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.

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[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...

 

[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.