AMD FX-8350 to the limit!

Duartico

New member
Sadly, my budget has been lowered. I have changed my build's CPU to a AMD FX-8350.
I need to pull as much juice as i can from it, but i can't afford a expensive cooler. Any suggestions?
 
The Noctua is the best choice for an air cooler but they are not cheap but until you can afford a decent air cooler have a look at the Artic Cooling Freezer pro rev 2 :)
 
Duplicate thread removed.

If you've only got a tenner or two, the Hyper 212 Evo is, as always, the best bet. Isn't going to get your chip to the limit though, and especially an 8350 will still run warm and the fan loud.

If you move up, you might want to have a look at the cheaper Cooler Master AIO coolers like the Seidon 120v (Make sure you get Version 2!) which will perform loads better, or invest in one of the massive air heatsinks.
The Scythe Mugen 4 is not too expensive and has amazing performance cause it's such a massive heatsink.

Also just wondering, considering you're getting an 8350 and want to overclock it, what motherboard are you putting it in?
 
Still choosing the MOBO, but i ain't enoguh of a noob to not check if overclocking is supported.

Posts merged - Please do not post multiple times in a row

Would the GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ be a good choice?
 
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no mate you want a 990 fx chipset, the 970 boards don't really have the power requirements for a overclocked 8350
 
no mate you want a 990 fx chipset, the 970 boards don't really have the power requirements for a overclocked 8350

Wrong dude. There are 4+1 990FX boards out there (Asrock's for example).

OP - whatever board you decide to get let us know here first. If I miss it shoot me a PM !. Personally I would try and go for this

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asro...3plus-ddr3-pci-e-20-sata-6gbs-atx-motherboard

Or this.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-...42-4ddr3-2pci_ex16-2pci_ex1-2pci-6sata3-4usb3

Which I'm pretty sure both have 6+2 fets and will get you to around 4.5ghz. If you're dreaming of 5ghz though you will need either an Asus Sabertooth, Gigabyte UD5 or Crosshair V FZ and they will cost you more than it's worth.. What I mean is, by the time you bought one of those boards you could have got an I5 K set up with a cheaper board.

The FX 8s can still be as good as the new I5s of course, but only if you are running Virtual Machines or doing very core heavy work.

noctua coolers for air i would think would be your best choice

Noctuas are not great for FX 8s. The core layout in the FX 8 means that the actual surface to be cooled is quite massive. For clocks of 4.5ghz - 5.3 (the best I managed on my 8320) it required a Corsair H100. I could only get the CPU safely temp wise to 4.9ghz stable but believe me I was living right on the limit. If my CPU Package temp hit 73c the rig would just lock.

Because of the core layout it's water you want and not a puny one either. You need at least a H80 design (double thick 120mm rad) or dual fan rad (240/280).

Oddly enough the Hyper is one of the air coolers that are pretty good for AMD. I still wouldn't expect to be able to get more than 4.5ghz safely on a cooler like that though. There's just so much heat packed into such a large die. Well, not so much overall heat because Intel are still the champs there, but just so much packed in ready to heat up very very quickly as soon as they take any sort of load.

Also this. The 8350 is a complete waste of money, as are every other 8 core FX. Get the 8320/8320 E. They are all binned on the same process as the Centurions and I have never seen one not want to do 4.5ghz easy, even an 8320. Of the two I had one would do 4.9ghz fully stable under a H100 and the other did 4.7. They are hideously easy to overclock, so don't waste your beans on the chip dude.
 
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Wrong dude. There are 4+1 990FX boards out there (Asrock's for example).

just telling him what i know from my experiances with overclocking when i had my 8350 dude, the 970 board i had didn't like to overclock the chip, where as soon as i changed it to a 990 board i could overclock like billeyo
 
just telling him what i know from my experiances with overclocking when i had my 8350 dude, the 970 board i had didn't like to overclock the chip, where as soon as i changed it to a 990 board i could overclock like billeyo

It has nothing to do with the chipset. Nothing at all.

This board.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/990FX Extreme3/

For example is a 990FX yet only has 4-1 fets so can only do about 4.2ghz.

There are some really nice 970 based boards out there with 6 phase delivery which will get him to around 4.5. For anything else you need 8 phases, and there are only a very small handful of boards that come specced like that and they cost £150+

Now granted, those uber high end expensive boards are all 990 based, but there are a metric ton of 990FX based stinkers out there.
 
ALX is right trip it all comes down to power delivery. Although on the opposite side of the fence 'most' 990 boards are much better than the budget orientated 970's


All in all if you want to overclock an AMD 8 core youll spend the money you saved from INtel on a better motherboard and better cooling. (and electric)
 
i didnt say it was anything to do with the chipset, i pointed towards the 990 fx boards because they usually come with sufficient power delivery
 
ALX is right trip it all comes down to power delivery. Although on the opposite side of the fence 'most' 990 boards are much better than the budget orientated 970's


All in all if you want to overclock an AMD 8 core youll spend the money you saved from INtel on a better motherboard and better cooling. (and electric)

Yeah the issue is board prices. Good ones don't come cheap, but due to Haswell and Skylake's power sipping cores you can get a good decent board for around £80 that will allow you to reach the high clocks. (on Intel)

It's a shame, because tbh? there are even fewer reasons to go AMD now but it's good for the masses.

For VMware and so on though AMD still offer absolutely cracking value. The cheaper Intel chips and most if not all of the "K" chips don't have the instruction sets needed to even run some of that stuff.

But yeah, even that doesn't justify the outlay because there's practically nothing in it when you go from 4.5 - 5ghz apart from a crap ton of heat you need to get rid of and fast. And the fets? crikey, they need proper cooling too. Back of my rig used to feel like a convection heater :eek:

i didnt say it was anything to do with the chipset, i pointed towards the 990 fx boards because they usually come with sufficient power delivery

They don't, though. I was fooled into buying two 990FX boards that were both rubbish.

Chipset just means SLI support, Crossfire X, SATA 3 etc. It has absolutely nothing to do with how a board clocks.

The only boards known to do 5ghz are the Saber, Giga UD5 and CHVFZ and they're expensive.

As I said to OP, just run the board you are looking at by us and we can do a bit of research and see what power phases it has.

Honestly, you would be absolutely amazed at how many 990FX boards are total crap for Vishera. They were designed when the Phenom 2 chips were around, so set up to supply a far less greedy 6 core CPU, not a 8 core nuclear power plant.

And that's the issue.
 
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They don't, though. I was fooled into buying two 990FX boards that were both rubbish.

Chipset just means SLI support, Crossfire X, SATA 3 etc. It has absolutely nothing to do with how a board clocks.

The only boards known to do 5ghz are the Saber, Giga UD5 and CHVFZ and they're expensive.

As I said to OP, just run the board you are looking at by us and we can do a bit of research and see what power phases it has.

Honestly, you would be absolutely amazed at how many 990FX boards are total crap for Vishera. They were designed when the Phenom 2 chips were around, so set up to supply a far less greedy 6 core CPU, not a 8 core nuclear power plant.

And that's the issue.

Edit. Apols for DP, no idea what happened there...

oh i know that there are a fair few duff 990 boards mate, an that there are some decent 970 ones too. just pointed towards the 990's more as i found that what worked for me.

used that very same 990 asrock board for a build for a friend with a fx6300, personally i wouldnt bother with the 8350 as the 8320e is just as good with a more friendly TDP......an it would probably clock just as high as the 8350, as the good 8350's where binned as 9370's.

anyway as you said if the OP posts the board he is looking at, i'm sure us lot here could help him out
 
The e-chips are more likely to get better overclocks IIRC as they're better binned compared to the non e versions.
 
I could recommend the 990FX Sabertooth r2.0 I run 1.5 volts through my chip and the vrm stayed cool.
ASUS is the best when it comes to am3+
You could get the M5A99FX EVO for cheap
 
A lot of it is going to depend on the silicone lottery. My 8350 was the first golden chip Ive ever gotten in all my years of overclocking and cruised right on up to 4.8 without much problem at all.

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 is the best cheap cooler and should be good for 4.4 but anything more than that and youll need a little more horsepower. The Noctua D15 is about the best air cooler option out there but my gawd is that thing huge!

There are some good 970 boards out there to be had as well. I just bought an Asus M5A970 for $75 shipped for my boy's rig and dropped an old Phenom II 1090 in it and overclocked it to 3.8 and its running fine. One of the best value options for AM3+ is the Asus MFA99FX for $120. Get one of those, a 8350 and a Corsair H80i and you could do some very good overclocking. My H100 cools my 8350 on low fan settings although I bump it up to medium during the summer months when me and my boy are playing co-op Borderlands for hours on end (our rigs sit side by side). An H80i would be plenty capable of cooling a 8350 at solid overclocks.
 
I could recommend the 990FX Sabertooth r2.0 I run 1.5 volts through my chip and the vrm stayed cool.
ASUS is the best when it comes to am3+
You could get the M5A99FX EVO for cheap

I have had both those boards and I got to 4.7ghz on my 8350 with 4 cores on the sabertooth with a noctua D14 cooling it but either board I would highly recommend :)
 
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