AMD CPU/Motherboard Prize Build

[slippy]

Introduction

Hi there! It's your week #3 contest winner slippy here to share my upgrade journey.
Thanks again to HardwareCanucks, AMD and NCIX for the prizes!



Here is what I upgraded:

CPU: AMD Athlon X3 440 --> AMD A10 5800K
MOBO: Asus M4A78LT-M LE --> MSI FM2-A55M-E33

Before and After:

Installation

The new MSI motherboard is much smaller than my old Asus. As a result, sacrifices had to made in terms of board layout. The first roadblock I hit was that the SATA ports were situated right under the video card slot. Since I have a double-slotted GTS 450 the ports are effectively blocked off. Luckily I have two right-angled cables. However, due to the orientation of the ports, I can't connect more than two devices. This is unfortunate as I have two hard drives and a DVD drive (not connected).

A small annoyance is the case fan header. On my old board it was located on the left side of the motherboard. This worked perfectly for me because I connected the rear exhaust case fan. On the new board the fan connector is on the right side, making cable management more difficult.

System Benchmarks

Conclusion

[slippy]

Maybe I should have posted this in reviews or worklogs.

Does anyone know if I can connect more SATA cables with my setup?
Does a cable exist that caps all four of those ports and have cables coming out?

[Fudd Rucker]

Are you running stock clocks with that new chip?

[slippy]

Yes, for now. Would I need new RAM to overclock?

[Fudd Rucker]

Not necessarily as you have a K version of the chip so its just a matter of changing the multi and possibly a few voltage tweaks. But from what I have read overclocking the ram really makes these chips shine.

[Alwaysrun]

Great to see someone winning something that they actually need and appreciate. I also got a chuckle out of the way you framed your build log as a short review. Congratulations once again Slippy and thanks for sharing.

[slippy]

Originally Posted by Fudd Rucker

Not necessarily as you have a K version of the chip so its just a matter of changing the multi and possibly a few voltage tweaks. But from what I have read overclocking the ram really makes these chips shine.

I'll try the motherboard's "1 sec overclocking OC genie II" feature.

Originally Posted by Alwaysrun

Great to see someone winning something that they actually need and appreciate. I also got a chuckle out of the way you framed your build log as a short review. Congratulations once again Slippy and thanks for sharing.

I tried to copy HWC's review format

[Bungwirez]

Originally Posted by slippy

Does a cable exist that caps all four of those ports and have cables coming out?

there's something like this: NZXT :: Unique. Unprecendented. Inspired - CB-SATA44P Product Detail

[slippy]

Overclocking Results

Using the motherboard's "1 Sec Overclocking OC Genie II" the CPU was overclocked from 3.8 Ghz to 4.0 GHz.
I'm not sure why CPU-Z is reporting 200 MHz more for both values.

[Bond007]

The auto OC doesn't look that great to me, as it raised vCore a touch and only bumped the frequency 5 mhz. (5x40=200mhz OC). I would say either:

A. drop your ram multiplier by one in case its holding up your overclock
B. Put everything back to stock and just bump the multiplier to 42 (I would think it should maintain 4.2ghz on stock voltage no problem...maybe even a bit more).

Keep in mind you are on the stock cooler, so monitor temps and keep them in check (especially with a raised voltage).