Question 1

Does the cooling kit come with thermal paste or do I need to buy that myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes it comes with some paste on the Liquid cooler.  Be warned, this Chip runs very hot even with the cooler.  When I got it, it averaged 50c at just idle temps with the cooler at max, which is very loud.

Question 2

The motherboard that is sold as a combo sale doesn't meet the power spec. The processor is rated at 220 Watts the mother board is only rated for 125W. Will this work and will it be reliable? I have been trying to find a motherboard that will support a 220 watt processor and have not seen one . This is the board recommended by Newegg as part of a combo kit The ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ AMD 990FX + Check out their site it shows the processor power level is about 1/2 of what is needed.

Accepted Answer

I set this up over a year ago the AMD FX 9590 Vishera 4.7 AM3 and the ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ AMD 990FX +.  I called AMD and Asus To make sure these worked together, and was told they would. I put this together with 16GB Skill Ram DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800), and a 480GB SSD drive.  This is extremely fast in turbo mode it does hit 5.0GHz.  I built this for my wife to use for medical transcription that she uses Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical Edition. It is incredible how fast this computer is her voice speeds are faster than all her friends can type.  Last we checked she was over 130 words a minute with very few mistakes.  Quite impressive!  This was well worth the price of the build, she finishes her work much faster than before with a 6 core running at 3.8GHz.  This has been in place for a year & a half, the liquid cooler is big and takes up a lot of room in the case. This cooler is filled and together already, so can't take apart to put fans and radiator outside case.

Question 3

What kind of Windows experience index rating can one expect from this cpu?

Accepted Answer

I use Windows 8.1 on my current build and the WEI rating isn't displayed as it is in Vista or 7 but to answer your question,
CPUScore              : 8.2
D3DScore              : 8.3
DiskScore             : 8.1
GraphicsScore         : 8.3
MemoryScore           : 8.2
TimeTaken             : MostRecentAssessment
WinSATAssessmentState : 1
WinSPRLevel           : 8.1

That is my Index score from the windows Powershell 4.0 however when i bought this product i wasn't quite aware of the related issues associated with it. I have to dial it down just to run the computer (without fail) every time i turn it on. I've been told it could be everything from the Cooler to the MOBO to the OS nothing i tried has ever given me a solid answer. The cooler that came with it was DOA and leaked fluid everywhere. So, though you did not ask for my advice I would feel remiss if i didn't say i wish i had gone w/ the Vishera 8350. If i can be any more help please let me know and i hope you enjoy your new CPU

Question 4

I could just be blindly overlooking the answer to this, but does anyone happen to know the size of the radiator/fan for the included cooling kit?

Accepted Answer

It is the size of a 120mm fan. But you attached a fan on each side of the radiator so it becomes really thick.

Question 5

Can this CPU be used with just the usual air cooled unit, such as the Zalman 9900a?

Accepted Answer

It would have to be a BEAST of an air cooling option, with a heatsink that would envelop the case. However, I would recommend a liquid cooling option to be absolutely safe. The temps this cpu puts out is definitely cause for an upgrade to liquid cooling.

Question 6

Do you have to use the liquid cooler or can you use a different fan?

Accepted Answer

I would not recommend a fan for this, the processor runs pretty hot at it's base rate. If you really don't want to use the fan then I suggest underclocking it, otherwise if you plan to run it at 4.7Ghz+, then I recommend the liquid cooler... in fact, I recommend a better cooler than what comes with the product.

Question 7

Is this DDR4 compatible and can it utilize 128GB of ram?

Accepted Answer

No unfortunately there are no DDR4 AMD motherboards available at the moment so if you want DDR4 you have to go with Intel ASUS's X99-Deluxe or the RAMPAGE V EXTREME are the top of the food chain right now . So far there is no eta on when AMD will drop a DDR4 board,I'm looking forward to it but I doubt that AMD will use the FX cpus on those when they do. Most likely they will use the A series for DDR4 Motherboards. I hope this helps you out

Question 8

So this works in any AM3 socket then?

Accepted Answer

The only motherboards that I know of that fully support the FX 9000 series AMD CPUs, e.g this FX-9590, are the latest revisions of the Gigabyte 990FXA boards, e.g. the GA-990FXA-UD3 (rev. 4.0) , the GA-990FXA-UD5 (rev. 3.0), the GA-990FXA-UD7 (rev. 3.0). They put more mosfets on these latest revisions to support the 9000 series AMD CPUs. You can check other manufacturers' cpu support lists but more than likely you will not find this cpu suuported. This is an AM3+ but 220 watts and not backwards compatible to AM3.

Question 9

Is the liquid cooling system good enough to stream and record with or will it over heat or will i need to buy a different liquid cooling system? (recording and streaming at 1080p at 60 FPS)

Accepted Answer

technically it depends on a lot of things like, how big your case is, do you have the right case fans installed, is your bios set up right, is you case loaded with components not allowing proper airflow and generating more heat, my daughters works great on any gaming, video editing, compression, etc....   she has a storm stryker case from cooler master 1000w ps, 16gb 2133 AMD high performance ram, a gigabyte mother board, factory overclocked video card, SD hard drive, Blu ray burner. A memory air cooler and 5 standard case fans and a 120 fan oh and the cpu with radiator and fans on each side flowing in right direction attached to top of case. Works great. hope this helps a little.

Question 10

1. which motherboards will this work with?
a. asus M5A99X EVO R2.0, and the asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 
Will it work with those 2 motherboards. I would appreaciate an answer asap' thank you.

Accepted Answer

Hi Floyd! Before I bought into this myself, due to the high $ cost of not only the chip; but, the MB as well, I pinged a query off to AMD, and here was their reply. Straight from the Big Boys, themselves.

"Dear Jon,
Your service request : SR #{ticketno:[8200561981]} has been reviewed and updated.
Response and Service Request History: Thank you for contacting AMD!
The Sabertooth 990FX is compatible with the FX 9000 series of CPUs.
In order to update this service request, please respond, leaving the service request reference intact.
Best regards,
AMD Global Customer Care".

I hope this answers your question for you.

I would like to add; however, that to my knowledge, The Sabertooth Gen 3, is the only MB that offers PCIe 3.0 support. This may or may not be important to you.

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