Athlon X2 5200+ 45nm 2.3GHz AM3 unlocks to Phenom FX-5200

[Golden Dragoon]

Unfortunately I *am,* and would really quite like an upgrade to my office / lan box... which is a problem since payday is still over a week away

MD put very little stock out on display in their shops, but I'm sure if you wanted to check a products details they'd pull one out of the warehouse for you to have a quick look at though. Never bothered trying myself, since I've always known exactly what I wanted before I went in!

If you do end up popping in to find out if they are unlockable, then give me a shout, am fairly close to Manchester, but too far to just pop there to check one thing and have no other reason to head there anytime soon

[killie99]

It's a AD50000DJ22GI which looks promising.

Used the following link:

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/3243...r-oem?&page=16

It's a CACVC AC 0937 EPMW which isn't listed but i'd say has a good chance of getting there!.

But that would mean forking out on another motherboard, some more RAM, and cooler. Not sure if it's worth it! Recommendations on a motherboard would be appreciated!

I've got one of these, unlocks to 4 core but isn't stable. Works just dandy as a triple core though and overclocks to 2.9GHz.

[Uriel]

I've got one of these, unlocks to 4 core but isn't stable. Works just dandy as a triple core though and overclocks to 2.9GHz.

My old 45nm 5000+ also wasn't quite right, with some dodgy cache on one CPU core. I got it stable enough to run IBT 20x and Prime95 blend 8 hours but it took a lot of vCore to get it there.

Not all boards let you select which cores to unlock. Asus boards do it but unsure about others. They give you a better chance if only one core is substandard.

On most boards with ACC, it's all or nothing.

[killie99]

the cheap ASRock (N68c-s ucc) board lets you select individual cores, great board for £30

[scaryjim]

Hmmm, that's very interesting Killie - may I will upgrade my office PC next month after all

EDIT: confusingly, there's 6 variants of the ASRock board each with slighly different features Also, microdirect currently have an AM3 / DDR3 790GX mATX mobo for £66 - very tempting...

*sigh* and I wasn't meant to be buying any new computers this year...

MORE EDIT:

Now look what you've started:

AMD CPU AM2 5200 Dual Core Athlon 64 Socket AM2 OEM(S031938) £35.29
Corsair memory 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) £34.00
Asrock motherboard N68-S3-UCC AMD AM3 DDR3 £31.50

Total: £100.79

That's quite an impressive subsystem for £100 even if the CPU doesn't unlock....

[Sputnik]

What is the GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a like at unlocking? does it support ACC ?

[Domestic_Ginger]

What is the GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a like at unlocking? does it support ACC ?

On NV boards its called NVCC for obvious reasons. tbh no idea.

Those asrock boards are good but they only support HT1.0 iirc. The cooler slot is rotated 90 degrees which is nice as the tower coolers are now pointing towards the back rather than up or down.

[Sputnik]

One day I might sort try to sort out the BIOS on my board and unlock the 4th core. so far I've only had it about 2 years.

[Homeking]

AMD CPU AM2 5200 Dual Core Athlon 64 Socket AM2 OEM(S031938) £35.29
Corsair memory 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) £34.00
Asrock motherboard N68-S3-UCC AMD AM3 DDR3 £31.50

Total: £100.79

That's quite an impressive subsystem for £100 even if the CPU doesn't unlock....

That is impressive and very tempting even if it's just as a system to tide me over until Bulldozer comes out and the prices drop a little.

The N68-S3-UCC definitely looks the best version of this Asrock board as it's full AM3:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...Specifications

and it's only £29.99 here:

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/A...ard_34252.html

Only supports CPUs up to 95W though - would this be enough if the 5200+ unlocked?

[Uriel]

I reckon my unlocked 5200+ at 3.24GHz is probably pulling about 95w (at a guess), as the vCore is similar to a 95w 955 (1.25v). CPU-NB voltage is a little higher than 955 stock though, so perhaps a little over. Pretty sure it's well under at lower speed though.

My unlocked 5000+ was a different story entirely. That was using 1.45v vCore for stability regardless of clocks plus a big boost to CPU-NB voltage.. Could easily have needed 125-140w .

[scaryjim]

Personally I'd look for either the N68-GS3-UCC or N68-GE3-UCC. The former has gigabit LAN rather than 10/100, and the latter has Gb LAN *and* 4 dimm slots.

But for a budget second or fill-in system the S3 certainly looks a reasonably well featured board.

[Sputnik]

The N68-GE3-UCC. is £31.09 from Digtaq (whoever they are). So still a cheap board.

[scaryjim]

The N68-GE3-UCC. is £31.09 from Digtaq (whoever they are)

Ditaq Computers. A quick poke round their website reveals head office is in Malaysia, although their alternate website is in german and their shipping prices are listed in Euros, so I'd guess their actually base of operations is EU somewhere (Malaysian office could be for tax reasons perhaps? *shrug* just speculating ).

No idea where they ship from but postage to Great Britain *starts* at 7.67 Euros, and they don't do free shipping until you spend > 500 Euros. Shame really, as the GE3 has the best layout for my mATX case

[Homeking]

Sellers of the N68-GE3-UCC do seem to be very scarce. Both MD and Aria have the N68-GS3-UCC at £33 though.

Aria postage looks expensive - £6.95 plus VAT. Worrying reply from them in response to a customer query on the product page though:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=42326

Does this board support 955 Black Edition 125W? Answer: yes it does no problem at all.

[Uriel]

Yeah - I remember some reviewers (maybe Anantech?) cooking a Gigabyte board by sticking an early Phenom X4 in it. Not great consumer advice there!

[Uriel]

Been running an x6 since around may last year, started random shut downs around end of November, pulled it and found the thermal tape around the power mosfets had started to liquefy and covered the surrounding area. There were also small balls of solder, it was obviously getting that warm the solder was starting to melt. I cleaned it applied a thermalright hsf, and it booted, but any sort of overclock and during stress it would shut down.

I pulled the thermalright hsf and again more solder had appeared, I then opted for a 550 be, which unlocke to tri and it ran this ok under stress, and this is after a puff of magic smoke coming out of one of the fets(upon inspection no visible signs of burn). Lambdatek would not rma as I had pulled the fets hsf, so I settled for running a quad in it. Thus the 5200 purchase, but it gave it up after only a short time.

cheers

Interesting - pretty much exactly what just happened to my Jetway HA08 Combo. First time I ran Prime95 blend after swapping out DDR2-800 for DDR3-1600 (not officially supported) it shut down when runnning Prime95. Wouldn't turn back on. After unplugging and repluggin the ATX and ATX12v power connectors - "pfft" - out comes the magic smoke from the VRM choke at the top of the board. Closer inspection indicates that the area round the mosfets looked dirty so somthing none-too-healthy there. It seems that this sort of thing is very common for motherboards with 4+1 phase vrm for X4 and x6 cpus.

Everything's back up and running in a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3. Interestingly when it died I was in the middle of an email discussion with Jetway technical support regarding RAM compatibility and they've indicated I might be able to RMA it, despite bing out of the warranty period and them knowing I've run the FSB over the specified speed. Will have to see how that goes.