Is my motherboard holding me back?

Hardware Hub Motherboards
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I recently upgraded a few of my components over the holidays and I was wondering if I might need to go a little further.

CPU: FX4130 to FX8350

GPU: n450 GTS to GTX 950

Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43

Cooler: Hyper 212 EVO

I mostly play CSGO and was looking for a considerable boost in FPS from my previous 100 average on all low settings. I was a bit surprised at the lack of appreciable increase from my old parts. Additionally, my fps appeared quite variable instead of the stable value I was looking to achieve.

Attempting to fix the issue I delved into my BIOS and turned off all power saving features of my board (EUP 2013, C1E Support, and Core 6 State, CPU Smart Protection) and proprietary AMD features (AMD Turbo Core Control), while also applying a slight overclock (200 base x 20.5 multiplier). When I went to test the stability of the overclock via prime95 and CoreTemp/HardwareMonitor, I found that one temperature consistently climbed while the CPU was under load. Within HWmonitor, the TMPIN1 would climb while the torture test was running and upon hitting 100 degrees Celsius the CPU clock would drop from 4100 MHz to 1400 MHz until the TMPIN1 cooled off. Similarly, the CPU voltage would drop when reaching that threshold.

With this information I could see the bottleneck in action but I'm still failing to identify the unifying cause. Despite researching I'm not exactly sure which component of the motherboard that the TMPIN1 is referencing. I've read that the type of motherboard I'm utilizing is notorious for having bad VRMs and overheating occasionally so I decided to perform an experiment. I opened up the side panel of my case and ran a standard table fan pointing towards the heatsink on my motherboard. With this in place I found the TMPIN1 remaining stable at around 65 degrees Celsius while under max load and my CPU remaining at full speed. Unfortunately, my case doesn't allow for any fan configuration to push air directly over the motherboard heatsink.

With the information now at my hands, my question is do I need to upgrade my motherboard to one with a better heat dissipation mechanism or is there an alternative solution (BIOS setting, etc.) to the bottleneck? I highly doubt this is the root of my CSGO fps woes (game is just poorly optimized probably) but I'd really appreciate any advice and insight into my quandary. If its determined that a new motherboard is necessary, suggestions on which to buy would also be very helpful.

Thank you

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Yeah trowing a FX8 core cpu on that Msi board with only a 4+1 powerphase and analog vrm, is not realy a good idea.
THe Msi 970A-G43 has well known overheating vrm issues wenn you trow a FX8 core on it.
A mobo upgrade will definitely help.
However as far as CS go is concerned, i think that csgo is a bit cpu demending, so dont expect any massive miracles.

3 Likes
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Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the insight. :)

4

If you need a better motherboard, and you have a budget,
then i could eventualy help you with some recommendations.

Or ofc you could sell your cpu's and mobo and upgrade to intel for example.
But that would be drastic.

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I was considering around the $100 range. The Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 looks like it might be a possibility.

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That would be a sollid board, with a 6+2 powerphase digi vrm and 990X chipset.

Diffrence between 990X and 990FX is that the 990X has 20 pci-e 2.0 lanes,
and 990FX has 40 pci-e 2.0 lanes.
Since you only use 1 GPU, those extra pci-e lanes that 990FX chipset boards offer, is not realy interesting for you.

i personaly use Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 which is also a 6+2 powerphase digi vrm board.
But that board seems to be hard to get, and the M5A99X EVO would be better anyway.

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Alright, thanks a bunch for the help. I'm gonna go with the 990X one.

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Your welcome,

i think you should be able to squeeze a bit more fps out of it wenn you overclock the FX8350 a bit.
With the Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 board 4.5GHz should be fairly easy to reach.
But yeah like i said, CS go is realy a game that realy like strong per core performance,
so dont expect huge miracles.

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Are you still running c.s. go on low Running a game to low limits the amount of resources it uses. For instance in warframe the higher I put aa the higher my fps goes. If aa is on 4x I can get 100 fps put aa on 16x and I can get 200 fps. I lock it at around 120 fps because having double the fps of my refresh rate gives me a good bonus in response time.

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For the safety of your PC and your house I'd suggest upgrading motherboards asap.

1 Like
11

Ok I'll definitely try that out, thanks!

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Will do