Phenom II Overclocking
It has been quite a while coming, but AMD fans can once again put together a screaming overclocking system with Phenom II. There are two apparent CPU candidates for the Phenom II OC system. The obvious choice might appear to be the 940BE, but the new 720BE has many charms at a lower price. Personally we would prefer the upcoming 945BE as the CPU for a monster Phenom II OC system, but that CPU is not currently available though it should appear beginning in April. For those reasons the 720BE is the heart of the Phenom II OC system.
As discussed in many overclocking articles here, there are normally two types of overclockers. First are those who overclock for value, which are those that select cheaper parts rated at lower specs for their ability to overclock to much higher performance levels. Second, there is the overclocker who is trying to reach the highest overclock possible, and who usually chooses the highest priced and higher-performance parts to overclock even further. This last group should likely wait for the 945BE for the flexibility if nothing else.
Generally, parts were selected because they are a good value that becomes an outstanding value when overclocked. Since the newer Phenom II processors, like the 720BE, support either DDR3 or DDR2 there are two Phenom II Overclocking systems - DDR3 and DDR2. They only differ in the motherboard and memory choice.
The choice of the $145 Phenom X3 720BE for the Overclocking System pushes our OC perspective toward the value side of the overclocking equation. That means we have paired the 720 with a new DDR3 $135 motherboard instead of the very best $200 ASUS M4A79 Deluxe. It also means we matched the Full HD monitor with a cheaper video card that can deliver performance as good as you will likely get on a 1920x1080 monitor. It makes little sense to suggest a higher performing video card or CF or SLI graphics system if you can only see the better performance on a 30" monitor that is not part of this system.
Phenom II DDR3 Overclocking PC | ||
Hardware | Component | Price |
Processor | AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE (2.8GHzx3, 3x512KB L2, 6MB L3 Cache) | $145 |
Cooling | Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler - Retail | $40 |
Video | MSI R4850-512M OC Radeon HD 4850 512MB ($30 Rebate) | $125 |
Motherboard | Asus M4A78T-E | $135 |
Memory | OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Model OCZ3RPR16004GK ($40 Rebate) | $65 |
Hard Drive | Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB | $100 |
Optical Drive | LG BD/HD DVD / 16x DVD+/- RW GGC-H20L - Retail | $115 |
Audio | On-Board Audio | - |
Case | COOLER MASTER Centurion 534 RC-534-SKN2-GP Black/Silver Aluminum & Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower | $50 |
Power Supply | BFG Tech LS Series LS-550 550W Continuous@40C SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ($20 Rebate) | $60 |
Base System Total | $835 | |
Display | ASUS VH222H Black 21.5" 5ms HDMI Full HD Widescreen LCD Monitor (1920x1080) | $180 |
Speakers | Logitech X-540 70 Watts 5.1 Speaker System ($20 Rebate) | $59 |
Keyboard | Logitech G11 USB Gaming Keyboard | $59 |
Mouse | Logitech MX518 8-Button/1 Wheel USB 1800dpi Laser Mouse | $40 |
Operating System | Microsoft Vista Home Premium OEM | $99 |
Complete System Price | $1272 |
Phenom II DDR2 Overclocking PC | ||
Hardware | Component | Price |
Processor | AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE (2.8GHzx3, 3x512KB L2, 6MB L3 Cache) | $145 |
Cooling | Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler - Retail | $40 |
Video | MSI R4850-512M OC Radeon HD 4850 512MB ($30 Rebate) | $125 |
Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H | $139 |
Memory | OCZ Reaper 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2-1150 (PC2 9200) ($15 Rebate) | $66 |
Hard Drive | Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB | $100 |
Optical Drive | LG BD/HD DVD / 16x DVD+/- RW GGC-H20L - Retail | $115 |
Audio | On-Board Audio | - |
Case | Cooler Master Centurion 534 RC-534-SKN2-GP Black/Silver Aluminum & Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower | $50 |
Power Supply | BFG Tech LS SERIES LS-550 550W Continuous@40C SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ($20 Rebate) | $60 |
Base System Total | $840 | |
Display | ASUS VH222H Black 21.5" 5ms HDMI Full HD Widescreen LCD Monitor (1920x1080) | $180 |
Speakers | Logitech X-540 70 Watts 5.1 Speaker System ($20 Rebate) | $59 |
Keyboard | Logitech G11 USB Gaming Keyboard | $59 |
Mouse | Logitech MX518 8-Button/1 Wheel USB 1800dpi Optical Mouse | $40 |
Operating System | Microsoft Vista Home Premium OEM | $99 |
Complete System Price | $1277 |
The last area to discuss is input devices, where we went with gamer value favorites in the Logitech G11 USB gaming keyboard and the MX518 8-button mouse. Both are very well regarded devices that fit well with the capabilities and concept of the Phenom II Overclocking system. If gaming is not your goal you could easily move to the $16 Microsoft OEM keyboard and mouse used in the Entry Phenom II build and get the complete system price down to $1194. If you will use your OC system for graphics and photo editing but not gaming, you can also drop the G11/MX518 and select precision input devices that better fit your needs.
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MadMan007 - Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - link
1080p monitor? Fail. We need to discourage 16:9 monitors.v12v12 - Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - link
HAHA completely agreed on that point... When will people get that 16:9 offers LESS viewable area than the (forced) antiquated 4:3 resolution? Nothing worse than seeing some over priced, LCD on a desk that's as wide as the desk but not even as tall as my old POS (still superior to any LCD out there) 20" CRT!letsgetsilly - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
Just thinking about going down the Phenom route because of its value. Thanks so much for this article, great timing!ET - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
The entry level was what I considered getting when I first read about the new Phenoms. Plug in my Radeon 3870 and it's a pretty decent system, and considerably better than my current Athlon X2 3800+ one.ilkhan - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
$150 for DDR2? Are you insane? You can get 6GB of DDR3 for the same price, and it'll be just as good.The whole performance machine is screwy, who wants to build that when you can build an i7-920 for the same exact price, with 50% more RAM and at least 20% more performance?
strikeback03 - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
Notice that $154 is for 8GB, 2 4GB (2x2GB) kits. So the i7 system would be down 2GB.But yes, at $2000 for a complete new build, I would be looking at i7, not Phenom II.
Kiijibari - Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - link
>But yes, at $2000 for a complete new build, I would be looking at i7, >not Phenom II.Depends, as long as you are not using the i7's HTh advantages (i.e. lots of rendering & encoding), I would choose the Phenom2.
It is fast enough and cheaper, thus you can buy a better video card, monitor, maybe even a SSD ...
cheers
Kiiji
strikeback03 - Wednesday, March 4, 2009 - link
The i7 overclocking system in their guide is $47 (2.2%) more expensive than the Phenom II Performance system. Both use the 4870 1GB, the i7 does factor in a discount on the speakers but given the falling prices of DDR3 you could probably jump to 6GB for about the same overall system cost today as when that guide was published. Unless you are quite sure of what your CPU usage needs will be over the life of the system, I don't see much reason to go with the CPU which is significantly slower in most tests.The0ne - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
It's strange for me to see the part of the community be excited about AMDs CPUs. It wasn't long ago so many out there didn't even want to give AMD the chance. In any case, it's great to see AMD back in competition again. :)just4U - Monday, March 2, 2009 - link
Well, you have to remember that while Amd was selling fine in the budget area there wasn't much to be had in (what I believe) the real money making arena.. 9X, 8X, 7X Intel cpu's are pretty damn good and while Amd had competing products it was really hard to justify those purchases. Out of their whole last years line-up I only grabbed 3-4 X2's (4800-5200s) and one X3 8650. Now they've cracked that wide open and are only really shut out from the highest end. (not a big deal for many of us as i7 is still out of many of our wallets reach)