Monday, May 25, 2009

Phenom II X4 940 installed in an Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe Wi-Fi Motherboard? Yes...



1. Upgraded BIOS to 2205
2. System refused to boot
3. Pulled out hair for 1.5 days.
4. Cursed self for bricking the motherboard.
5. Realized that SATA RAID got turned off in BIOS
6. Turned SATA RAID back on in BIOS
7. System booted up... Celebrate
8. Installed Phenom II X4 940 with HSF
9. Freaked out when new CPU was showing mid to upper 60 C at idle
10. Realized motherboard CPU temp sensor is not very accurate
11. Downloaded and installed Core Temp to get temps directly from the CPU
12. Checked temp again and Core Temp showed from 40's C (idle) to 50's C (load)
13. Frag away

4 comments:

ildron said...

hey, i'm about to upgrade my machine. i'm asking you because we have the same motherboard. here comes a lot of questions. :-p
I've been thinking buying a Phenom II X4 940 on my m2n32 deluxe motherboard like yours. does it still work well? i've heard that it will be very hot, so i guess i'll buy a new cooler (noctua nh-d14). is that enough you think? you have nvidia 9800 SLI on your computer, how well can you run for example crysis? can i run gtx 295 on my m2n32 motherboard or? what's the best graphic card i can buy for the m2n32?
how fast is your memory? can you tell me the specs on your computer? i want to buy the best stuff i can get on my motherboard. i don't want to buy a super new pc for a lot of money.

my specs:
asus m2n32-SLI deluxe
amd athlon 64 x2 4600+ 2,4 ghz
asus geforce 8800gts 640mb GDDR3
silverstone zeus 750W
corsair cominator twin2x6400c4d 2048mb x 4 (8 GB RAM)

(i've been googling like crazy before before asking you. hope you can help)

- tonichan
norway

ildron said...

EDIT: sorry, i typed in the wrong name of the RAM stuff....

I have:
Crucial DDR2 PC5300 2048 CL5 (667mhz). I have 8gb RAM.
I really want to have 800mhz and i'm considering buying something new.
(maybe I can overclock it, but I don't know how and I'm a little bit afraid to do it). :-p

James Filau said...

Some quick answers... The Phenom II X4 940 still works well but it still can run hot. It's winter time here so it has been running cooler but it was near it's max temp (62 C) this summer as it topped out at 61 C.

My case is huge (ThermalTake Armor Series) and I installed a massive heat sink (Arctic Cooling Freezer) but it still can run hot during the summer.

One comment on the heat sink I bought, you should be aware that the orientation of the fan on the heat sink is such that the fan points towards the bottom or top of case. My case is very well vented so it's not a big deal for me.

I still need to replace the TIM with Arctic Silver so that may drop the temperature a few degrees.

I don't have Crysis so I can't tell you how the video cards perform with it. You can buy any PCIE card you like, just make sure your power supply can provide enough wattage for your entire system if you decide to do SLI.

Also, be aware that not all cards come with an SLI bridge connector. If you don't have the one that came with your motherboard you'll need to procure one.

I bought the 9800's because they were:
1)better than what I had (a single 7950GTX2)
2)inexpensive (great performance-to-cost ratio)
3)each occupies only 1 slot-worth of space which keeps nearby PCIE slots open and allows more air to circulate.

I'll have to checks the specs on the RAM. It's only 2 GB and nothing fancy. The RAM, like the CPU, is not overclocked on my system.

Takk!

ildron said...

Hehe, tusen takk for hjelpa. :D
Thank you for helping me! ^^