Overclocking


#201

Solid cooler, very good value for money.


#202

rather than me find an old post, is there a program which makes overclocking easy and safe?


#203

There are programs, usually each motherboard manufacturer has their own but you really can’t beat overclocking via the bios.

The only way you can really damage anything by overclocking is due to voltage. Overheating isn’t even that much of a drama as the CPU will shut itself down before you can go cooking anything (despite this, you shouldn’t try to, haha). Depending on the CPU you own, it’ll have a maximum Vcore that you shouldn’t surpass, the same applies to your RAM (no more than 1.65V).

Without remembering what type of system you have, you should be able to safely go up to ~1.35V but even that will be more than you need for a half decent jump in speed.

I think you have a GB board, so you’ll be looking for EasyTune if you want to play around.


#204

yeah easy tune has a 3.8 option on mine, but the volatage goes through the roof! Core temp was showing 1.5v peak? It did run, but didnt seem reasonable.


#205

ive tried downloading it from two places but the file seems to not want to open.


#206

Not sure why that would be. Do you have a GigaByte motherboard? If so, what chipset (P55, P67?). There are probably x86 and x64 variants of the software also.


#207

i downloaded it off the gigabyte site


#208

yep z68x-UD3R-b3

I found a program on the pc called [COLOR=Yellow]Touch Bios [/COLOR][COLOR=Gray]

Im not sure of what setting or alerts I should be putting on. Ill play with it more when one you you experienced guys are on ts
[/COLOR]


#209

Ok, done a little research but before i crank it up thought id run it past you guys…

MOBO GA-Z68X-UD3R-B3
CPU Intel Core i5 2500K Processor LGA1155 3.3GHz CPU

Ive seen a write up that says I can crank the CPU multiplier to 47 but this seems extreme…is anyone else doing this already on a similar setup?

Does the following sound like a good setup
Overclock a Core i5-2500K to 4.5GHz

  1. Set the CPU multiplier to 45x
  2. Enable Load-Line Calibration
  3. Set the CPU voltage to 1.3-1.35V
  4. Set the CPU PLL to 1.9V
  5. Set the VCCSA to 1.1V
  6. Set the VCCIO to 1.106V

I should add im not usign water cooling so I imagine this will restrict the settings somewhet.


#210

I’m not sure what VCCSA or VCCIO is but the rest seems reasonable, you will be able to refine that greatly once you get started.

Even though Sandy Bridge CPUs clock like mad, I’d probably still go up in smaller steps. Go for ~3.8GHz first, then go for 4.0GHz. You should be able to do it on lower voltages also, start at your stock voltage and add from there. I’m not sure whether 4.5GHz will be possible on air cooling but then I wouldn’t really know any more. CPU PLL can probably stay at 1.8V, I’ve found it only needs to be adjusted as a last resort and even then it has had a minimal impact on any system I have been involved in over clocking.


#211

what advantages am i supposed to get. I upped it to 4ghz and everything looks stable, still running prime. Temps maxing out around 62, but its a bloody hot day as well. In fact normal temps were almost 10 degrees higher today before overclocking

I used the Heaven test I saw Az had used and the only real difference I saw was in the minimum FPS which went from 11.8 to 25. But the max FPS stayed at 101.

EDIT…ive now got it at 4.5 ghz and using that same program basically saw no difference ??? Temps around 66 at full load

I havent enabled load line calibration at this point or changes those settings


#212

Some programs will see less results than others. Cinebench for eg will show cpu overclock efforts better

Get the free edition of 3dmark11 mate ( if you have a dx 11 card) otherwise 3dmark vantage. Running that stock vs oc shows its improvements.

Older cpus with beefy gpus or new cpus and big gpu setups really benefit from pushing the cpu to relieve bottlenecking on the lanes.

End of the day its fun and once you start - start saving hehehe … btw my rads might be for sale soon too incase you start lookin hehe:P


#213

You usually will only notice a difference in benchmarks when your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU/s. That heaven bench is a perfect example, you improved your min FPS over 100% which is far more noticeable in a gaming environment than your maximum frame rate. Get 3DMark 11 going, do a test loop on your base clock and then on your over clocked one and it should be clear. In certain games it will definitely be noticeable but only if your CPU was acting as a bottleneck, you will notice that your PC will not stutter (or as much) as it did before (if it would stutter in the first place).

For day to day use (web browsing/word processing, etc…), you will not notice any performance increase.

Edit: Beaten to it, haha.


#214

Finally i have some time to begin seeing what this bitch can do.

Fuck linx takes a long time with the extra ram and HT zzzzzzzzzzz … looks like it will be 3 test runs for temp stability checks until i near the mark lol.

nice to have a bios full of options and shit…rather than the limited bios of 1156. Certainly taking a bit to get used to after running ASUS bios for the duration of my overclocking… its awesome … i feel like a kid at chrissy again :slight_smile:

only at 3150 (21x150) atm … 10mhz bclock jumps.

EDIT : 3570mhz passed


#215

rofl 3.8ghz will have to do it for now.

As it was 2 passes through that and the motherboard has died.

Just shutdown and wouldnt reboot. Has the green and amber ram light up.

cmos clear - no
remove ram - no
remove gpu - no
short the atx pin with nothing plugged in - all fans etc power up fine.

diagnosis - fucked motherboard :yes:

Where i was at Nip :
21x181 - 3800mhz 4cores/8threads
Vcore - 1.212 ( hadnt been raising it … just had it set there from start)
QPI/VTT - 1.24 (3.8 didnt like 1.2 so jumped to 1.24 to give some room for a bit)
QPI PLL - 1.2
RAM - 1.5 ( stock spec)
others at stock

Max core under that linx run was 62degrees.

awesome mobo… been a gem imo lol
cpu seems to be going along very nicely … will have to wait until phase 2 takes effect for the next chapter.


#216

Who ever sold you that board should be drawn and quartered. Big inconvenience for you, sounds like it’s well and truly had it.

Sounds like the CPU is a good one though. From your last run, I reckon you could at the very least hit 4.0GHz at a reasonable voltage. If you decide to pack it in, let me know what you want for the CPU because I will probably find a way to justify it (as long as the CPU didn’t come from that same seller as the mobo, haha).

I’m sure you’ve read heaps of 1366 OC guides by now, but just in case you missed it, if you set your QPI multi on the lowest setting, and set your uncore multi to 2x your RAM multi (or 2x RAM + 1), you’ll get a stable OC at lower voltages.

Laughed when you said how long LinX takes, welcome to my world, haha. Wait until you think you have something stable, only to have to stop on an error on the tenth run, ARGH!!!


#217

hahah keep your eyes off my cpu :stuck_out_tongue: Next week it will come to life once again.

Honestly dude, id keep an eye on the forums and the moment a d0 or 950 pops up just grab it… and put yours on ebay straight away… honestly wont wont cost you a cent hey … just be the wait on ebay but put a buy it now and be done with it.

then you’ll have 4ghz with ht at nearly same temps.

I think from memory i was nearly matching you for temps at 3.8 wasnt i ?


#218

So we started messing with Blademan’s PC today. Looks like a little more reading is in order. Bumping up to 4GHz was no problem. But going above that and the multi would drop under load. For example it’d boot fine and CPU-Z would say 4.4GHz, but after a few secs of running LinX and the multi would drop down to 4.1 or 4GHz. Thoughts what that might be? Was just messing with vCore <1.3V, max temps around 56C.


#219

Still holds all 4 cores @ 4.1 - 4ghz John?


#220

yeh it holds the 4GHz no worries. Also did a run @ 4.3 without dramas as well, although I tried again later and couldn’t get it to stay there without dropping the multi (settings mighta been diff, I was rushin at this point). Ended the night with a stable 4.1 before I bailed.