Question 1

Do I need to buy thermal paste?

Accepted Answer

I used it. I always use it. I recommend you do also. It does not cost much and will help keep your CPU from overheating. Go to Youtube and watch how to easily apply paste. If you are going to overclock the CPU get the best paste you can and maybe a better CPU fan. I hope that helps.

Question 2

Is this overclockable?

Accepted Answer

Yes that is what the K in the 760K means.  It has an unlocked multiplier so you can run the processor faster without increasing the speed of the motherboard or other components.  You will want to use an aftermarket cool though.  The one in the box is really only good enough to run the processor at stock speed for the most part.

Question 3

Which heat-sink would you recommend?  I prefer to stay away from the water based ones since this won't be my computer and won't be used for much gaming.

Accepted Answer

Well it all depends on what price range and case style your looking for. I just bought this exact CPU you have a question for here. I paired it along with an H80i Watercooler... the CPU runs hotter than my last, but the H80i is an overkill and keeps it under 40 degrees no matter what I am doing. You don't seem to want to go that route so here are some options based on a few variables I notice.
**Note: All heatsinks I post below are good ones that I use(d) personally.**

ZALMAN CNPS9900 D/F 140mm & 120mm Long Life Bearing Dual Fans Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler
-Provides great heat dissipation for it's relatively smaller size, is not too expensive, is larger heat-sinked RAM friendly, isn't really noisy, and will fit in smaller cases.

Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 140mm and 120mm SSO CPU Cooler
-Larger Heatsink with heat dissipation and cooling that rivals watercooling. My best friends rig is running this heatsink and it keeps his CPU at the same heat as mine. May not have room for RAM on this sides because of fans, lower profile RAM a must. Keeps CPU Extremely cool even when under gaming stress, it looks great, it is very tall and requires a wider case.

Question 4

I have had this CPU for about a week and a half. Since I installed it, it has been reaching extremely hot temperatures, North of 90C. I have the Legacy u3 case by Rosewill that does have limited airflow. I  first thought that maybe the reason was the stock cooler wasn't powerful enough so I decided to get a cooler master heatsink. Even after putting that on it still was only about 5 degrees cooler.

Also after about 2 hours of gaming games will start to shudder.
My specs:
CPU: AMD x4 760k
Mobo: MSI A55m-e35
GPU:GTX 660
Ram: 1600mhz 4gbx2
I have just purchased a coolermaster closed loop liquid cooling set up and the MSI A88m-e45 mobo hoping this will lower temperatures.
I am wondering if this could be due to lack of airflow in the case.? Thanks

Accepted Answer

90C? What are you checking temp with? No monitoring software out at the moment reads this chip correctly.
You need AMD Overdrive and look at the "Thermal Margin" under "CPU Status. The farther away from 0c the better.
Once you find what your thermal margin is you can make a better decision whether your case has adequate airflow to cool your CPU.
You may in-turn need to purchase an aftermarket CPU cooler such as the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.

Question 5

i don't know to much about CPUs and ago and i want and i want a new CPU and i don't know to much about CPUs so i was wondering if  this one is better then the one i have now which is a AMD A10-5800K Trinity 3.8GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Desktop APU or any other CPUs that are better then this one, and if it matters my motherboard is a ASUS F2A85-V PRO FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4)?

Accepted Answer

To be honest, the overall performance is within about 1% of each other as they are based on similar core microarchitecture and have the same base speed. The A10 has a very slight edge in turbo speeds (A10 = 4.2Ghz, the 760K = 4.1Ghz), but we have seen no noticeable performance difference. My son has a system based on the A10, and I have the 760K, we have the similar spec'd motherboards, and the same type and amount of ram. During  benchmarking, our systems put out basically the same CPU performance numbers.

Question 6

I have an aftermarket heat sink and I was wondering how far could I overclock this CPU?

Accepted Answer

I got my cpu up to 4.5ghz w/out much issue.  Just up the voltage a little.  You'll have to tweak it a bit.  Temps were in upper 30's idle and upper 50's during load.

Question 7

which would u do 760k or 860k? i have an r9 270x graphics card rog crossblade ranger motherboard r9 ram 2400mhz 8gb. 850w power supply the works i want the better of the two for gaming. I play tera dayz diablo 3 dragon age. need suggestions

Accepted Answer

860k has better performance and better tech inside without a doubt. I'd say get the 860k definitely. When you do though i highly recommend an aftermarket cooler like a cooler master hyper 212 evo or an arctic freezer 7 pro rev. 2, as it will run A LOT hotter than a 760k with the stock cooler.

Question 8

Does the stock fan come with pre-applied thermal paste?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it comes with a thin layer so when you pull the heatsink out use trepidation not to accidentally touch the little square of thermal paste .

Question 9

Will this CPU support DDR3 2133?

Accepted Answer

The question is... does your motherboard supports it? You will only fill that much frequency by overclocking this cpu. I am urrently using 2400 now... they are just moving at 1600 I wasnt planing on overocking but they were on sale super cheap. The higher frequency ram works this way... if you have a cpu and you overclock it 10% the memory frequency will also increment. The standard is 1333 so the ram will increase 10% over 1333... if you have a 1600 rams they will handle it fine... but if you have 1333 rams you will be pushing them 10% over their limit. Basically if you want to run your ram at 2133 you will need to overclock your cpu 57%. Bottom line it doesnt matter how high your ram frequency is... it will run on your board/cpu but just at the standard speed the board/cpu is ment to work. Unless you overclock

Question 10

What would be the best GPU to use with this that wouldn't be a bottleneck? I want to get a good GPU, but don't want to waste a bunch of money if it's just going to bottleneck

Accepted Answer

This won't bottleneck any current gpu for games. Most games are optimized for 4 or less cores today. So if your going for gaming your fine. I would recommend something else for a workstation (video editing, compiling, rendering etc). Like a 4770k Intel etc. However for the extra hundreds for the Intel you wouldn't notice a game performance improvements in most cases.

I just purchased one of these myself for a gaming system for my kid and so far we can max anything.

Hope this helps.

Questions & Answers