AMD Phenom II / Athlon II Extra Core Unlocking

            Nowadays, price/performance ratio was the battle on making the most affordable processor. AMD launches the unlocking method on todays motherboards including their little bit old motherboard like the 790FX/GX series. Unlocking power of this motherboard can done via bios update by just checking on the specified website of the mobo you were using. For me I recommend MSI and ASUS mobo cause they always have updated bios to be download.

Things you must have:

Choose the right Processor:

AMD Phenom II x2,x3,x4 (with a T at the end of their model number like the 955T), or Athlon II with a cacad stepping code. (Currently Im using Phenom X2 555)


Get a good motherboard:
         A good motherboard is a must like the 790/870/880/890/990 GX/FX chipset. Currently, Im using MSI 890FX motherboard.

The most important:
           The most important is, "LUCK" . I successfully unlocked my Phenom II X2 555 to Phenom II X4 B55 with L3 cached.


Unlocking procedure:


Unlocking your hidden or some people called it a“defective” cores, the process is very very simple.

   1. Enter BIOS.
   2. This settings are the most common method you gonna found on most motherboard:  Set Automatic     Clock Calibration (ACC) or Nvidia Core Calibration (NCC) to AUTO.
        For Asus and Gigabyte owners : Enable "Unleashing" or change "EC Firmware" mode to "Hybrid". And my current using MSI 890FX was done via "Unlocked Core" selection in bios,
   3. Then Reboot.

            Remeber if it was successful, your processor should have a new name; ending in either x3, x4, or x6. (Mine was rename as Phenom II X4 B55) Though naming is not always consistent on some boards.

Once you are in Windows, or any other OS that you use, you should begin stability testing for your unlocked processor. I highly suggest to use of Prime95 "Blend Test" or Intelli Burn Test for 24 hours to ensure stability before overclocking. Mine was running now at 3.6Ghz with 1.4V.

This is the test hardware used when I successfully unlocked to X4:

Phenom II X2 B55 ( unlocked to Pheonom II X4 @ 3.6Ghz)
MSI 890FX motherboard
MSI Geforce GTX 480 Lightning ( runs at stock)
Gskill Ripjaws X @ 1600Mhz
Cougar CMX 700watts power supply

The CPUZ and GPUZ: