>I know I’m going to regret trying to type something out on this laptop. I always hit the touchpad and sometimes even jump up and delete entire paragraphs if I’m not paying attention. In any case I’m writing this on my laptop because I didn’t include my northbridge (MCP) temp on my monitor when I was overclocking. I had pretty good CPU temps but the northbridge got heated up way too high when the computer decided to come out of sleep for whatever reason and sit there baking in a 90 degree room with no A/C turned on.

Once I got wise (after it happened for like the 5th time) I would shutdown instead but it had already done it’s damage. It only got hotter after that and would freeze more and more frequently. First I could have the A/C on, then I could only play for 3 hours or so before it would overheat, then 2 hours. I wasn’t looking at MCP so the relatively high CPU tempts I assumed were the culprit. I clocked down the voltage, speed, everything back down to stock but the freezing / overheating remained. By this time I was watching the MCP and it was climbing higher.

The CPU was roughly 45C at idle and up to 55C at load overclocked from 3.2 to 3.9ghz – it’s a 4 core Phenom II 955. The board is an ASUS M3N-SLi with built in heatsink for the memory (memipe). I had it tweaked up pretty good, and the extra oomph game the ceiling I needed for GTA & Bad Company 2. I had no more CPU ceiling in those games, but it took it’s toll and eventually baked the heatsinks on the board. I haven’t actually taken them off yet. Instead I elected to sell my old RAM and CPU (a Phenom 9950 4x 2.6ghz) along with my old video cards (2 x EVGA 280 GTX 1G) to finance an updated board.

I replaced the CPU a month or two ago – AM2 to AM3 – which I was impressed was possible with the AM2 motherboard, but my thirst for power was too great. I still have my old CPU so selling that with the memory to someone else with the same board seemed to make the most sense. I have OEM SuperTalent memory – undocumented overclocking gaming memory 5-5-5-15 Dual Channel DDR2 @ 1066mhz so there’s even some special voltage settings to get those to work right, that was a good month or so of testing to get that solid but damned if they ain’t the most that can be gotten out of 8g of DDR2.

So I had to settle for a not so great motherboard because I wanted DDR3 & SLi. If I had two ATI graphics cards I would be fine, there are tons of offerings out there for AM3 DDR3 Tri Channel Crossfire but with what was available for SLi left me with a choice of SLi or Tri Channel DDR3 – I already have 2 x EVGA 285GTX 2G cards so had to say bye bye to my Tri Channel Dreams. I will do something in the future, and when the next video card choice comes along I will need to make my decision. I have been with NVidia for quite some time now and don’t plan on moving… AMD might have to go bye bye to make way for Intel and intelligent choice of what I want in a motherboard. If they don’t do something with the selection I’ll have to abandon AMD.

So the new system will be Dual Channel DDR3 with the Phenom II chip and SLi – got a new case while I was at it, I was tired of trying to make it all fit and cursing the case evertime I had to touch it. The stuff should come tomorrow, but not sure I’ll touch it yet.