XPredator X3 Devil Red Build

[suraswami]

It's upgrade time, wanted to play around with a FX and got the following parts:

CPU - AMD FX 8320 (used, bought from Johnnyfive)
Mobo - Gigabyte 970A-UD3 - Open box clearance from MC, throw away price
For OS - 120 GB MC branded AData SATA III SSD - brand new clearance item, bought for dirt cheap
Case - AeroCool XPredator X3 Devil Red (bought from Sneekypeet)

Carried over parts

Kingston HyperX Blue 4 x 4GB DDR3 1333 Ram
SilenX 4 heat pipe big ass CPU cooler
Sapphire Radeon 6970 2GB video card (to be upgraded - 7970 or 670 or 770?)
OCZ 120 GB SATA III SSD for Games
1 TB WD Black
Asus BD writer
Ultra Full Modular 600W Power Supply

Total Cost of Upgrade - $260

Old Game machine
Gigabyte 790GP-UD4H (AM2+ board)
AMD Phenom II X6 1045T
DDR2 800 - 4 x 2 GB memory
This will be repurposed as family machine and sell parts from current family machine to recoup some $.

Anyway new FX is clocked @ 4.2 Ghz (turbo off) from 3.5 Ghz with stock volts. Ram, HTT and NB clocks are at default. Will I get any improvements with tweaking any of these?

OS was reimaged from old Patriot TorqX 64GB SSD. Much faster boot and response times. Boots in 12 secs from 35 secs before. All programs open real fast now.

Since I moved from X6 to FX is there any patch I need to install specific to FX?

Pics to follow. Post your comments on any improvements I can do.

 

[suraswami]

Case:

Parts all assembled

Good neat side. Board's NB sink was pretty much useless, under load it was burning hot at around 90C. Pulled out old Vantec GPU heatsink with the little fan, modified it to fit in there and added a small fan controller to reduce the whine from it, now the chipset is at high 40's.

Rear fan is pretty useless, for now it stays.

Big ass cooler

Now the ugly side

Finished looks

Front Logo glows in nice White LED and there are few other LEDs around it that adds blink blink but nice looking.

Side panel see thru. Need to add few Red LED fans.

 

[suraswami]

Comments welcome.

 

[cdawall]

Looks good. Is 4.2ghz all that board can hold up?

 

[suraswami]

Looks good. Is 4.2ghz all that board can hold up?

I went all the way upto 4.6 but heat is my enemy and power usage exponentially climbs up. Need .05v for every 200 Mhz increase and it consumes 25 to 30 watts more for every 200 Mhz increase after 4.2.

What is the safe volts for FX and safe temps? Several monitoring tools report several temps.

@ 4.2 IBT finishes when run basic test, if I increase the Stress level to very High, CPU throttles to 2.9.

Using good old AS5. Need it to settle down for few days of heat and rest, then may be push more.

 

[d1nky]

keep it below 60-62*c fully loaded, and people say its not the volts but the heat. id stick to staying under 60*c or 1.55v if temps are good.

itll be tough to push too much of a clock on that air cooler, and ive heard those UD3's arent the best for overclocking. just find its limit and then drop back a little.

i like that red and blue look, i know it wasnt planned out but it works really well together. i like it!

 

[suraswami]

keep it below 60-62*c fully loaded, and people say its not the volts but the heat. id stick to staying under 60*c or 1.55v if temps are good.

itll be tough to push too much of a clock on that air cooler, and ive heard those UD3's arent the best for overclocking. just find its limit and then drop back a little.

i like that red and blue look, i know it wasnt planned out but it works really well together. i like it!

which software do i use to monitor temps? I use HWMonitor and recent editions are all broken, doesn't report individual core temps. AOD reports but again it's also old tool, is it good enough?

 

[d1nky]

coretemp shows all cpu core temps, think its down to motherboard sensors as well. just try a few out individually. i like hwinfo64 the best, the new updates are pretty good with rivatuner OSD.

 

[suraswami]

I found older version of HWMonitor to be reporting properly on the core temps, so for now using that version.

Pending - replace rear fan and add a small fan on top of the VRM sink.

 

[Batou1986]

I found older version of HWMonitor to be reporting properly on the core temps, so for now using that version.

Pending - replace rear fan and add a small fan on top of the VRM sink.

which version would that be

 

[Durvelle27]

I try to keep my 8320 below 60c and safe volts for Air cooling i would say below 1.45 or it will get real toasty. With that board i think you will max out at 4.4GHz or 4.5GHz. But nice build wish it was all blue though XD.

 

[suraswami]

which version would that be

1.19.

 

[johnnyfiive]

Awww yeah, looking good!

 

[suraswami]

Here is my updated Rig.

Gigabyte 970-UD3 --> Gigabyte 990FX-UD3
FX 8320 --> FX 8350
Sapphire 6970 --> MSI 7950 TFIII --> Asus DirectCU II R9 290
Ultra X3 600W Full modular --> Corsair HX 1050W Semi-modular
SilenX air cooler --> TT Water 3.0

Microcenter had Open Box R9 290 and brand new HX 1050W on the clearance shelf. Total cost after rebate for both $200. Couldn't resist so grabbed it and glad I did it.

Here is case getting cleaned up and ready for upgrade.

Here is pic of final build.

This R9 has been returned 4 times, no idea why, but it works well so far. But this sucks at OCing. I can't even get 10% OC on clock or memory. Furmark testing works fine but BF4 crashes.

Right now its at 1050 on VGA and 1300 on Memory.

MSI AB didn't help either.

Oh well good jump from 7950 to R9 290.