JimAttrill 24 Posted February 14, 2014 Hi folks I have an AMD 965 which is 3.4Mhz stock and is now o/c to 3.9Mhz. It runs WOFF well, but the stock fan is a bit noisy and the temps regularly go over 60°C. The socket is AMD3+ and I wonder what sort of coolers are recommended. The web is not much help as there seem to be thousands of fans available. ps. I am not interested in water cooling as it costs too much. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamper 9 Posted February 14, 2014 (edited) Hi Jim It happens that I just finished an exercise in overclocking that very chip yesterday, having recently built my wife a new machine. If I can ask, what motherboard are you using? The reason I ask is, before I checked the BIOS options (on the Asus M4A79T Deluxe), I thought the stock fan was way too loud as well. Fortunately, this board supports what Asus calls "Q fan" settings in BIOS, and this has basically three 'profiles' - Silent, Optimal, and Performance if I recall correctly (I think you can also create profiles based on temp and fan speed). First thing I did before putting this on her desk (she doesn't like loud fans) is set it on Optimal. This made a big difference in the stock AMD CPU fan noise. The thing is, the BIOS doesn't show you these settings as long as the Q fan setting is disabled (which it is by default). In the case I use, and with the fans arranged as I have them, overclocked to 4.013G, it gets up to 69 max while running Prime95 (100% load on all 4 cores) - but remember the Tmax on this CPU is 90, so 69 is nothing to worry about; you could probably even run a little higher and still leave room for higher ambient temps during the summer months (I'll be testing again at that time to be sure). The Q fan concept applies here, because in my testing I can see it working: the hotter the CPU gets, the harder the fan runs (keeping it quiet when there's less load). The Optimal setting seems programmed to keep the CPU just south of 70c, which it did flawlessly. There are also (2) fan connectors on this board that support this Q Fan feature, so your intake and exhaust fans can be temp-controlled as well. I'll tell you what, in all the time I've built computers (easily hundreds of machines) I've learned Asus has a rep for being among the costliest boards, but it's features like this that make working with them a lot nicer. Something else to consider - although I'm sure you've thought of this, so just throwing it up here - is that overclocking typically involves raising voltages in BIOS, but sometimes ambitious overclockers set voltages too high, which results in excessively high temps (even for the given overclock). Can you tell me how your voltage settings look? I settled on a 1.475 core I think, which with "droop" runs at about 1.402 +/- when loaded 100%. Not sure yet if this board supports a separate droop control or PLL, overvoltage control, so my idle/min temps are probably a little high (in the high 40s I think, which doesn't concern me at all). Hopefully the board you're using has similar features; if not, and you don't mind a little tinkering, I'm fairly sure there is a way to do the same thing by using a utility app to increase/decrease fan speed programmed in profiles based on temps. It was really 'fall-down' easy with this board (and didn't cost a dime for a better heatsink/fan!) In any event, best of luck to you! Edited February 14, 2014 by Tamper Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JimAttrill 24 Posted February 14, 2014 Hi tamper, thanks for your very interesting post. My Mobo is a Gigabyte 880GA-UD3H with which I am very happy. I have always used ASUS mobos before but one was not available anywhere in SA at that time. I don't think there is anything about fan speed in the Bios but I can have a look. I upped the voltage on the CPU to 1.45 from 1.4 and tried the multiplier at 20 (it failed) and then at 19.5 which seems to work ok. However, Core temp reports it is running at 200.88 x 19 which gives 3.8Mhz. I see you are running a Zalman CNPS990 which is a bit out of my price range. I have used Zalman fans before but the one I have lying about is not suitable for more than a 945 processor. I did try it and the temps went high, What I have done for WOFF and CFS3 is run them on cores 2 and 3 which might help. The cores are running at 45-49 basically at idle. With Prime95 I saw 69-70 which I think is maybe a bit high. I have tried using the AMD overclocker but it is a bit hard to understand and last time it whacked the processor to 4.5Hz upon which the whole thing collapsed with a blue screen. I thought the Tmax on this processor was 70 but none of the web info seems to agree. Some say as low as 65°C. Anyway, I get reasonable performance from WOFF (but reasonable depends on where you are coming from). I used to run OFF with 4Gb ram and an ASUS 6450 but have at least upgraded to an ASUS 7750 which works ok for me in my BE2c Interestingly only the very high-end and expensive graphics cards on sale here come with more than 1Gb ram. I can't afford any of them .... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamper 9 Posted February 16, 2014 You know, Jim, you have a well-taken point. I relied on the Tmax reading in CoreTemp (which I do feel is 'safe'), and it indicates 90c. However, just as you said, there is a lot of discussion on the web most of which gives a number much closer to the low 60's. The AMD site indicates 62c as a max temp; but even with that, there is speculation that it's not the same number that CoreTemp shows as the 'core' temperature, and that the number read directly from the CPU isn't actually the 'real' number in the newer CPUs. SpeedFan shows two numbers; one which agrees with CoreTemp and another 'CPU temp' which is much less - in my testing, while I had temps up to 70c in CoreTemp, this SpeedFan cpu temp never went above 62. So, I am not sure at this point. Not usually the level of confidence in temps I usually want when I'm jacking up voltages and frequencies, I'll say. One good thing is that the machine I'm working with has run Prime95 at length without incident, and the CPU appears not to do any sort of throttling or whatnot - so this makes me think that, while the numbers are somewhat askew, the actual temps are just fine. I'm also reminded that even with the most ambitious of games, it would be very rare for a 'real-life' scenario to tax a CPU at 100% across all the cores. Monitoring temps and load using various utility log files indicates to me that I typically approach half of the load that the benchmarks put on a machine, and the temps are generally lower than the benchmark temps by at least 10c. So I doubt any system being used in a 'typical' fashion would approach the kind of loads that these utilities are simulating. Based on that, I think the temps are likely much lower/safer in 'real' application. Sorry to hear the availability of cards is limited in there SA. Have you considered other sources? Maybe having something shipped (though perhaps costly) and/or buying 'gently-used' hardware? I've had nothing but the best of luck with only 1-2 exceptions in at least 10 years (and in each case, the folks I had bought from refunded my money immediately). Again, best of luck to you! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nbryant 8 Posted February 17, 2014 When you can afford it Jim you must try the liquid cool. I am running a Corsair Hydro Series 60 cooling an AMD 8350 on a Sabretooth 990 Mobo. Right now it's running at 18c and usually pushes 35c or so if I'm running something heavy. I have seen these going for around $60-$70 US but every now and then you can catch one cheaper, plus they have various others in the series. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JimAttrill 24 Posted February 18, 2014 I worked on some water-cooled computers in the past. They were big blue things with IBM written on them. Software AG in Darmstadt Germany used to push the water through radiators to heat the building I heard rumours that they were going to have a swimming pool on the roof and heat that as well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
