FX-8350

[mauser1891]

Hello Folks,


I have just got done running some base test's for stability. And I am fairly comfortable that I can take my system into a overclocking scenario.
But I have come seeking wisdom and knowledge from others that have taken this path with their FX-8350's also.
I have chosen the FX-8350 for the fact I will be doing some transcoding, running atleast two virtual machines and gaming.
This has been my first build in about 13 years, but I have done a lot of reading and web searches while selecting my hardware.
I will not submit my story here, but I will merely state that I have battled to retain much as I can since 2006 and I am disabled via memory issue's.
Once again I state I come seeking knowledge and wisdom. I am a user of various operating system's and hardware, thus only interested in fact's.
But I do have to admit I feel some pride in my build for it was built with limited revenue that disability provide's. So with my intent and a little about myself. I move onto the system.

Intel Burn Test 2.54 results -
H80 cooler on High and 14096MB RAM; 37.1C peak temp, 36C average temp and 6.9C Idle temp.
H80 Low and 14096MB RAM; 39C peak temp, 38.1C average temp and 9.9C Idle temp.
Peak 4.1Ghz and Lowest 3.4Ghz core frequencies used automatically by each of the 8 core's. Auto 1.3875 voltage, with a low of 1.2875 voltage. Auto 20x to 17x mulitpliers.

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 -
Render: Direct3D11
Mode: 1600x900 8xAA fullscreen
Preset Custom Quality Ultra Tessellation: Extreme
FPS: 33.4 Score: 840 Min FPS: 11.3 Max FPS: 86.6

Furmark (limited info) -
Primary GA-7770OCGD rev 1 up to 109° C at 100% load, secondary GA-7770OCGD rev 1 at 51° C 30%

Hardware list -
Xclio 320, I had thought I had ordered the "touch" model.
KINGWIN LZP-750, PSU Platinum 80+ with overhead in mind.
Biostar TA990FXE, read many 990 mobo revue's pro/con but this seemed best price/performance.
FX-8350, actually scaling 1.4Ghz to 4.1Ghz load dependant.
GSKILL F3-1866C10D-16GAB R, limited BIOS setting change to bring it to 1866. Another set of Ares will be purchased this next month.
GA-7770OCDGD revision 1, dual Gigabyte 7770's CrossfireX with no issue's.
CWCCH80/RF, Corsair H80 water cooler.

Prior to posting I tried and found no thread via a FX-8350 or 8350 search. I was really "spooked" while conducting the "tests", except the Intel Burn Test since I knew that the processor would be protected via it's own thermal throttling. Furmark simply scared me since I did not do a prior read of the max thermal capabilities of the 7770's. My best recall that 100C is boiling point for water while watching the temp's climb, then hold at 109C. This has been a great adventure thus far. I can see that I will probably venture into custom cooling blocks after watching those temp's rise.
Please note that most of the machines that I have built were for everyday office use. My first "over spec" system was a AMD K6-233 with a ASUS P5A where I changed the FSB from 66Mhz to 100Mhz with a multiplier switch to 2.5x so it operated at 250Mhz. My first distro was Slackware in 1998. First build was a Intel 386 with DOS and Win 3.1. I remember "Plug N Pray" and 33.6 dialup.
I will also take a moment to say that I am pleased that all the post's and replies that I have read here has made me decide that this is the Forum for me. So far everyone proceeds in a proper manner, unlike some other's that I will not name but seemed to have "fanboy/elitest" mentalities. So I look forward to others sharing and posting their suggestions for myself and others. As I will post in this thread my experiences with my FX-8350 as this adventure progresses.


Thank You,
mauser1891

[mauser1891]

Hello Folks,

Since I did not know the spec's for the stock H80 fans that came with it.
I swapped them for dual COUGAR CF-V12HP fans, and that I also installed them in the front case area for additional intake cooling.
I was considering some fans by Noctua, but price and watched a YouTube comparison video I chose the COUGAR CF-V12HP.
I just realized I had forgotten that it was in my build manifest on here.

Thank You,
mauser1891

[clone]

Once again I state I come seeking knowledge and wisdom.

pertaining to?

no offense but yours is not a system I would have built if overclocking was the goal, while much of it is good some components will not yield gains that alternatives could offer, the FX 8350 will do the job but for less coin the FX 8320 will yield much the same.

with regard to the graphics, dual GPU solutions are plagued by micro stuttering (when loaded) and weaker driver support than their single gpu cousins.

you've already bought the parts and to be clear they'll work fine but their were some avenues that may have been better suited given your potential goals.

[Hammer_Time]

Welcome to the forums Mauser1891!! ( not the year of your birth I assume! )

I will also take a moment to say that I am pleased that all the post's and replies that I have read here has made me decide that this is the Forum for me. So far everyone proceeds in a proper manner, unlike some other's that I will not name but seemed to have "fanboy/elitest" mentalities. So I look forward to others sharing and posting their suggestions for myself and others. As I will post in this thread my experiences with my FX-8350 as this adventure progresses.

Thanks, I suppose we must be doing something "right" here in general then, always nice to hear positive feedback!

Clone - the reason he chose to buy the FX-8350 is this:

Hello Folks,
I have just got done running some base test's for stability. And I am fairly comfortable that I can take my system into a overclocking scenario.
But I have come seeking wisdom and knowledge from others that have taken this path with their FX-8350's also.
I have chosen the FX-8350 for the fact I will be doing some transcoding, running at least two virtual machines and gaming.

So he wanted the 8 cores for transcoding and doing heavy multitasking ( running two virtual machines whilst gaming etc. ). The FX octacores are good at this of course...

While micro-stutter is an issue for some people using Crossfire ( or SLi ) , it is not all that noticeable for others... he seems happy with his dual 7770's in Xfire mode. They will struggle in demanding games like Crysis 3 ( lowest fps scenario in heavy scenes ) , but the average fps will be decent.

Also remember he states that he is on Disability and thus on a limited fixed budget, so he bought the best he could afford given his income...not all of us are able to buy a GTX 680 or HD 7970 at will...

Clone mentions buying the cheaper 8320 as it can easily be overclocked to 8350 levels which is true, but remember this is not a request for advice on what to buy, he has ALREADY bought the system ( thus all the reports on temps and performance on it in his post ), he is simply seeking advice on how best to overclock it to the maximum here...

[mauser1891]

Hello X-bit Guru,

I come to start my adventure into overclocking my FX-8350, thus "And I am fairly comfortable that I can take my system into a overclocking scenario."
As for my 7770's I have not encountered any micro stuttering and have performed very well. The FX-8320 was another that I had considered, but held firm in my choice.
I hope my "die" is as good as yours.
How is your FX-8350 running? Which motherboard did you use? What are your overclocking settings? Can I get a link to your FX-8350 based system?
Which steps did you take in getting to your overclocking scenario?

Thank You,
mauser1891

[mauser1891]

Designation error. X-bit Guru should be clone. Noted.

[Hammer_Time]

See Clone - Mauser's post above just now confirms my own thoughts above...

BTW Clone just happened to comment on your thread, I don't believe he owns an 8350 atm, pretty sure he is still rocking a Phenom II - based system...

I am not running an 8350 either, just an old Q9400 overclocked to 3.35 Ghz, fast enough for my needs right now.

I am sure you read X-bit's review on the 8350 and their overclocking attempts here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... html#sect0

First of all, we retested our FX-8350 processor once again. We hoped to get a better result than the original 4.7 GHz. However, we have already checked out a few other FX-8350 samples since then and none of them did any better. So, it looks like 4.7 GHz is indeed a typical overclocking maximum for a flagship AMD FX processor equipped with an air cooler.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/fx-8 ... 350-oc.png

So, it looks like all FX processors on Piledriver microarchitecture, independent of the number of cores they have, can overclock to about the same level of 4.6-4.7 GHz with air-cooling. Yes, it is better than what we saw from the previous generation of AMD FX processors, but there is certain no qualitative improvement in their frequency potential as of yet. Nevertheless, overclockers should be pretty happy with these results, which are quite typical of 32 nm processors.

I would also like to mention that when we overclocked FX-6300 and FX-4300 processors by raising their Vcore to 1.5-1.55 V, they didn’t heat up too much at all. The temperature of our six-core CPU rose to 65°C maximum, while the quad-core temperature stayed at the ridiculously low 53°C. It means that you could raise the core voltage higher and achieve stability at even higher clock speeds. However, we cannot approve of this approach, because excessive increase in the processor Vcore may lead to die degradation and therefore this mode is unacceptable for long-term use.

A couple of points about overclocking FX processors in general...

You have to push about 1.40 to 1.55 volts to the cpu ( from stock 1.28 volts ) to get it stable above 4.5 Ghz ( from numerous reviews including overclocking on this particular cpu ).

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2055/14/

With only a few tweaks within the ASUS Crosshair V formula BIOS we were able to bring the AMD FX-8350 to a rock solid 4.9GHz at only 1.45 Volts on the core. We tried to push to 5.0GHz, but we weren't able to get anything stable even as high as 1.5 Volts. We didn't want to push to hard since we weren't quite sure how hot the processor was getting.

and so on... 4.7 Ghz seems to be the average "limit" for overclocking this cpu with air cooling, of course certain samples will be a little higher or lower than this median value...

Toms hw got their sample to 4.8 Ghz:

Using a 1.375 V CPU voltage and a 1.175 V northbridge voltage, I was able to get FX-8350 running stably at 4.8 GHz under full load.

Another thing to remember is that power consumption of this cpu increases dramatically once you increase cpu voltage to go higher than 4.0 Ghz:

Power draw

Power consumption wise we are a little reserved in judgement, the platform with this processor uses just over 100W in idle yet when we stress the CPU cores all at once, we peak well over 200W. That's not bad, but it certainly isn't excellent either. Overclocking wise we think the FX series will offer a lot of fun but power consumption there rises quickly when you apply CPU voltage tweaks. With a decent air cooler, 4.5~4.6 GHz should be a viable target to achieve, 4.7 to 5 GHz on proper liquid cooling should be achievable as well but will require a lot of CPU voltage.

If you don't have to pay the electricity bill where you live, then crank it up!! If you do, you should be aware of this ...

Even though you have a different brand of mobo than Asus, both use same AMD 990FX chipset so this overclocking guide for the 8350 should help you out a bit:

http://rog.asus.com/216552013/crosshair ... formula-z/

Personally I would not recommend pushing more than 1.40 volts to your cpu ( anything higher may shorten the lifespan of your cpu considerably ) just to be "safe". Many peeps out there have gotten their 8350 stable at 4.6 to 4.7 Ghz using between 1.35 and 1.40 cpu volts which seems reasonable.

Not only are you risking shortened cpu lifespan by pushing lots of power to the cpu if you use 1.5 volts, but it dramatically increases power consumption of the cpu ( when going higher than 4.5 Ghz )... so this is the range you should be shooting for methinks, you will not notice any difference in overall system "feel" between 4.5 and 4.9 Ghz to be honest, the thing is already hopping along quite quickly at 4.5 to 4.7 Ghz...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/1 ... 0-review/7

The total system power consumption for the 8350 at stock speed ( 4.0 Ghz ) is 213 Watts in their testbed, and once you oc it to 4.8 Ghz the power consumption nearly doubles to 364 watts, just something to be aware of...

http://www.behardware.com/articles/880- ... -back.html



At 4.6 Ghz their system also consumed 365 watts , while this is much better than previous FX cpu's ( non-Vishera like the 8150 for example ), it is still quite a bit of power consumption overall...something to be aware of...

If I were you, I would shoot for an overclock of 4.40 Ghz using around 1.35 cpu volts to achieve it, the system consumption is only 260 watts then ( this is only 40 watts more than the stock speed consumption of 220 Watts at 4.0 Ghz as shown in chart above ). So you get a nice bump in speed without a huge spike in power consumption, a fair tradeoff methinks...good luck and let us know your final results...

[Hammer_Time]

Designation error. X-bit Guru should be clone. Noted.

No problem, we posted at the same time above, and mine just happened to appear first...

I edited my long post above to include power consumption figures for overclocked 8350 and added more information, please check it out!

[Sauron_Daz]

BTW Clone just happened to comment on your thread, I don't believe he owns an 8350 atm, pretty sure he is still rocking a Phenom II - based system...

As do I, still no real reason to upgrade.

[Sauron_Daz]

BTW: Welcome aboard!

[mauser1891]

Hello Folks,


I am so appreciate the links and information that has been shared. And thank you for the welcome's. I had considered using a previous generation AMD processor, but initial price from one processor to the Vishera gen I decided that the FX-8350 would be best for a starting point and my intended use and exploration into mod and overclocking. If given the chance I would have been more than happy to venture into this with an Intel product, but logic of my financials dictate that I could not get an hex or octo core Intel.
I took a moment this morning to relocate a fan from my H80 and the lower intake fan to the top part of my case to balance my intake and exhaust fans. Which it seems that I had made a logical error initially installing the fans. So they are now configured with two as intake and two exhaust, thus a more balanced flow and has reduced the noise level. Though I still believe that I will acquire a front mounted fan control module that I can throttle down the fans. Unfortunately my Biostar TA990FXE motherboard runs the fans at maximum speed.
I am thinking that I may have to get back into my electronics studies and develop and make a thermistor controlled case fan cooling solution. Unless there is one in production. If not I shall post a solution in the manner and regards via a GPL type of license, and start producing them.
I should also state that I am no electrical engineer nor have a degree in any of this, but love to read plus make things with my own skills and abilities. Just as I have used a couple of "soup cans" to make my own "cantenna" which a couple of years ago I used to connect to a open AP about 350-400 meters away. The AP was located behind some buildings, so it was not exactly in the "line of sight" connection. Nor did I have the revenue to use the "proper" materials and connectors to make it. But I used common household materials that were around me, and I had sealed and weather-proofed it. If I am capable of finding the pictures I am more than willing to post them.
For now, I thank you SO much for sharing the links and information. I will now be reviewing and reading them today in my preparation's.


Thank You,
mauser1891

[mauser1891]

Hello Folks,


Now that I have remounted the fans. I think I will rerun Furmark and the Intel Burn Test programs to test if the remount's have indeed improved my thermal dissapation. Which I believe is needed prior to any further progression leading to a overclock scenario.
I have also forgotten that my current monitor has a 5 ms response capable controller on my EV442VA Vizio HDTV which supercede's DVI, but not DisplayPort. Which on some "120/240 Hz" displays use a controller that interpolates frames, thus are not truely "120/240" displays and are subject to higher response times and may not be usable. Downside is that my display is a "bottleneck" for my 7770's and peak at 64 fps, but I do not require anything higher than 60 fps and I have FC3, BF3, GW1, GW2, Operation Flashpoint (MFCTI) and ArmA II currently. I am so looking forward to ArmA III. I do only play at 1080 resolution with all settings at maximum with all the "bells and whistles" and have not suffered any CrossfireX issue's. Perhaps those issue's become relevant at high frame rates. But considering that about 30 fps is base motion requirement's. I think 64 frames per second are acceptable via the 1080 HDMI overall. Though "technically" in BF3 I have only "observed" a "spread load" of +/-40% between all cores at 4.1Ghz with an average temperature of 25C. I like using a 42" display for it allows me to observe and engage opposing forces whereas on a smaller display it is far harder to do, and that all I got to say about that.
I currently cannot find the link I am seeking to properly cover this topic with a reference, as is my usual habit to provide one. I am also a member on the AVS forum which I also read on display tech information, which is located @ http://www.avsforum.com
But I am off to rerun my testing software, and will post my result's here should the be beneficial to another member.


Thank You,
mauser1891

Pardon my side posting on the game aspect. I should really be posting that part in a gaming section, but wanted to provide a little information. Should anymore inquiries arise I shall post a reply in the proper section with a new thread.

[clone]

Clone - the reason he chose to buy the FX-8350 is this

I agree which is why I didn't suggest he use a 6 core ora 4 core or explore an Intel platform.

BTW Clone just happened to comment on your thread, I don't believe he owns an 8350 atm, pretty sure he is still rocking a Phenom II - based system.

my FX 8320 is in the mail.... literally, I'll be cooling it with air if I can, if not I've got 2 dual 120mm radiators along with a 1/2" pump and D-Tek water block .... but it is true currently I'm using an X3, my motherboard is an Asus M5A97 that will support the 8 core AMD's and will overclock via the UEFI bios and while I have used dual GPU systems I dumped all of them early on because of driver issues and instead am currently using an HD 7850 gfx card.

As do I, still no real reason to upgrade.

in all honesty the only reason I've decided to make the move is because of boredom.... looking for something cheap, fun and indulgent to do that benefits no one but me.

[Hammer_Time]

Clone - Cool, so you did order the 8320 ... nice!! That should be fun to play around with... let us know how far you can oc it once you have it running stable... Just make sure you have the latest BIOS version for your board so it properly recognizes "Vishera" cpus! :

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/archi ... 74341.html

Norton Oct 24, 2012, 04:17 PM

ASUS released updated BIOS files today for the M5A99X Evo and M5A97 Evo

* Note- M5A97 says the same:

M5A99X EVO BIOS 1604
1.Improve system stability.
2.Support new CPUs. Please refer to our website at: http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpus ... uage=en-us
File Size 2,37 (MBytes) 2012.10.24 update

These updates will (should?) support the Vishera CPU's. They don't list the "new" CPU's in the support list but this is EXACTLY what they did last time with the FX-6200 BIOS revision.

Don't bother to e-mail ASUS CS as you will continue to get the canned response that they are unsupported. This is due to the CPU support list not being updated. :shadedshu

( I know you would probably already have done this automatically before plugging the 8320 in your board, but your mobo does need latest BIOS in order to recognize the Vishera cpus properly as shown in linky above ).

Mauser - Thank you for your thoughts above, and you are more than welcome of course. I liked your story about your homebrew "cantenna" ( soup cans Wifi antenna ) to connect to an open ap!! I like to do these types of "diy" fixes myself to save money.. am on a limited budget just as you are... a little creativity can go a long way these days...

I can see your previous modding experience present in your posts here, you explain things quite well and with lots of detail, which is always helpful...plus you like to stay on topic and also give us a headsup when going slightly off topic... your posts are easy to read and understand. I ( am sure I speak for the rest of us here as well ) am glad you decided to join the community here! I also appreciate your honest disclosure about your memory impairment but to be honest I can see no evidence of it in your detailed posts...all of us have issues or challenges that we have to deal with in our lives and I am pleased to see you dealing with yours and being so forthcoming and honest, an admirable quality indeed!

Good luck with the overclocking... regarding your case fans and air flow, I was wondering if you keep your tower sitting on a computer desk, or does it sit on your floor? If it is down on your floor then you might consider removing the side panel completely and leaving it off permanently ( I did and it makes a big difference in keeping vidcard cool while gaming , a few degrees cooler ). I have original Antec 900 Gamer case ( 200mm "Big Boy" fan in top rear of case, 120mm rear case fan, twin 120mm front case fans ( to cool hard drives etc. ). I measured my cpu temp using CoreTemp and my gpu temp using MSi Afterburner.. I measured temps with and without my side panel on ( and all case fans running at medium speed, "high" setting was too loud as my computer sits on my desk beside my 24" monitor ) and found that my video card and cpu ran about 2C cooler with no side panel on at all... so I just leave it off all the time.. yes it collects a bit more dust of course, but I just use an electric leaf blower to blast all dust out of my case about every 4 to 6 months or so...works great!!

The only drawbacks to leaving your side panel off all the time are the increased dust, slightly louder as you can hear the fan noise especially if the computer is sitting on your desk ( not loud enough to bother me personally ) , and if you have any pets such as a cat that might stick its face inside your case while it is running to trim its whiskers so to speak..lol... other than that you can run a cooler system with the side panel off... just an idea for you...

Happy overclocking and look forward to your final results, cheers!

[Sauron_Daz]

Clone - the reason he chose to buy the FX-8350 is this

I agree which is why I didn't suggest he use a 6 core ora 4 core or explore an Intel platform.

BTW Clone just happened to comment on your thread, I don't believe he owns an 8350 atm, pretty sure he is still rocking a Phenom II - based system.

my FX 8320 is in the mail.... literally, I'll be cooling it with air if I can, if not I've got 2 dual 120mm radiators along with a 1/2" pump and D-Tek water block .... but it is true currently I'm using an X3, my motherboard is an Asus M5A97 that will support the 8 core AMD's and will overclock via the UEFI bios and while I have used dual GPU systems I dumped all of them early on because of driver issues and instead am currently using an HD 7850 gfx card.

As do I, still no real reason to upgrade.

in all honesty the only reason I've decided to make the move is because of boredom.... looking for something cheap, fun and indulgent to do that benefits no one but me.

Athlon of Phenom (II)?

[clone]

I'm sure it was a Phenom II X3, a 455 cpu bubbling along at 3700mhz (paltry 400 mhz clock).... my biggest improvement is still far and away been the addition of the Intel SSD.

p.s. Hammer Time, yep BIOS flash was first on the list.

[mauser1891]

Hello Folks,


Ok, a bit off topic though I admit the Japanese AMD girls above would make a much better case sticker. But can we get them holding a "FX" one instead?
My "plain jane" "FX" one is still in the container that the chip came in. lol

It hasn't been just a simple selection of random parts for this 8350 build. The 7770's can be used in A10-5800k builds along with the DDR3.
I'm not saying that 78xx or 79xx cards are not power efficient, but power efficiency and cost are were also determining factors. But steadfast on the FX-83xx decision, but the FX-8350 was the final choice for me with my usage determining it.
Which I can also outsource the Cougar 120mm fans from this build to those possible builds. I am looking at some thermally controlled case fans. So I plan on acquiring 6 of them this next month perhaps. Another scenario is that I could deploy them into a car audio build for active amp cooling. I have multiple hobby interests, but those topics are covered elsewhere.
I have chosen thermally controlled fans because I wanted something that would ramp up automatically, since I do not want to monitor them myself and have to do it manually.
Besides, I did not see any controller's that appealed to me that was on my vendor site that had good enough reviews with consideration of price/performance/failure rate/DOA.

clone, please add your FX-8320 build/upgrade here since it is also a FX-83xx series also. I did read many of the same kind of reviews covering the die quality aspects, price and performance with the over clocking also covered from all over the 'Net. And if you could provide pictures and/or diagrams covering your cooling loop system, that would also be much appreciated by myself and others who might also be interested in doing FX-83xx builds. As I stated from the beginning. Knowledge and Wisdom are sought.


Thank You,
mauser1891

[mauser1891]

Hello Folks,

On page to two of this thread and five posts not on topic of FX-8350 or FX-83xx overclocking.
Have a nice day. I'm done with this thread I think. EOL. Feel free to close or delete it.

Thank You,
mauser1891

[Hammer_Time]

Hi Mauser,

Sorry, that was my fault for bringing up non-related posts regarding AMD girls and so on. Was not my intention to offend you or purposely take the thread off-topic which of course is what happened in the end. Just trying to inject a little humour but this was not the place for it. I deleted the off-topic posts so we can keep the thread clean and on-topic. Point taken, won't happen again here.

[Sauron_Daz]