Posts tagged with Liquid Nitrogen Cooling
AREA 64 Presents: The TWKR…
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 11:29 AM
Loading ...When fast just isn’t fast enough!
What do you get when you cross extreme engineering with extreme overclockability?
You get an AMD TWKR CPU.
**WARNING: Extreme overclocking is an activity that should be carried out only by experts, using expert tools in a safe and secure environment. Use of extreme cooling methods and materials, including but not limited to liquid nitrogen, can be extremely hazardous. Extreme overclocking is not for everyone – AMD urges caution and disclaims all liability for any damages, of any type or character (including without limitation, system damage, loss of data or personal injury) caused as a result of or while engaged in engaging in extreme overclocking activities.
AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by overclocking, even when enabled via AMD software.
As they say, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
Matt Davis aka @dattymavis
@dattymavis and I ventured over to AMD’s “AREA 64″ with a newly minted AMD TWKR CPU to give it a testdrive under some extreme Ln2, and what ensued was pure overclocking awesomeness!
First, let me introduce to you the AMD TWKR:
AMD created a small number of limited edition AMD PhenomTM II TWKR Black Edition processors expressly for the purpose of commemorating the record performance feats with the AMD platform technology codenamed “Dragon” and AMD PhenomTM II processors. These processors are designed to reach the utmost performance barriers of the AMD Phenom II processor and operate beyond the specifications of typical production level processors.
Called the AMD PhenomTM II X4 42 Black Edition TWKR processor, it is not currently for sale, and not covered by AMD’s product warranty. This processor is provided “as is” and AMD disclaims any and all liable for any damages, of any type or character (including without limitation, system damage, loss of data or personal injury), caused as a result of or in connection with the use of this processor.
These processors demonstrate the sound engineering and superior process technology that is in each AMD Phenom II processor.
With our TWKR in hand and a solid warning from our buildings management staff, we headed across Austin to AMD’s Secret Lab – AREA 64.
The lab is fully stocked with all the hardware an overclocker could ever imagine or dream of, shopping made easy! Did I mention the 9,000 gallon Liquid Nitrogen tank outside with direct piping into the AREA 64 lab, yup, doesn’t get much better than that!
The motherboard of choice was a Gigabyte 790X.
4G of Corsair memory,
An ATI RadeonTM HD 4870 X2 GPU.
And a TWKR CPU.
Hmmm, why is it not posting???
After 20 minutes of no posting at all, we finally realized that the DIMMS had been previously whacked and were no good… Step 1: Always make sure you have working hardware!
Once we had working hardware, we fired it up and started the “slow pour” of Ln2.
The steps we followed are detailed in this blog.
Ln2 engaged! First thermos of Ln2 got us to -120C, time for thermos #2. The second pour brought us down to -139C! Time for more!
The third thermos of Ln2 brought our TWKR part down to -186.6C – Ah, overclocking bliss!
At this point in time, I let @dattymavis take over as he is the obvious safer one between the two of us…
@dattymavis jokingly dons full protective gear and looks like something out of an alien movie…
Now time to see what this badboy can do! We pushed the proc to a single core overclock of 6.42Ghz at a voltage of 1.725volts. This was accomplished just having Windows at idle. We will leave it up to the professional overclockers to push the proc’s with a heavy workload.
As for a 4-core OC, we achieved 6.2Ghz at 1.8 volts. Again, this was at a temp of -182F with a light workload.
All in all, we achieved significant frequency for a couple of hacks with unlimited Ln2.
The TWKR is not currently for sale, but is designed to make a statement to the OC community: Thank you to each and every enthusiast who continues to support AMD and fights the good fight!
Ah, the sweat smell of Ln2...
If I’m lucky, I may be able to give away some of the TWKR processors via Twitter in the coming weeks. I’m not making any promises, but follow me if you are on Twitter and you just might be lucky enough to become a proud owner of a TWKR yourself someday.
Also follow @AMDDesktop…they have some goodies for the community too!
Cheers!
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Overclocking 101 with the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 9:05 PM
(20 votes, average: 4.10 out of 5)Breaking it down with Pete Hardman in our secret lab
Does your PC have overclock potential? Our new AMD PhenomTM II processors certainly do, and to showcase this I ventured over to our super secret lab buried deep inside the bowels of our Austin campus to prove the point!
Picture long hallways of unmarked doors, the hum of machinery, people milling about eyeing you up and down, wondering who you are and why you’re there. Now imagine a dream job for an enthusiast, one where you have almost limitless access to silicon, hardware and time to hone your craft. This is the life of Pete Hardman, one of AMD’s in-house overclocking gurus!
Pete comes into work every day, passes through the “MI6″ type security barriers, enters his lab and proceeds to break records the world may never ever know about (at least that’s what he tells us)! All in a day’s work I say!
You may have seen some of the insane things we’ve done with Dragon platform technology and liquid helium, both at CES and with our friends in Finland. But for this blog we’re going to keep it simple and break down a ‘tried and true’ method for getting more performance out of your AMD Phenom II processor.
Check out his classy nameplate
Pete's work desk - a little unorthodox to say the least
Pete and I took the new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor and walked it through a proper overclocking methodology using AMD OverDriveTM software*. Here are the steps we went through in detail:
Overclocking 101
Step 1 – Figure out your goals, small increase or one shot big gain? Power efficiency, is it important? Going for a full system max overclcok? Find the limits?
Step 2 – Procure the right hardware and software.
Our test system:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition quad-core processor
ASUS M4879T Deluxe DDR3 Motherboard
4G Corsair DDR3 Memory
ATI RadeonTM HD4870 X2 GPU
Thermalrite Ultra 120 Extreme “TRUE”
2 – 120mm high volume fans
Software add-ons:
Step 3 – Prep system – thermal paste the CPU, mount your air cooling solution as per guidelines. Keep the thermal paste to a nice thin amount; this will be beneficial once the heatsink is applied and pressure is added.
Step 4 – Power on system and boot to the OS – Install AMD OverDrive software*
Step 5 – Change frequency; make small incremental changes to the systems multiplier.
Once you have made your frequency multiplier changes, run a benchmark like Cinebench or 3DMark® to check for stability. Adjust frequency using stock voltage first before increasing voltage.
Step 6 – Increase multiplier and redo step 5 until the benchmark does not complete.
Step 7 – Once you have established the ‘ceiling’ in terms of frequency at stock voltage, do a cold reset/reboot.
Step 8 – Now increase voltage; this should also be done incrementally. You need to know how the voltage scales with frequency. As you increase voltage, frequency should increase, but there is a limit where too much voltage will start to reduce frequency; this is the “Sweet Spot” – find it!
Step 9 – Make a small 50mv increase, now retry the benchmark at the same frequency you previously failed at.
Step 10 – Continue to increase frequency at the new voltage until you find a fail case (meaning your computer hangs or blue screens).
Step 11 – Once you have a fail case at the new frequency, increase the voltage another 50mv and redo Step 10
Step 12 – Once you have established a threshold on voltage and frequency, we now move to the Northbridge and we make those changes via BIOS
Step 13 – Restart and enter BIOS
Step 14 – Click on CPU/NB Frequency and make an increase; we went from 2G to 2.4G which is a large jump and ended up at 2.8Ghz.
Step 15 – Continue to make incremental increases until you have a fail.
Step 16 – Take the results from steps 5, 8 and 12 and put them all together into a total system overclock. CPU cores, Voltage and North Bridge frequency all overclocked to establish a high performing PC experience
Overclocking can be a lot of fun; I personally like to do a moderate overclock and leave my system at that performance level. Pete, on the other hand, is pushing the boundaries of silicon every day. Chances are you are wondering what frequency we ended at, well, the results may vary, and what Pete and I achieved may not be representative of what everyone can do. With that caveat clearly stated, our final frequency was 4.2G on air without overclocking the memory. Not bad considering we did not spend a lot of time tweaking, we simply followed the steps above that delivered a good 1 Ghz OC.
*And remember kids, AMD’s product warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, even when enabled via AMD OverDriveTM software.
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Hitting the Overclocking Stratosphere in Austin!
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 2:00 AM
Have you ever wondered just how much performance you can get from your current PC? Or, how much do you need to spend on a CPU vs. GPU? Or, do large containers of Liquid Nitrogen spewing vapour make your neighbours nervous?
At AMD HQ in Austin, TX in November we invited some of the top press in the world to preview our newest DT CPU, AMD Phenom™ II processor in a “Dragon Platform Technology Techday Event”. Here are the ingredients to a fantastic overclocking event:
- Lots of Tier 1 press from all over the world -- Check
- Cool Surroundings -- Check
- Lots of hardware -- Check
- Design engineers -- Check
- Massive containers of Liquid Nitrogen -- hehe -- Check
- Food, Food, Food -- Check
- A few pairs of welding mitts and safely glasses -- Check, Check, Check
And with this you have the makings of an overclocking smorgasbord!
Patrick Moorhead (AMD Veep of cool stuff) setting the stage before we unleashed our AMD Phenom II Processor overclocked to 6+GHz
Most gamers are satisfied with their stock CPU frequency, but there is the occasion, if just for pride or ego, a gamer wants to strut their stuff and showoff the headroom of their PC. At AMD we are no different; we wanted to showcase to the WW press the massive overclockability of our new Phenom II CPU.
Some of the most interesting conversations are had when a company allows their top talent engineers to converse directly with tech journalists, no marketing, no spinning, no positioning, just honest answers to questions and some crazy idea generation let me assure you!
left to right: Sanjiv Lakenpaul (AMD Senior Platform Engineer), ME, John Bruno (AMD Engineering Roadmap Strategist), Jeremy Laird (Tech Radar), Tarinder Sandhu (Hexus)
We were discussing the demo behind me - our competitor’s 3.2G i7 processor vs. our 3.0G AMD Phenom II processor playing CRYSIS and how a balanced platform is the right choice. Just considering CPU performance in a CPU centric synthetic benchmark is no longer relevant. A gamer has to consider their chipset, CPU and GPU as a holistic platform, in a lot of cases, investing more in the GPU and a little less in the CPU will deliver a better gaming experience. (I smell a future video blog)
On with the show! But first our own Sami Makkinen addressed the safety concerns around the demo and laid out the exact configuration and what to expect (little did he know, they would even surpass his world champion overclocking expectations)
Sami Makkinen (AMD Professional Overclocker and creator of AMD Overdrive)
“Have CPU, will Overclock” was the motto of the day, and overclock they did! Sami and team started with just an air cooler and achieved a monstrous 4+GHz overclock booting and playing CRYSIS.
But that was just the beginning, “Please stand back folks…6GHz is no barrier”
...add the Liquid Nitrogen and the 6GHz barrier was smashed!
A little fine tuning by Sanjiv and team prior to the final attempt
And in the end, everyone was able to witness a stunning 6.2GHz overclock of the AMD Phenom II processor playing CRYSIS and a further 100MHz to 6.3GHz booting…Just amazing.
This event was so successful we decided to take it on the road, we asked Sami to invite two of the world’s top overclockers to the US to personally take the AMD Phenom II processor through its overclocking paces and the result was awesome.
See the whole event …well worth experiencing!
…or watch it on Mogulus
We then took it even another quantum leap forward and participated in an overclocking event in Las Vegas going HEAD TO HEAD vs. INTEL, yes, INTEL! I won’t ruin the fairytale ending, but watch this video to see AMD Phenom II Processor break records and establish itself as THE KING OF OVERCLOCKERS!! If that wasn’t enough to quench your thirst for Phenom overclocking madness, AMD traveled to Finland to break even more records.
Moral of the story: invest in your PC wisely, don’t be fooled by the “$1000 CPU hype”, in most cases a good sub $300 CPU coupled with a ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series gfx card is all any gamer needs to achieve the best gaming experience, and when the few times to need to “drag race your friends” or “show off to the new, cute neighbourhood girl” you can use AMD Overdrive and overclock your AMD Phenom II to processor massive frequencies, all with a few clicks and a wise purchase decision.
Cheers!
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
(4.65 out of 5)