First Time Buyer worries! MSI 760GM-E51 (FX)

hello everyone.

For my first ever "from scratch" build (i know how to build and maintain pc's, ive just never built from scratch before! )

I have just purchased the MSI 760GM-E51 (FX) and an AMD FX 6200 on another forum from a guy who said its fully working etc for $130 shipped (to the UK from the USA!)

I have just been on MSI's website and two things gave me cause for concern.

He says that he has been running the mobo and the processor for a while with no problems yet the processor isnt listed as supported (Whereas all the other FX chips are)

http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/760GM-E51--FX-.html#/?div=CPUSupport

Should the chip work? Also another thing that made my heart feel a little sad was a notice i found on their website saying

"Due to power design specifications, we strongly advise against using heavy burn in tools on this mainboard to protect your system from heat damage"

Now the mobo itself offers overclocking as a bios feature (i do not plan to overclock) However, i do want to video edit and the CPU will be under 100% load from time to time. Although, i do not plan to be running say, prime95 for a week ( Lol! ) Should i be worried? Should i sell the mobo on and get a different one?

I would rather not have the headache of trying to sell this and buy a new one as for the price i was pleased with the bundle.

Would really appreciate advice!

Thanks
Grandfatman

Wait for an expert to reply.

In the meantime, my humble opinion:

That board doesn't seem to support 125W CPUs. The 6200 is 125W. Probably it's not supported. Maybe it "works", but not officially supported.

Several MSI motherboards, have the bad habbit of catching fire (literally) with FX CPUs (and earlier with Thubans), due to poor VRM design-not enough VRM cooling. That boards also lacks heatsinks in VRM area. I wouldn't dare overvlock on an MSI board that only supports 95W CPUs. Do you have a fire extinguisher nearby?

Honestly,if i were you, i 'd change to a motherboard (not MSI), which officially supports the CPU, just to be safe and sure that everything works at full potential and without risks.

Who knows, it may in deed work, but putting 125W CPU on MSI board that supports up to 95W, it's asking for trouble. I 'd get a 970 chipset motherboard for that CPU, be it ASUS, Gigabyte or Asrock. It's the cheapest, safest choice.

P.S.: Whoever sold you this combo, IMHO didn't make you an honest deal.

Well, according to the CPU support list for the FX series, they only show 95W max CPUs, which means the board may not officially/properly support the 125W CPUs, which the FX-6200 is.

I know officially, so that means if he has, then warranty is void, But if it runs, it runs? I dont know ?

The FX-6200 is not common. I wish we knew what he had been running on the combination.
Manufacturer web sites are notorious for not updating their information.
Customer reviews show at least some happily running FX-6100 CPUs. These would have worse TDP than an FX-6200.
There does seem to be a problem with 8320/8350 processors.
My understanding is FX 4 and 6 core processors are 8 core with defective modules turned off, so actual power usage can vary.
The FX-6300 is a 95 watt TDP, hopefully your 6200 runs closer to that than the 8xxx.

grandfatman said:

I know officially, so that means if he has, then warranty is void, But if it runs, it runs? I dont know ?

Click to expand...

It means, it may BURN and with it, it may take in the grave something else too in your computer.

To give you a more idea of what "MSI doesn't support" means (notice how MSI "wins" all other brands?):

http://www.overclock.net/a/database-of-motherboard-vrm-failure-incidents



The board has no kind of VRM protection. To translate. Other boards, when their VRM overheat, have a mechanism that throttles back the CPU to allow VRM to cool down. MSI does not. The result is, that either it overheats but not to the point of ignition or it passes above a limit and catches fire...

It's a bit of a russian roulette. It may work forever without incident. It may also happen, that the VRM overheats and you end up with fire...

It's your call.

If it was me, i 'd run to replace it.Low cost MSI boards like yours have caught fire even with officially supported CPUs running stock speeds. Expecting it to run a 125W Bulldozer, which draws more power than even a Thuban, is stretching your luck. It's like running overclocked as far as the board is concerned.

If I were you, I wouldn't touch that board even with a very long stick (except to put it back in it's box). Any board with a note like that on the manufacturer product page should be avoided, there is no excuse for a manufacturer to create a board that can't handle a cpu at 100% load. If you are looking for a low cost board, something like a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 should be fine but won't be any good for overclocking (no vrm cooling). If you plan on ANY overclocking then go for the GA-970A-D3 (make sure to get a revision 1.3 or higher for vrm heatsink).
Overclocking + no vrm cooling = dead board.

i dont plan on overclocking at all, seeing all this info leaves me a little bummed out, i checked the website earlier and must have overlooked the notice. I probably wouldnt get anything if i tried to sell it either :/ that Gigabyte mobo is one i was looking at in the first place anyways.

grandfatman said:

i dont plan on overclocking at all, seeing all this info leaves me a little bummed out, i checked the website earlier and must have overlooked the notice. I probably wouldnt get anything if i tried to sell it either :/ that Gigabyte mobo is one i was looking at in the first place anyways.

Click to expand...

You can try to sell it for what it is. A 95W board... Maybe someone can buy it for an HTPC...

The despicable kind of warning in MSI's website, is put there, exactly because they know their boards have this dubbious "honour" of having the "fire crown". So instead of finally implementing a technology that all other manufacturers have, that of throttling the CPU, they came up with the brilliant idea of putting a warning: "Don't run at 100%, cause it will be your fault when you see the smoke". Which is preposterous.

If you want to keep the motherboard and assuming it works as should with the CPU, your best bet is to put a fan to blow on your VRM area of the motherboard. This way it may survive longer. Cause you don't plan to overlock, but putting 125W Bulldozer on a 95W board, it's overclocking if you ask the board's opinion!

We know that the FX-6100 is a 95W cpu and we can look up the specs for it. You could always downclock the cpu in the bios to match those FX-6100 specs, cross your fingers, and pray it doesn't blow up. This may work. The FX-6100 has a clock speed of 3.3 Ghz as the base clock and 3.9 Ghz Turbo.
If the bios has some decent adjustment options you can give it a try.

It's just not worth the risk keeping a board that has such a bad track record, it has been known to blow vrms even with 95w CPUs at stock frequencies.

I'd really like to sell the mobo but from what ive heard here it seems like it would be a hard sell. I got the bundle cheaper than what i could get just the cpu for over here, so if i can sell the mobo for anything, it will be a bonus.

Could just sell it on ebay. The average buyer wouldn't know about the vrm problems, I'm not saying try to screw them over but if the board is working now then all you need to put on the listing is that it's a used board in working condition. They are £45+ for a new one on ebay, could probably get £35 for it.

Thats what i was thinking, ebay and paypal fees suck though

The remote possiiblity of a fire is a bit scary. If possible, try to set the 6200 CPU to a voltage that would keep it at or near a max of 95W. In other words, some motherboards are very liberal with motherboard settings, I am not very familiar with MSI's but as an example, if I set my 65W CPU to 1.375V, it lowers the TDP to 62W. Theoretically you could keep lowering the CPU voltage until you reach 95W, but depending on the CPU it may or may not be stable at full clock speed, so you'll have to reduce clock speed at some point also. You will have to verify with something like CPU-Z, but the closer you can get the chip to 95W while keeping it running, the better.

What will happen is even if the board does run the chip at 125W it will more quickly wear out the transistors and other components in the CPU power grid on the board. Motherboards didn't always need heatsinks on these parts but IMO a board with PWM heatsinks probably has cheaper components than a board that does not have PWM heatsinks. Case in point, I have a Biostar board with no PWM heatsinks, supports 125W, and the affected parts barely even get warm to the touch while running.

Voltage is not the main issue here in terms of power draw when you are comparing the 6100 and 6200. The FX-6100 is a 95W cpu and runs at almost the same voltages at stock settings as the FX-6200. Power draw goes up with clock speed, even with the same voltage. An FX-6200 has a higher clock speed than a FX-6100 and therefore draws more power. If you drop the multipliers on the FX-6200 to match the FX-6100 they would probably be very similar in power draw.

One thing I have noticed though on Bulldozer cpus is that the mid turbo speed seems impossible to control with just BIOS settings. I have not tried AMD Overdrive so maybe it allows control of this. Bulldozer cpus have what I guess you could call standard top speed, then a mid turbo speed, and then a top turbo speed. For the FX-6100 as an example it has a 3.3 Ghz speed, but can turbo all cores to 3.6 if not under a heavy load of all cores, and then can go to 3.9 on 3 or less cores while the others are at idle. You can adjust the 3.3 and 3.9 multipliers in the BIOS of many boards I have owned, but I have never seen a setting for the 3.6. I believe that is controlled by APM settings and not adjustable.

Anyway, my point is that you can downclock a 6200 to behave more like a 6100 but it may not fully work out that way because of the non-adjustable mid turbo. You may need to shut off APM, if possible in the BIOS, or just shut off turbo in the BIOS to keep the 6200 frequency from going too high and drawing too much power. I'm sure you can play around and get that cpu to run well on that board with no issues.

Undervolting a Bulldozer helps a little and should be looked into. Tom's had a nice article on undervolting an FX-8150 that may be of some help: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bulldozer-efficiency-overclock-undervolt,3083-14.html
Note that undervolting only saved about 15 watts at stock speed under load. That doesn't take a 125W cpu down to 95W. Underclocking will be necessary.

One more issue with voltage adjustments. I have an Asus M5A97. I can change the cpu voltage in the BIOS two different ways: by either using an offset or I can change to manual adjustment

With offset I can have either a + or a - offset. Plus sign obviously adds which would help for overclocking, and the minus sign for if undervolting. When I use this feature I still have cool n quiet options in the bios which you want enabled to save on power draw.

With manual control for some reason cool n quiet options disappear and the cpu runs at full speed all the time.

I don't have an MSI board so I don't know how the BIOS works or what options it has, but watch out for things like this. Be careful with voltage adjustments. If one was not aware of the issue I just described with my board they might use manual voltage adjustment and think they are undervolting and saving energy but in reality the cpu will be at full speed all the time.

I'd rather not be messing around with clock speeds and diminishing the power of the CPU, it would be pointless. I'd rather just sell it on (the mobo) and get a supported mobo from gigabyte.

what do you guys think of this as an alternative? http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A97_LE_R20/