Phenom II x4 940 BE plus 790GX Mobo $208 shipped

Be careful when overclocking on biostar board. Has no mosfet heatsinks. Fried mine and switched to a gigabyte board. Only running at 3500 with default voltage when board fried.
 
Got this, assembled it last night.

Comming from an athlon 64 3200+ to this. Night and day in terms of performance. Very happy just at stock. But I was curious how it overclocked. The board got solid oc potential. You can adjust voltages way above the safe zones and adjust nearly every frequency.

Real quick oc result:
Just flipping the multi without voltage changes, I was able to get 3400 on stock cooling. Increasing to 1.4v I was able to get to 3700 on stock cooling, just with changes to the multiplier. I'm sure it can go much higher if I use more volts, but temp is creeping up. I also didn't even bother fine tuning the HT values, so I'm sure I can get it higher with more time. But the above OC took me only like 2 mins :D

pxc:
That is the same one
 
got mine set up also very happy with purchase. coming from x2 at 2.8ghz got this running 3.6ghz with just multi change minor voltage bump very happy
 
dang what a deal!

I bought my Phenom II 920 for a little under $200 about 2 months ago!
 
Coming from an amd 5600+ would this cpu give me any more in terms of performance? I don't need a lot more but when I'm playing l4d my cpu just sits at max the entire time and it bottle necks me. Would this run any different?
 
Considering that Steam engine is multi-cpu friendly, that the 940 is a newer/more efficient architecture than your 5600, I'd have to say it would run much better.
 
Thanks MassiveOverkill. The only thing that's killing me is that motherboard doesn't have spdif out...which would mean I'd need to pick up an audio card as well which isn't a huge deal, just a nuisance. Kinda wishing I didn't get the base M2N so I had AM2+ support right about now.
 
THIS particular model does indeed need mosfet sinks if you plan on overclocking the 940BE to it's limit. My TA770 is older and has a much weaker vcore section but I am able to overclock my chip with some small enzotech copper mosfet sinks ($9.99) cooled by an old spare 80mm fan. The heatsinks don't seem that hot to the touch (maybe 105°F ? I don't have a probe) but I guess whatever cooling they do makes all the difference in keeping the board alive and stable.
 
sparksterz said:
Coming from an amd 5600+ would this cpu give me any more in terms of performance? I don't need a lot more but when I'm playing l4d my cpu just sits at max the entire time and it bottle necks me. Would this run any different?
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I went from a X2 5000+ BE at 3.1 to a Phenom 920 and my performance in L4D went up quite a bit. It certainly wasn't bad before, but it would take noticeable dips when a huge amount of zombies were on screen. With the 920 those dips are gone.
 
I wish I would have seen this before I bought a board 2 weeks before buying the CPU....

On the bright side looks like this Biostar board will be PERFECT for a low power 4850e htpc build.....
 
pigwalk said:
I wish I would have seen this before I bought a board 2 weeks before buying the CPU....

On the bright side looks like this Biostar board will be PERFECT for a low power 4850e htpc build.....
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I'm thinking right along those same lines. I'm going to flip the 940, buy a 5050e, and finish building a WHS box. :)
 
ordovician said:
You know, I've been holding out for an Q9550, but considering that this is $40 cheaper after rebate AND comes with a motherboard, I might just get this.
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Yeah, really. A PhII 3GHz + 790GX combo for $190AR + shipping is very hot, even if overclocking is limited. I'm tempted to order it just for the CPU, then dump the motherboard + 9850BE I have in another system (I already have a 790FX board w/4 PCI-E video slots).
 
pxc said:
Yeah, really. A PhII 3GHz + 790GX combo for $190AR + shipping is very hot, even if overclocking is limited. I'm tempted to order it just for the CPU, then dump the motherboard + 9850BE I have in another system (I already have a 790FX board w/4 PCI-E video slots).
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I don't even think the overclocking would be limited. The SB750 Biostar boards are actually quite good in that department.
 
But there's a difference between overclocking 65W/89W CPUs and 125W (or 140W if you go by the old scale) CPUs on motherboards not designed to handle such high loads. That's not to say that you won't get a few hundred MHz extra off this combo.
 
Yeah, but a "125W" PhI or PhII is actually 140W as far as the motherboard makers need to design for. AMD just made new scales, and they don't match between model lines anymore.

You can see what they did in AMD's ACP paper which lists all 3 ratings (ACP, "max TDP" and TDP, with "max TDP" less than the other TDP rating). The ACP rating isn't used for desktop chips of course, but you can see how AMD changed what they report as the power consumption rating. Yeah, it's a mess for the benefit of AMD. :p
 
/shrug my combo running at 3.6ghz without any work at all just multi change. ill take 600mhz free OC
 
pxc said:
Yeah, but a "125W" PhI or PhII is actually 140W as far as the motherboard makers need to design for. AMD just made new scales, and they don't match between model lines anymore.

You can see what they did in AMD's ACP paper which lists all 3 ratings (ACP, "max TDP" and TDP, with "max TDP" less than the other TDP rating). The ACP rating isn't used for desktop chips of course, but you can see how AMD changed what they report as the power consumption rating. Yeah, it's a mess for the benefit of AMD. :p
Click to expand...

Ok, so how do we know what boards allow for good overclocks?
 
Is the cpu mult under cpu/HT freq onT serie? I made it to 215 from 200 and now I got around 3.2ghz. Another thing, how do I made the bio recognize my usb keyboard? I had to dig out my old keyboard to get in bios.

In addition, under T series, the ACC is disbale atm, would trying it on made it better to overclock?
 
The cpu multi you can adjust on the biostar. You have to go into the T-series section in bios and set overclocking option to manual.

I notice no difference in ACC, except it fubars my temperature readings. IIRC, only Phenom I really benefited from ACC. PhII was designed to already benefit without ACC.
 
I know that but where is it? I remember when I use my E6400 c2d there is clear a setting call "multiplier" and I see no such option in the biostar bio's setting under T serie. .
 
Whats with the ridiculous combo discounts for the 940 and the 955?
 
Bit! The 940 isn't going into a GB board I just bought, and the Biostar board will get itself a 4850e as soon as I can ebay off the Opteron 175 I have. Thanks guys!
 
I purchased this on Monday and received it yesterday. I had to disable USB 2.0 to get Windows 7 x64 to install. It kept freezing after loading disk.sys.
 
MIne came today. FYI, if you want it to run full 3600mhz HT, you have to go into the Multiplier VTT setting under Tpower, and set the northbridge freq to 1800, then save and reboot, re-enter the BIOS, and select 1800mhz HT from the Hypertransport menu (it won't be available as an option otherwise) under Tpower. Hope that makes sense.

On another note, these Phenoms run HOT! Overclocking them using the stock HSF is a JOKE. I'm using a Coolermaster GoldenOrb because it's slightly better, but I'm really going to need a better cooler. I'm sitting at 3.4Ghz @ 1.34V after vdroop and 2 minutes into Prime95 it hit 62C.
 
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