So, I actually did a dedicated video on core unlocking quite some time ago on my
NCIXCOM channel, but ASUS has actually
recently updated their core unlocker utility to make it even simpler. So,
Core Unlocking is basically taking processors such as the
X3720, which AMD has um what they've
done is they've actually Okay, I'm going to drop the camera here for a minute so that I can break the seal on the CPU box
here. What AMD has actually done is they
have physically disabled well not physically but through kind of a a
software trick they have disabled the uh
one of the cores in the CPU. So they've
actually got dual cores that are also unlock or locked quad cores as well as
the triple cores. So the 720 today basically okay here I'm going to sort of
stop rambling. The point of this video is to show you in real time how quickly
you can unlock the core of a CP of a CPU
in order to get better performance out of it. So today I'm going to be using the M4A889 GTD Pro USB 3 from ASUS using
their core unlocker. So ASUS has simplified the whole process down to one
button, a switch that you hit on the motherboard that will automatically
unlock any available extra cores for you. So here's my uh my retail 720. Just
going to install it in the socket here. So, lift up the lever. All right.
Where's my little triangle? I think it's going to be in that corner. Yep, there
we go. Okay. So, install that. Now, I'm
just doing a quick demo here, so I'm not going to bother Oh, my batter is dying.
That's going to make this a far less effective demonstration in real time.
Hopefully, it lasts long enough for me to get some thermal compound on here and
boot this thing up. So, I'm just going to apply a little bit of thermal
compound on the CPU and then I'm just going to throw a heat sink on top of it
rather than actually hook it up properly because um I don't have a whole lot of
time here. So, here we go. Just going to plug in the fan. Okay, so the Coron
locker has been simplified right down to a and we're back. Hate it when the uh
battery dies on my camera, but what can you do? Okay, so I was just showing the
core unlocking button that ASUS has added to their motherboard. Well,
motherboards, some of them. So, you can see there's a little arrow here that
points to where the core unlocker button is. You press that button, the light
goes red, and then in theory, there are
four cores on this triple core CPU.
Now there's a lot of uh misconceptions about uh you know there being dangers
involved in unlocking cores like your system's going to be unstable and that
may be true but you got to understand that AMD unlocks cores for any number of
different reasons. Some of them are unlocks them locks them seals them off
for any number of different reasons. So press F1 to go into setup. Okay. F10
enter. And so those reasons could be anything ranging from the core being
actually physically defective to maybe it not meeting their target power
envelope to maybe it being stable but
you know only uh only within not quite within their tolerances because almost
all CPUs will actually run faster than what they're spec by at least a little
bit. Okay. So as long as you run the
proper stability test. Oh, there you go. Four cores are activated. That was easy.
As long as you run the necessary stability tests on your CPU, which means
just, you know, Prime 95 for 24 to 48 hours, if the CPU doesn't make a math
error, then it's stable. And this one
appears to be not
stable. That's too bad. I mean, there
you go. I just pulled sort of any random any random retail CPU. And uh this one
happens to not be stable with the core
unlocker. I'm going to give it sort of one more try. I'm going to load the
defaults in the setup here and I'm going to
cuz h that's kind of disappointing. I've
actually had pretty good success myself unlocking CPUs and I had hoped that this
just sort of random one would work for me here. So far, no success. But that's
the whole point of doing this kind of thing on camera so that everyone can
learn and have new experiences. Maybe
I'll have some of my V8 juice.
Hopefully we don't get a blue screen this time. Blue screens are bad. Okay.
No, let's just start Windows
normally. H I wonder if it's to do with AHCI mode.
Could be something like
that. Well, I guess you're along for the
ride now. I'm not about to stop the video now. If
you're interested, you can keep watching. And if you're not, then you
can always not watch anymore. So, I'm going to go into the onboard devices
configuration. I'm going to set the serial serial port. No, I'm going to set
the onboard. No.
Hey, where are my uh where are my SATA
ports? North bridge configuration.
No. No. This is stupid.
H.
Well, I might have to give up at some point here. Can't figure out how to
set RAID on this motherboard. Normally,
it's here, but I don't see it here. So,
I I actually don't have any uh any ideas
beyond that.
Oh, wonder if that's a problem. I'm going to do
this. Probably not, but you never know.
Maybe I'll just show you the test bench some more. So, there's that little light that
says in theory everything should be
working. I didn't turn on turbo key, so it's not the uh it's not the automated
overclocking that's causing any problems here. Okay, we'll try that one more
time.
Oh, wouldn't it be funny if that had been
it? How about that? So, there you go. We
figured out how to get the system booted up. Well, we I guess I Well, you were
here, too. Okay. No, we we figured out how to get the system booted up. I have
Catalyst Control Center installed, which is completely unnecessary when you're
running a NVIDIA video card. So, I'm just going to go ahead and exit that.
So, let's uh let's fire up CPUZ to see
whether we have four cores running or not. So, I'm just going to go ahead and
do that. And it looks like we have four cores, four threads. They're running at
stock speed of 2.8 GHz. So, we'll go into the task manager here. So, yeah,
you can see that task manager has 1 2 3 four CPUs. And then we Okay, this is
what I was saying before. You will need to run Prime 95 and I recommend small
FFTs for I'd say a minimum of 24 hours
and then I'd run it anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to ensure that your triple core
CPU is stable with four cores enabled.
And then you can actually even sometimes overclock triple cores unlocked to quad
core and get even even more performance out of them. But there you go. That was
my core unlocking uh tutorial and we
figured out what the problem was and thank you for checking it out.