# Ion gets a FX8



## [Ion] (Aug 4, 2013)

So, what with the summer drawing to a close, I decided that now would be time to prepare for the cooler weather of fall.  And I just so happen to have a $500 Tiger Direct gift card that I won in a computer assembly race back in May.  Given Haswell's lackluster improvement, I decided to get an AMD FX8 setup to see what it's all about.  So, here I am.  I'm in the process now of setting up a new system.  Specs are:
ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2
AMD FX8350 (what else!)
160GB Western Digital HDD (bigger than necessary, but all I have is this and 1TB ones)
4GB G.SKILL DDR3 (not sure what speed)
Antec 650w PSU
Radeon X300 (?)

TigerDirect wanted an unreasonable $109 for a Corsair H80i, so I'm running on stock cooling for now.  I'm installing Windows 7 on it for now; I'm going to see if I can get a 10% OC out of it.  Then I'm going to load on Mint and WCG and see how it does


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## Deleted member 24505 (Aug 4, 2013)

Nice, were's the backplate gone off the gfx card? just wondered. Don't short nothing on the board with that hdd.


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## Norton (Aug 4, 2013)

Nice!!! 

You will definitely need better cooling- order at least a Xig Gaia and a pair of 1,500rpm min. fans before the end of the day. 

* The Xig Night Hawk is better but the Gaia is hard to beat for price/performance

btw- YGPM incoming


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## [Ion] (Aug 4, 2013)

Tigger: Lost it, haven't seen it since Feb
Norton:  Indeed, the stock cooler is exactly how we would hope for it to be--load and hot.  I do have a spare Hyper 212 or Gaia somewhere, I just need to find the mounting equipment for it


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## Vario (Aug 4, 2013)

If you don't go with the coolers you have, I recommend the Phantek PH-TC12DX as a cooler as the H80i is out of your budget.  Its $50-60 and comes in a variety of colors.  The performance is very good and it doesn't take up very much space in the case (about the same as a CM212).  Its like a better built CM212.  Comes with two high end fans and great thermal paste.  Really worth it.


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## [Ion] (Aug 4, 2013)

Ended up finding a Hyper 212+--only one set of fan brackets, but oh well.

Noob question--reasonable max temps or volts?  This thing seems to run much cooler than my i7s albeit with much higher voltages


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## Norton (Aug 4, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> Ended up finding a Hyper 212+--only one set of fan brackets, but oh well.
> 
> Noob question--reasonable max temps or volts?  This thing seems to run much cooler than my i7s albeit with much higher voltages



Try to keep it around 60C or less on the die (the higher temp listed using HW monitor) and under 1.4v on core voltage and it will crunch fine


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## TRWOV (Aug 4, 2013)

I've been working on undervolting the FX8350s, so far I've gotten one of them to 1.25v and the other to 1.275v. I think that'd get you the best watts/ppd ratio as the voltage curve is pretty steep with them.


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## Norton (Aug 4, 2013)

TRWOV said:


> I've been working on undervolting the FX8350s, so far I've gotten one of them to 1.25v and the other to 1.275v. I think that'd get you the best watts/ppd ratio as the voltage curve is pretty steep with them.



I did that a bit as well.

   I have one 8350 running at 4.4Ghz @1.34v (52-58C on air) and the other is at 4.2Ghz @1.24v (48-54C on water). Both will crunch happily at 100% load with near/over 6k ppd output. I have no idea on power use....


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## [Ion] (Aug 4, 2013)

Norton said:


> Try to keep it around 60C or less on the die (the higher temp listed using HW monitor) and under 1.4v on core voltage and it will crunch fine



OK.  At 4.4GHz it was doing 56C right before it locked up.  Currently it's just at stock--will OC later on.

I have now officially welcomed *Danmarkshavn* to my fleet!


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

These results are of course very preliminary as I just set up BOINC/WCG on the system four hours ago, but, the results are....looking pretty good


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## Norton (Aug 5, 2013)

Very interested in how well your FX does in Linux! 

   I am planning on moving the i7's I have over to Linux at some point but if your FX ppd looks good I may move one of the 8350's or the 8150 over to Linux.


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## t_ski (Aug 5, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> Tigger: Lost it, haven't seen it since Feb



You need one?  I can probably hook you up with a standard or low-profile one.


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

Norton said:


> Very interested in how well your FX does in Linux!
> 
> I am planning on moving the i7's I have over to Linux at some point but if your FX ppd looks good I may move one of the 8350's or the 8150 over to Linux.


I'm honestly rather astonished.  I am curious to see how it does on other WUs (CEP2, mostly) but I'm just running SN2S ATM because that's the (active) project that I've done the least on.  I will give FAAH a shot as well--it does pretty well on my other systems 

Currently, my 2600k and FX8350 are both on Linux, with the rest on Windows.  Once I see for sure exactly how much better Linux is, I may bring over the 3770k, 2700k, and 3930k.  We shall see 


t_ski said:


> You need one?  I can probably hook you up with a standard or low-profile one.



I have mo video cards than I can shake a stick at.  I have close to 9 G92 cards, some GT520s as well--nah, I'm just using this card because I already had it down at the desk and it's low power (no need for my GTX560TI448 for a computer that will just crunch).  I probably even have a generic low-profile DVI bracket around here somewhere...

Thanks though!


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## de.das.dude (Aug 5, 2013)

whats the organic stuff ?


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

de.das.dude said:


> whats the organic stuff ?



That is a terrarium with two hamsters in it--that is shredded paper that they burrow in


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## brandonwh64 (Aug 5, 2013)

Wow this is a sweet looking system ION!


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## TRWOV (Aug 5, 2013)

Norton said:


> I did that a bit as well.
> 
> I have one 8350 running at 4.4Ghz @1.34v (52-58C on air) and the other is at 4.2Ghz @1.24v (48-54C on water). Both will crunch happily at 100% load with near/over 6k ppd output. I have no idea on power use....



Well, mine are pulling 385w in total with sudden jumps to 400w (Turbo Core I think). This is with two Antec Earthwatts 380 (80+ bronze).


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> Wow this is a sweet looking system ION!


Thanks!  It does a very good job I think 


TRWOV said:


> Well, mine are pulling 385w in total with sudden jumps to 400w (Turbo Core I think). This is with two Antec Earthwatts 380 (80+ bronze).



I would be astonished if mine was drawing nearly 400w.  lm-sensors says that the CPU is right at 125w--I'd think that with the low-end GPU and single HDD it wouldn't be more than 200w at the wall.


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## TRWOV (Aug 5, 2013)

That's for both of them, so each one is pulling 192w


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

TRWOV said:


> That's for both of them, so each one is pulling 192w



That's much more reasonable.  Still nearly twice what the 3770k does, but also a lot cheaper.  I would be interested in seeing how a stock-clocked barebones FX8350 does....hmmm.


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## xvi (Aug 5, 2013)

Can't wait to see numbers. I like that AMD is trying new things, but this power usage thing is just.. a bit much. I'll take a die shrunk Phenom III X8, please.


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

xvi said:


> Can't wait to see numbers. I like that AMD is trying new things, but this power usage thing is just.. a bit much. I'll take a die shrunk Phenom III X8, please.



Well, we somehow "manage" just fine with 225w GPUs, so I don't think that 125w is too terrible.  I suspect that with a hefty OC it would get much worse very fast


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Aug 5, 2013)

My Fx 83560 is running at 4.4 on stock volts running right around 50c with a hyper 212+ in push pull. The ambient with 4 rigs is around 80f. It is my top producing cruncher with an average of around 5.5k.


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> My Fx 83560 is running at 4.4 on stock volts running right around 50c with a hyper 212+ in push pull. The ambient with 4 rigs is around 80f. It is my top producing cruncher with an average of around 5.5k.



I have a hyper212+ with only a single can (because I can't find the other set of brackets) and it's doing low-40s C at 4GHz.  Trying to do 4.3 or 4.4GHz (even overvolted) it locked up as soon as I started a stress test.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Aug 5, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> I have a hyper212+ with only a single can (because I can't find the other set of brackets) and it's doing low-40s C at 4GHz.  Trying to do 4.3 or 4.4GHz (even overvolted) it locked up as soon as I started a stress test.



I never did a stress test on mine. I just cranked it to 4.4 and let it rock. Haven't had any issues. I don't know much about the board you are using as I refuse to use anything newer that has Asus name on it. I am running mine in a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.1.


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> I never did a stress test on mine. I just cranked it to 4.4 and let it rock. Haven't had any issues. I don't know much about the board you are using as I refuse to use anything newer that has Asus name on it. I am running mine in a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.1.



I considered that one too, but given my success with the Maximus IV, P9X79, and P8P67 I ended up going with the Asus.  I'll see if I can get it working any better.


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## Norton (Aug 5, 2013)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> I never did a stress test on mine. I just cranked it to 4.4 and let it rock. Haven't had any issues. I don't know much about the board you are using as I refuse to use anything newer that has Asus name on it. I am running mine in a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.1.



+1 Just crunch on it and watch for errors... no need to stress test. Crunching *IS* the stress test


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## [Ion] (Aug 5, 2013)

Norton said:


> +1 Just crunch on it and watch for errors... no need to stress test. Crunching *IS* the stress test



I feel much better even running just an hour or two of Prime95 or LinX--but I'm not going to waste a couple days just heating the room to test an OC when it could be crunching


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## Jstn7477 (Aug 5, 2013)

Prime95 is junk anyway and I've had times where LINPACK stress tests worked fine yet the system would still crash on something simple. Crunching is IMO the best stress test.


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## TRWOV (Aug 5, 2013)

Take in mind, Linpack uses some extensions that boinc might not use at all. My 1090t crashed on Linpack at anything north of 3.8Ghz but it has happily crunched at 3.93Ghz for months without issue. 

Kind of how my QX6800 runs at 3.24 "Cinebench stable" but IBT kills it in the second loop. Never had a crash on any other program apart from IBT, not even boinc in the short time I crunched on it.


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## t_ski (Aug 5, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> I have mo video cards than I can shake a stick at.  I have close to 9 G92 cards, some GT520s as well--nah, I'm just using this card because I already had it down at the desk and it's low power (no need for my GTX560TI448 for a computer that will just crunch).  I probably even have a generic low-profile DVI bracket around here somewhere...
> 
> Thanks though!



I was just offering the bracket if you wanted one   I know I have that type of Dell Radeon X1300(?) around.


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## AnnCore (Aug 5, 2013)

I got the same cpu.

Had it OCed with no problems for a while and run WCG WUs.

Then I figured out how to have more than one Clean Energy Project working and got some random BSODs... 

Set the cpu back to stock and no major problems since.

Mind you, might also have something to do with the memory, as though WUs are also memory intensive, no?


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## TRWOV (Aug 6, 2013)

I've never seen memory usage go above 800MB in my linux crunchers.  The CCTV PC (Win7) has 2GB of RAM with 256MB used by the IGP and it uses 1.2GB.

If anything, WGC is somewhat I/O intensive (lots of small saves for checkpoints).


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Aug 6, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Crunching is IMO the best stress test.


I whole heartily believe this. I have found that if my rigs can crunch without issues for a few days at there clock speeds and also without erroring out wu's then they will run whatever I throw at them. Hell I have gamed on my Fx rig while crunching (forgot to shut wcg down). It doesn't seem to effect it at all.


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## [Ion] (Aug 6, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Prime95 is junk anyway and I've had times where LINPACK stress tests worked fine yet the system would still crash on something simple. Crunching is IMO the best stress test.


I just don't want WUs to error or send back ones that will be marked as invalid--my big reason for something else first 


TRWOV said:


> Take in mind, Linpack uses some extensions that boinc might not use at all. My 1090t crashed on Linpack at anything north of 3.8Ghz but it has happily crunched at 3.93Ghz for months without issue.
> 
> Kind of how my QX6800 runs at 3.24 "Cinebench stable" but IBT kills it in the second loop. Never had a crash on any other program apart from IBT, not even boinc in the short time I crunched on it.


Well, I'll give OCing a shot again later this week.  I suspect that I won't have the time test out anything until Thursday or Friday, but we'll see 


t_ski said:


> I was just offering the bracket if you wanted one   I know I have that type of Dell Radeon X1300(?) around.


I don't know if it's a Dell card, but Mint does identify it as a "Radeon X1300/X1550".


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## t_ski (Aug 7, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> I don't know if it's a Dell card, but Mint does identify it as a "Radeon X1300/X1550".



I feel like I've seem a billion of them...

https://www.google.com/search?q=del...5GsKbygHjlYHACg&ved=0CHQQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=963


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## [Ion] (Aug 7, 2013)

Indeed, it does quite look like that.  I've had an X1300 before, and they're awful cards for actually doing anything with, but for what this needs to do, it works just fine 

Now I have to resist the urge to go and buy another FX8


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## Norton (Aug 7, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> Indeed, it does quite look like that.  I've had an X1300 before, and they're awful cards for actually doing anything with, but for what this needs to do, it works just fine
> 
> Now I have to resist the urge to go and buy another FX8



That's a very tough urge to fight!


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## [Ion] (Aug 7, 2013)

Norton said:


> That's a very tough urge to fight!



Indeed--given that I could put together another FX8350 setup for less than $400, it is very tempting indeed 

Perhaps in a month or two, then I can


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## t_ski (Aug 8, 2013)

[Ion] said:


> Indeed, it does quite look like that.  I've had an X1300 before, and they're awful cards for actually doing anything with, but for what this needs to do, it works just fine



A friend and I refere to these as "heaters" because they often do little else but add heat to the Dells they came from.


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## librin.so.1 (Aug 10, 2013)

Awesome project, [Ion]!
(how come I didn't notice this thread before?)



ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> I never did a stress test on mine. I just cranked it to 4.4 and let it rock. Haven't had any issues. I don't know much about the board you are using as I refuse to use anything newer that has Asus name on it. I am running mine in a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.1.



I too dislike ASUS [dontask] and get Gigabyte mobos when I can, but with the FX CPUs, there's a bit of a problem. AMD's specification requires the BIOS to gradually downvoltage the CPU when it's load & power usage increases which can drop the voltage by as much as 0.17V (the most I've managed to see before crashing). This spec is kinda obscure and "stealty" (unexposed), so I even had this embarrassing thing because of it (that thread is highly misleading and contains info that turned out to be BS later, though). I haven't seen any mobo 'cept my current "main" mobo (ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z) to allow to control this "feature". This mobo exposes a deeply buried setting which allows to go around this spec. Which means when I got this mobo I was FINALLY able fine-tune my voltage & retain explicit control of it... *sigh*

For stress testing, I usually run the Linux version of Prime95. I first run its stress test on all cores for several to see if the "normal" clocks/voltages are stable and note the temps. I then run the stress test with a single thread and use a script to cycle the processor affinity of the thread every half an hour or so. This one is to test the Turbo/Boost/WhateverIt'sCalled clocks/voltages.


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## [Ion] (Aug 11, 2013)

I didn't realize that there was a Linux version--I'll check that out.   Perhaps for my next board I'll get a Gigabyte, but I have been entirely happy with my Asus ones, so we'll see.

And thanks, it does rather well


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