BIOS and not using any of the tools provided with the board.

For testing I set the Bios up with a slightly lower HTT and then load up clockgen (google) to increase the HTT slowely while running Orthos until errors occur. Once this happens I back of the HTT 5Mhz then test. if it fails, back off another 5 and test. Help in finding the limits early on.

Hope the helps

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[22BUK]

I run an Opty 165 @ 2.9GHz (default volts) in a Shuttle SN95G5v2. I also have two 7200rpm hdd's, DVD burner, X800XTPE, TV card and 2GB RAM in there. It all runs fine on a 240W PSU.

PS. I use clockgen to get past the Shuttles 280fsb bios limitation.

 

[hmillhouse]

Thanks for the Orthos and bios fan advice, decto.
I'm letting it run at 2.4ghz fsb 267 with HTT multiplier at 3x and ram on a 12 divider = 200mhz. Using 1.375v.

It runs stable using orthos for over 30mins, then i stopped it. The temperature does seem high. CPU temp is reported at 57c, but Everest reports one core at ~51c and other at ~66c. Not sure why theres such a difference. (Small FFT's test)

When you say running orthos till errors occur. Do you mean it reports a calculation mistake or the system freezes?
My problem is being unable to tell if lack of voltage locks it up or the temperature does it.

Would low volts cause a lockup as soon as cpu load increased?

cheers

 

[hmillhouse]

Returning CPU

I've decided to return the cpu. I put everything back to stock speeds, volts, ram etc. I'm running the latest bios for my Abit AN8.

I decided to leave Vista behind incase that was causing issues.
The cpu couldnt even complete a fresh install of windows xp sp2, locked repeatedly. I popped in my A64 3000+ and everything started working perfectly again.

Does anyone know how a certain company that i bought the opteron from is at returns? Begins with a K and its in Holland and the opty165 is currently £110.

I'd like to buy a x2 4600+ from here, but cant really risk it in case I dont get a refund, but dont want them to sell out here...

 

[decto]

sorry to hear of your troubles.

If you have such a difference in core temps then either the IHS on the CPU is badly fitted your your heatsink wasn't sitting correctly. I generally get a max of around 7 deg between the cores though it averages 5 deg and that's at 1.5v on air cooling with the IHS in place.

If you can't install XP at default settings then something is badly wrong

Regards

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[hmillhouse]

Well, the plot thickens. As a last ditch effort, i searched the Abit forums about opterons and AN8 boards.

I've now found out that the onboard USB 2.0 causes instability with dual core cpus. I set the controller to USB1.1 only and the opteron started behaving at stock. With USB2.0 I can cause lockups at will by transferring large files to my ipod, USB1.1 acts normally but daamn slow.

I've put the speed up to 2400mhz, all seems well, but the temps are a bit high on load, but lower in XP than vista. I guess from removing the cpu and reseating the heatsink twice the thermal pad isnt as level as it should be. It looks a mess in my opinion.

Ordered some A.Silver5 and the cleaning solution to reapply & hopefully make better contact. Failing that i'll be after a new heatsink. Or i'll need to look at this IHS thing a bit closer.

It'll boot and run windows at 2800, so things may be looking up. Dont dare orthos that fast until the silver arrives tho.