Jeffro's Project Phenom II X4 955
 

Parts ordered: Coming Soon!!!


AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3


ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard


2 X Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

1 for XP and 1 for Vista


Kingston HyperX 3GB (3 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX16000D3ULT1K3/3GX


2 X SAPPHIRE 100251SR Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card


I'll post a pic as soon as it all get's here and I have it together!


Arrived today!

http://i690.photobucket.com/albums/v...gPhenom001.jpg

http://i690.photobucket.com/albums/v...gPhenom002.jpg

http://i690.photobucket.com/albums/v...gPhenom003.jpg

Cant' wait to see how this turns out. Did you get you a dice pot yet?

Not yet... I'll be tied up with air then water before I get to dice, besides.... gotta buy this stuff a bit at a time.

This is great news Jeffro buddy. :D

WHAT THE BLEEP!!! Man I am jealous. 955BE, 4870x2!!! Can't wait for this. we needed some AMD love around here and I am still a good 2-3 months away from it.

LOL... Well this is just a stepping stone until I go to the i7 975. It will take a lot out of this system before i'll be able to call it AMD love as i've never been a big AMD fan myself.... but we'll see! I don't think it will come close to what you have in that 920 but ya just never know. I am a little excited though. :D

Your going to have fun with that system I guarantee it. Get the hang of the overclock then get a pot and DICE the hell out of it.

I do plan on doing just that. :D

Out of curiousity: why the triple channel ram kit? I saw some good kits of low voltage 2x2gb DDR3 in the 1600mhz range on newegg.

Just so i'll have something to start with when I move to i7. I've also got some 2x2gb corsair 1600 lying around here to play with.

Jeffro isn't one of those newbie young bucks that impluse buy, he's planning this thing out like an old pro :dj:

LOL... I guess the bug bit me good!


This project may be very short lived though.... Been reading a few reviews i'm not too happy with about this chip. Most say they can't get it stable even at 3.8ghz... and I have yet to find an after market CPU cooler for it.

Well, just put it under DICE or LN2 and see what happens then?

I still got an extra DICE pot I could lend yah for a bit ;)

Might just take you up on that brotha! :D

If you are looking for an AM3 cooler you might have a problem but an AM2, AM2+ or 940 cooler should fit. As for nOObs reporting that all they can get is 3.8....Remember also that comparing ghz when referring to intel/AMD you are wasting your time. The architecture is so different between them that it really is a nonsense comparison.

I did see the Zalman 9900 will work with the AM3 but I wasn't impressed at all with the 9700 on my 9650. As for the reviews on the chip they were socalled pro reviews you know like TPU, Toms hardware which I take with a grain of salt anyways LOL... and a few others but the chip was just getting smoked by the 9550 and the i7 920. Hell... even the x4 940 was kickin it's ass in some things LOL.

But if anyone finds some good reviews on it, i'm still looking... It would sure make me feel a lot better because it's too late now to cancel the orders. But one thing i'm not worried about are the two 4870 x2 cards.... think i'm gonna like them. :D

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233003

That should fit just fine, if the 955 you get is consistently beaten by a 940 than you can shuck out another $200 for a 940 and move on. It's not like an intel where a pair of EE cpu's will set you back $2500 or more...

This is true my friend! I was also looking at the Thermalright TRUE Black 120 as it also seems like it might fit.

Look at the first post! :D


Still gotta get a PSU and a good cooler before I can put her together though. Needless to say there will ne overnight shipping involved.

You can certainly put it together for testing with the stock cooler, get to it Jeff!

Well... I do have a Corsair TX750 PSU lying around, that might power it with one 4870 x2 on the board. :D

Hmmm.... This might just be fun. I just put it together real quick and installed XP x86 just to test things out and make sure all the hardware is ok...still gotta test out the other 4870 x2 but everything else is fine!

I went ahead and installed 3DMark 01 for shits and giggles and with no OC and one 4870 x2 I already bested my score vs my QX9770 @ 4050ghz with 3 GTX280s!! That score was 57848 compaired to 54343! :D

Sweet Jeff!! Now push out some mhz on that cpu and have a blast.

Sweeeeeet...

WOW.... The bios is totally different than what i'm used too, not sure what to do in there. I mean I see some things that are familiar but when you go to change something it has all these different settings but nowhere I saw what setting it's on before changing it...so not sure what to set anything to LOL.

Break out the Scientific Notepad and start logging default settings. Also, read that darn manual for proper cmos reset procedures in case it gets borked.

Scientific Notepad??? WTF...LOL, remember i'm new at this LMAO. I alredy read up on how to reset the cmos so i'm good on that bro! :D

This bios is greek to me though...gonna take awhile for that and how to really OC this thing. Might have to get a couple of you guy's on vent!

Well, I took her to 3.7ghz last night just messing with the multi. Didn't have time to mess with any other settings but I'm thinking its gonna be hard to get it past that on air going by what I experienced and what the reviews I've read say, but we'll see.

I hope to have some time tonight to play with it and mess with some more of the settings...might need some help with that lol. Real temp doesn't support the CPU and Core temp only sees it as a single CPU so don't really have a good temp to go by.... Core temp is saying 38-41c at stock settings so I really need to find a better cooler for sure.

See y'all after work!

I like using Everest Ultimate, it provides alot of detailed system info including temps, gpu/cpu/mobo etc. There's some free versions floating around and a demo version. Personally, I pay for it and like it as I move it from machine to machine and use it on all machines.

Do us a favor and run some baseline benchmarks at the clocks you've got so far. thx ;)

Don't forget to post some pics too ;)

Yeppers.... I'll post some pics asap.

I'm fixing to put the other 4870 x2 in after I take the other one out and make sure it works. After that i'm gonna try out my XP disc I made with nLite and see if it works and i'll start doing the base line benches.

Subscribed! :D

Well.... here's a quick pic of a base line 3dmark 03. Didn't do as well as last night for some reason... maybe the different XP?
http://www.overclockaholics.com/foru...2&d=1242097042

Still not bad Jeff. Now crank that biatch up and see what you can get out of her :D If you could, please test with different NB speeds too. I'd like to see the difference it makes.

Wish I knew how to do that...when I said I was a noob at this stuff, I really meant it LOL.

Here's a slight OC...
http://www.overclockaholics.com/foru...3&d=1242099475

Jeff, crank out some wprime, superPI and hexus PI for points ;) . They are all cpu based benchmarks and might bump you up some points. Besides, I'm curious how the cpu will fair :D

I'm working on it bro.... I did some wprime runs an so far it's down right embarrassing. I mean even at 3.7 we're talking high 11's.:o

Those 11's might get you points in the AMD category bro, hardware points FTW :D

That's actually better than you think! 2d benches have always been the province of intel and then intel dual cores. The place that chip obviously shines is on the 3d benches.

Sorry I haven't been active with this thing yet guy's.... been working double shifts the last two days. This weekend for sure though!