Are my FX-6300 GA-78LMT-USB3 OC Temps OK?

Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
58
Hi, guys,

Rebuilding my spare PC / gaming PC, and I want to make sure my temps and settings are okay before I put it into service.

Bought the CPU/MB combo for $90 at Microcenter. Couldn't resist.

Stuff:

GA-78LMT-USB3 v5.0. Has VRM heatsinks (unlike earlier versions) and solid caps.
FX-6300
Buffalo-brand heat pipe/tower cooler (like Hyper 212)
8 GB Kingston CAS 9 DDR-1333
Radeon 7950 (game at 1920 x 1200 max)
PCP&C Silencer 750
MX-100 SSD - Win 7

Just looking for a solid, mid-level overclock -- NOT TRYING TO MAX the OC :)

Couldn't find a temp-utility that gave consistent results (or worked at all), so I'm using the "thermal headroom" reading on AMD Overdrive, CPU-Z and Prime 95 for torture testing.

I turned off the C6, APM, turbo core, etc, as web sites have advised. Testing process very smooth so far. When Prime "drops" a core, it doesn't even throw a red flag. I have to use the visual core-loading indicators on Overdrive to even notice. Never seen that before...

NB and VRM temps measured with non-contact, optical thermometer on the hottest part of each respective heat sink. I have a small fan blowing on the VRMs and NB.

Anyway... Settings and Temps so far for 2-hour Prime 95 stable:

FREQ--Volts--Thermal Headroom--VRM Temp--NB Temp
4.0 GHz--1.24--41--41--26
4.1 GHz--1.26--37--43--27
4.2 GHz--1.30--33--47--28

Other than confirming the RAM CAS settings I haven't messed with the RAM yet.

I may stop here, as this board has a 125 W TDP, and I can't imagine that there's much more performance to be gained between 4.2 and 4.5 GHz, and I don't see myself running above 4.5 on this board. I need it to be trouble-free and fire-and-forget.

Thoughts on Temps, etc?

As always...thanks.

--Kirk in MN
 
I would have gotten at least 1866MHz ram. Maybe you can OC the ram some? Vishera loves ram speed.

I have a FX-9370 and those temps are perfectly fine for me. Overclocked to 4.7GHz and my home's thermostat set to 85f, I'm at 1.45v--42--41--34. In a proper MB and a really nice air / water cooler, I bet that processor is good for almost 5.0GHz. But it's always better to run for a long time than fast for a short time. Stick with your 4.2GHz OC and everything will be fine.
 
As far as I know, the thermal headroom reading in Overdrive is the most reliable reading. Apparently the way that AMD measures the temperature is via the difference between the thermal max and the current temperature, which a lot of temperature monitors have trouble calculating properly since it is not a linear measurement, but more of a curve.

Prime95 may not be the best stability test for FX chips. It doesn't seem to interact with the architecture properly. There are other threads out there about this. You may want to find an alternative stress testing application.

Also, if you are looking for the best performance, you may want to consider installing Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 7. If I recall correctly, Windows 8.1 includes the update that schedules threads on FX CPUs properly, whereas Windows 7 does not. My brother-in-law and I have very similar builds with that CPU and I have noticed our CPU usage is very different (monitored via Afterburner) in the same games. His CPU will run very high on three of the monitors, but mine runs lower and across all six monitors. He is running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and I am running Windows 8.1 Professional 64-bit.

I want to do some more testing with the OC on that chip and motherboard (also lured in by that amazing Microcenter pricing), but so far I suspect my build is cursed. I experienced overheating issues while gaming at stock clocks with the stock cooler, so I replaced it with the copper-base variety from my old Phenom II 1090T, but wasn't able to OC with it. I ordered a Hyper 212 EVO and one of the stand-offs wasn't threaded, so I can't mount it. I have been waiting two weeks for a parts request to be approved by their CS department (shipping it back to Newegg for an RMA replacement would cost almost as much as I paid for the damn thing when it was on sale). I then tried a Corsair H50, which worked great and gave me a bit of OC headroom, but the pump died on the second day it was installed.

One day I might finally get the chance to push this CPU a bit...
 
Wow. Too bad about the Hyper 212 and the H50.

I know what it's like to work on a "cursed build." :) Thankfully, this one seems rather "golden," and I suspect that the chip, as one poster suggested, probably has a lot of OC-ability if it were installed in a more manly motherboard.

I do have a couple Win 8 (8,1) COAs on hand, but I have become such a Win 8 hater I don't know if I can get myself to use it on my gaming box :) But I had forgotten the issue with processor scheduling between Win 7 and Win 8... Darn.

I went with the CAS 9 RAM because it was sitting in my goodie box. :) The whole idea of this little upgrade was to buy only the Microcenter MB/CPU combo, with the rest of the stuff already on hand. That way, my present gaming/backup box can slide over and become the "new" ham radio box. The present gaming box has a 965BE on a Gigabyte 880 ATX MB and 8 GB of DDR-1333 RAM. That MB has lots of expansion slots (needed for sound cards and goodies), plus serial and parallel ports, which are still used by many ham radio software packages for external I/O.

Unless the NIC on the new MB fails, other than the video card, I don't have any add-ons installed (and don't forsee any), so the little 78LMT should do fine (it has one PCI slot open after I install the 7950 in the PCI-e slot.

I will mess with the RAM to see if I can boost it a bit.

Thanks,

--Kirk in MN
 
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