Hey guys, I recently bought an AMD Phenom II X2 555 and a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P.

Just as I receive the packaging from the Poslaju delivery man, I straight away hook it up and behold!



It is now identifies as a Phenom X II X4 B55. Works similar as a first gen i5.

Share in the comments below on an OG hardware you are experimenting or running now.

P/S : Have not considered OC it as I am still running an AMD stock cooler

This post has been edited by 1depp1: Apr 10 2018, 11:43 PM

I have a 3 core that unlocked into a 4 core overclocked to 3.2 Ghz being my file server, using an 8 series chispet board (cant remember which brand). So far its doing a good job of being my file server housing software raid 5 of multiple WD reds, running plex (can do 3x 1080p source videos in real time or a single bigger than 4K 30 fps video that many computers simply cant play). It runs more than 1Gb/s of SFTP too (limited by client, i use SFP+ direct). I use a very low profile copper heatsink that does a good job cooling this.

nice one brah.. that's why it performs somewhat like a first gen i5.. Really happy with the price to performance considering I just bought this Phenom X2 processor at RM50 used.
Btw, you running this 170W chip as a full time server? Isn't that kinda high wattage?

not really, most of the time the CPU is at idle and its really the drives and cards that use the most watts, not to mention SFP+. The actual watt usage is quite low when measured using a wattmeter. Its not as bad as my overclocked 6 core xeon that can run at 4.3Ghz while using 150W from the wall. I use a wattmeter to measure the power usage. 150W when running a stress test.

The phenom ii is rated up to 170W via the 6 core variant. The 4 core variant will reach a max of 125W before you risk burning it with too many amps/volts. Power use depends on workload.

This post has been edited by System Error Message: Apr 11 2018, 03:27 PM

funny, my phenom II x4 955 runs at 125W at 3.2Ghz?

not really. Get yourself a wattmeter when measuring. For me a wattmeter may register 150W during a stress test, but it could also be accounting for other devices like ram as well which for the lga 1366 platform is quite a bit with 6 dimms.

Measure the idle load from wall, then load a CPU stress test and measure the load from wall. While this isnt really an accurate CPU measurement, its a useful one. However even when using full CPU to provide gigabits of ssh speeds it wont necessarily use that much power as power use depends on workload. I say useful because if you run a server you'll know the idle and full power approximates and also know if your PSU is good enough on the 12V.

Programs like hwmonitor can give exact wattage values if there are sensors for those but thats just for the CPU itself and not the whole system. You'll be surprised at how little power the CPU itself actually uses.

oh, okay bro.. but I don't dare OC my unlocked X4 B55.. Afraid that the unlocked cores are unstable.. haha

Depends, I monitor using the HWMonitor and CPUZ and it shows 125W if it is running at 100% load at 3.2ghz

never managed to check with hwmonitor as i run linux on it. File servers idle most of the time so theres no power issue here. I suggest you check your temperatures and voltages, for me i made sure to keep it below 60C at full load as i can overclock mine further but all processors especially massive ones like manycores such as GPUs and TILE significantly use more power as they heat up. With good cooling it will allow you to clock higher before it uses too much power or becomes unstable. Just dont push more power than the socket can handle. I dont think 125W will burn it out but typical mainstream CPUs usually target 80W and below but if you did overvolt it does significantly increase power. These AMD CPUs also dont have their thermometers right in the core as intel has.

My overclock needed only a little voltage bump. Not all the locked cores are unstable as AMD had huge demands for low end chips that they just took the high end chips and disabled the cores to fill the demand as they had lots of low end demand and not much high end demand. Realising their mistake, they improved micro code and bios to lock this but some motherboards had a workaround that is a hardware feature and this is well documented and can even unlock newer AMD CPUs as well if they have anything locked (but not with zen architecture as they arent backwards compatible). I can overclock mine much further but it'd then require more voltage and better cooling.

If you unlock and it doesnt boot, that means you got an unstable core and will need to bump the voltage. If you unlock and its stable that means you got one that was just disabled for demand. Sometimes a core is disabled because it just doesnt perform as well as they want when testing. When it comes to unlocking the chance of success is random. More chips were disabled rather than defective so you are more likely going to have success.

yeah, true.. maybe I have one of those good cores.. I will try my luck and OC it a little.. since I am running it for games.. hehe

wahhh 2018 still have ppl playing with phenom core unlock? my old cpu Athlon II X3 435 unlock to Phenom II X4 B35 still kicking ass until today..

sometimes, modern cpus nowadays it's easy to achieve OC, maybe tweak abit of RAM speeds, and that's about it. No challenge like unlocking Phenom, OC'ing it, and trying to balance out the voltage and OC the RAM abit further

yeahh like the old days..missed that moment..

Like they say, old but gold 😁