Test: AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR

Test & overclocking

The testmachine consists of the following:

o Asus M4A79T-Deluxe
o AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR
o Patriot - 2x1024MB DDR3, PC12800 DDR1600, CAS 7-7-7-18
o ThermalTake Toughpower 850w

Finally we got it running, after several hardware and BIOS problems. BIOS now recognizes the CPU, and the fun part can begin.

I finally got my setup running on my terrace with the necessary isolation.

Here are the first pictures of liquid nitrogen in my new CPU container, and I have to say that it is not like any container I have seen before.

Notice the forming of ice on the container as the temperature drops.

As clever as Express Gate can be in every day use, just as annoying it can be after every BIOS reset.

More ice pictures, and pictures of an alternative way of mounting my fan. Time to turn up the voltage in BIOS so we can clock on my TWKR.

Erhm, okay? Let us try to boot Windows again.... Still the same.

The error turned out to be from the volt regulations in the BIOS, which I am very confused about.

My LN2 container is starting to get rather small, so I decided to stop here. Just a few pictures of the defreezing process.

And then the result:

The result is, even though it is not exactly bad, made with room for inprovements. The version of Windows Vista used, leaves alot to wish for regarding performance and stability. Besides there was a bug, which I could not exactly locate, where Windows made a boot error every time the CPU volt settings were changed in BIOS.

Furthermore it did cost me quite a few error runs to find out, that AOD can not get above 31.5x in multi, but that is not a common problem. It is not exactly because this articles is overflowing with results, but that is due to some ram problems, and the fact that I do not have a graphics card worthy of my TWKR. Therefore I will update this article from time to time, as I get access to some better hardware and ofcourse some more LN2

Summary on the next page.