Tuesday 29 March 2011

CPU Overclocking With Ubuntu 10.10 Part 3

Cont. From Part 2
     Now that we have moved on from the hardware aspect now we are going to take a look a some tools that can be downloaded and used with Ubuntu. These tools are going to make sure everything with your over-clocked CPU is running fine. These tools will be able to be used in real time. What this means is that the programs will show you what is going on with your CPU right away.
     The first program that I am going to be talking about and that can be downloaded via the Ubuntu Software Centre is Xsensor. This a great program for letting you know the speeds of the fans that are in your computer. These fans will have to be plugged into your motherboard. Your bios will have to be able to detect the speeds of the fans for this program to work. This program will also let you know the temperature of the motherboard and CPU. With the CPU we are using the AMD Phenom II X 1055T the maximum temperature is around 60C. If your cpu is around this temperature I would say there a few issues that need to be looked at. With the over-clock I am using right now my CPU temperature is around 30C. The next program I would use is called Sysinfo this program will give you the same information as cat /proc/cpuinfo but in a easier way to view the information. 
     With over-clocking being able to burn out your CPU a lot faster then what the manufacture made it for, you will need to make sure everything is working fine. The biggest thing you need to remember with over-clocking is cooling for your CPU. Do not use the stock cooler that comes with the CPU, spend some money on cooling built for over-clocking. Also make sure you have a power supply that has enough power to give to your over-clock.
     We'll this ends my first ever blog I hope you found this full of incite about basic CPU over-clocking with Ubuntu. I will doing more post in the near future dedicated all around your computer and how to try to help you out.

Sunday 27 March 2011

Important Update

     We'll I found out that Ubuntu 10.10 was reporting the wrong speed. The proper speed is 2.94 GHZ this was after a update I did to Ubuntu. It is only a speed increase of .14 MHZ but it is still a increase. I am not sure why it was coming up with this speed but at least it is the right speed on the system now. Also I have update the systems operating system to Ubuntu 11.04 64bit. It is still not officially released yet but it is working just fine with the over-clock.

CPU Overclocking With Ubuntu 10.10 Part 2

Cont. From Part 1     
     Now that we got all the hardware in place now lets take a look at the motherboard's BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). In here is were we will be over-clocking the CPU to the stable speed we can get. To get into this BIOS for this motherboard when the system starts up you will have to press the F8 button. Once you get into here you will have to fist go to the Advanced tab. From there you will have to go the JumperFree Configuration option. Once you are in there you will see a lot of different options. What we are going to be concerned with today is the AI Tuning option. This option is set so you can easily bring the cpu speed up with out having to configure anything else. This is the safest option because if you tweak the other options you can break things pretty quickly. You will then be presented with being able to over-clock at 3%, 5%, 8% or 10%. If I was you I would start at 3% and then go up. The reason for this is to make sure that the system is stable at the speeds the over-clock gives you. You will then need to go back up one screen to the get to the CPU Configuration screen. Once you are in that option you need to disable the AMD Cool "n" Quiet Function. The reason you need to do this is because Ubuntu will not recognise the over-clock. This option tells the OS to only use what CPU speed you will need. It will want to bring the speed down when not in use. Once that is done you will need to back out to the main screen. From here you will need to save and exit the BIOS. Once your computer resets it will try to load Ubuntu if it does not then you will need to go back in to the BIOS. You will need to bring the over-clock percentage down. The reason this happens is because the the system becomes unstable.
     Once Ubuntu boots up there is a simple thing you can do to make sure the system is running the way you set it up. The first thing you should do is to start up the Terminal program that is under Accessories. Then type in cat /proc/cpuinfo this command will output something similar to this:

processor    : 0
vendor_id    : AuthenticAMD
cpu family    : 16
model        : 10
model name    : AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
stepping    : 0
cpu MHz        : 3464.972
cache size    : 512 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 6
core id        : 0
cpu cores    : 6
apicid        : 0
initial apicid    : 0
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 6
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt cpb npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips    : 5879.94
TLB size    : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate [9]

processor    : 1
vendor_id    : AuthenticAMD
cpu family    : 16
model        : 10
model name    : AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
stepping    : 0
cpu MHz        : 3464.972
cache size    : 512 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 6
core id        : 1
cpu cores    : 6
apicid        : 1
initial apicid    : 1
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 6
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt cpb npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips    : 5880.00
TLB size    : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate [9]

processor    : 2
vendor_id    : AuthenticAMD
cpu family    : 16
model        : 10
model name    : AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
stepping    : 0
cpu MHz        : 3464.972
cache size    : 512 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 6
core id        : 2
cpu cores    : 6
apicid        : 2
initial apicid    : 2
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 6
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt cpb npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips    : 5880.00
TLB size    : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate [9]

processor    : 3
vendor_id    : AuthenticAMD
cpu family    : 16
model        : 10
model name    : AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
stepping    : 0
cpu MHz        : 3464.972
cache size    : 512 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 6
core id        : 3
cpu cores    : 6
apicid        : 3
initial apicid    : 3
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 6
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt cpb npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips    : 5879.98
TLB size    : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate [9]

processor    : 4
vendor_id    : AuthenticAMD
cpu family    : 16
model        : 10
model name    : AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
stepping    : 0
cpu MHz        : 3464.972
cache size    : 512 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 6
core id        : 5
cpu cores    : 6
apicid        : 4
initial apicid    : 5
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 6
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt cpb npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips    : 5879.97
TLB size    : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate [9]

processor    : 5
vendor_id    : AuthenticAMD
cpu family    : 16
model        : 10
model name    : AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
stepping    : 0
cpu MHz        : 3464.972
cache size    : 512 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 6
core id        : 4
cpu cores    : 6
apicid        : 5
initial apicid    : 4
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 6
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt cpb npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips    : 5879.98
TLB size    : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate [9]


As you can see it is showing the cpu speed at 3.46.972 GHZ that is a overclock of 584.972 MHZ. This is from the stock speed of 2.8 GHZ (GHZ=gigahurtz MHZ=megahurtz). This is as far as I have pushed this cpu right now but I might look down the road to push it farther. In the next part we will be looking at software you can use in Ubuntu to make sure things are running fine for your cpu. Cont. in Part 3

CPU Overclocking With Ubuntu 10.10 Part 1

      Hey there this is my first blog ever so this is going to be a milestone for myself today. I am going to talk about the basics to over-clock your Central Processing Unit (CPU) and running Ubuntu as your Operating System (OS). The system we will be using for this test will be a Amd Phenom II X6 1055T CPU, Asus M3N-HT motherboard revision 3302, 8 gigs of OCZ DDR2 1066 ram, Corsair Cooling Air Series A70 CPU cooler, Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste, Thermaltake TRX-1000M 1000W power supply and Ubuntu 10.10 64bit OS. I will not be going into any other parts of the system because they are not relevant to over-clocking the system.
      The first thing I am going to talk about is why I picked these parts over generic parts. Remember these parts are what I felt at the time was the best choice for my budget and wants out of a system. First is the Amd Phenom II X6 1055T CPU from what I have read and have dealt with in the past. Amd runs cooler and is really good for over-clocking. When I bought the CPU it was also very cheap for a 6 core CPU for under $200. Next is the choice for the Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste over the stock thermal paste. I read that it does a better job transferring the heat from CPU to heat sink. I picked up the paste for under $20.00. Maybe one of the most important parts of the build is the Corsair Cooling Air Series A70 CPU cooler. The first thing I would have to say is that this cooler is VERY LARGE make sure you have the space in your case before you buy this. The cooler comes with two fans for a push pull cooling but can run with just one fan (I would highly recommend the two fans). I know there are other cooling types out there like water. But for myself I am to paranoid that there will be a leak and that will be it for the system. So that is why I stayed with a air cooling CPU. I picked up the cooler for under $60.00 I would "NOT" use a stock cooler to do over-clocking. Now for the motherboard the Asus M3N-HT. Not much I can say for this board at the time it was the only one I could find that would take all 4 sticks of my DDR2 ram. The reason for that issue was the fact DDR3 was being pushed out. It does do over-clocking very well and has a really good heat sink system for the north and south bridge. I was able to pick it up for under $250.00. The reason I picked OCZ ram was because from what I have read and was told they are really good for over-clocking. You need this because when you increase your front side bus speed for over-clocking you also increase the speed of your ram. You want to make sure that your ram can handle the increase if not the ram with start giving you errors in your programs. Now for the most important part of the over-clocking the power supply. I picked up a Thermaltake TRX-1000M 1000W power supply for the simple fact that I new I was going to need a lot of power. With all the extra cards and drives in my computer that extra power a over-clocked CPU would take is a lot. I was able to pick it up for under $250.00. I had a 650 watt OCZ power supply when I tried to over-clock a Intel CPU it fried the motherboard. I am glade it was only the motherboard and nothing else that went.
      We'll this is the first part of this write up about over-clocking with Ubuntu. I will have more up about this in the next day or two. Cont. in Part 2