overclocking a 65W amd x2-3600

[Jerod Vandehey]

I recently built a new system. Nothing special is what I was telling myself. I will buy it as cheap as I can and then make it do what I want. I neded up purchasing an AMD X2 3600 (65W of course). It is using stock cooling in a Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 motherboard (t had good reviews and a good price on newegg ($79)! I also purchased 2 GB or pc 5400 Corsair memory which was also on sale at newegg for ($99). I then proceeded to install it and boot it up at stock clock (in the new Rosewill case) as I loaded the os right? I id get to have some fun once I loaded the Easy Tune software. It let me boost the FSB up to 257 MHz before the CPU couldn't take it anymore. I had boosted the core voltage by two notches and one for the memory at this point. Once I lowered it down to 245 MHz it is rock solid. Actually it was stable at 250 MHz, but I wanted to give it a little cushion.

The nice thing about the utility is that you can boost the FSB of the CPU independent of the rest of the components. I have it running Tanpaku now and it should be in the top 20 computers crunching once I get more than a week's run at it. The benchmarks are pretty good at 2300-2500 seconds for a pep3 work unit and 3600-4300 for a pep4 work unit. I really wonder what I could have gotten out of an opteron processor if this is what you can get from a stock 65W chip with stock cooling. Now is when we need Mitro for some more lessons... My temps are holding steady at 38 degc or 100F. Total cost of the build was 300 since I used an old 13GB hard drive and an older video card and a copy of someone's old w2k software license.

Happy crunching!

[mitchellds]

nice work. Yup those Gigabyte boards, especially the s-series are one of the best hidden secrets for price/power combo, esp for socket 939. I guess you got the am2 variety. I have one for my am2 x2 6000, and it rocks.

[Bender10]

Hi Jerod, Nice work. I am also using AM2 65w for my projects.

I tried OC'ing with ASUS boards (new to oc'ing) with not much success, maybe 10% or a little better. I began to look at other boards for my new boxes. I might have to give Gigabytes a spin.

[Jerod Vandehey]

I used to be a big Asus fan myself and if you don't overclock they are a very stable board. The reviews on the new boards I was looking at just weren't that great and once you got to the boards that did have good reviews you were spending $200 on a board.

I also did decide to go with the am2 variety to enhance my upgrade options when this processor does eventually give up the ghost.

[PcManiac]

those are some pretty good overclocks there.

I would also recommend Abit motherboards to anyone that is going to be building one. they are awesome!

[spikey_richie]

I have one of the MS59-SLI S5 - the overclocking app looks a bit nasty but is very functional.