Advise on overclocking 980x / Asus P6T

Hello
My old 980x CPU is starting to show its age and I'd like to overclock at this point to something very stable over the long term. Ive overclocked before to 3.8ghz but I'd like to go s little higher now if possible. I've read people hitting 4.3-4.5ghz but I'm doubtful if that's going to be stable over the long term. I'd be happy hitting 4-4.2ghz.

CPU: Intel Core i7 Extreme 980x 3.33ghz
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 670 2048MB DDR5
Motherboard: Asus P6T SE
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3 1600 MHz
SSD: Samsung 256GB 840 Pro
Audio: Asus Xonar DX PCIE 7.1

Wondering if anyone could post their bios settings for the P6T motherboard or another Asus as they are usually closely related please?

Anyone please?

Overclocking is a trial and error thing. Others bios settings will most likely not be the one that works for you. You raise the frequency in incremental steps until you reach the desired clocks. If the computer becomes unstable then you slightly raise the voltage. I don't know off the top of my head what are safe levels for gulftown, so you'll have to do some research into that. But don't make large jumps in voltage regardless. Adjust gradually until it gets stable enough to boot into the OS and run basic tests. You don't have to do stress testing at this point. But do monitor core temperatures to see if you're nearing the limit of your cooling system.

When you reach your goal clock or no longer able to get it stable at a higher frequency, then do stress testing to test stability. And closely monitor temperatures while doing the stability testing. Instability can also be caused by overheating and not lack of voltage.

And a very important rule is to only change one setting in the BIOS at a time. So you know what caused the behavior you experience.

My standard disclaimer. This is what I would do, overclock at your own risk.

You should be able to hit 4ghz. Raise the multiplier to where it would be 4ghz and raise the CPU volts. I would not go over 1.35
Also you may have to raise the setting for Vdroop or line-load calibration to med or NOVDROOP. Keep an eye on the CPU voltage CPUz is a great tool to see how fast CPU and mem are running and CPUv
Uncore voltage may need to be raised a little too. 1.35v max on that also.
What is your ram running at? Maybe lower the ram speed or relax the timings a little to you get the overclock stable.
Try to set and keep the uncore at or just under 2 x ram speed. Keep uncore under 3400 if you can
For sure less voltage as you can get by with. 1.35 CPU and uncore.
Set QPI to its lowest setting, NOT Slow mo though. I think it is 4something s

If you are BCLK overclocking 175 x 23 multiplier will get you to 4ghz. You can run ram at 14xx and timings 9-9-9-25 T2 with uncore at 28xx
1.3v CPU and 1.3V uncore
Raise the BCLK a little at a time and see where the CPU and memory goes t
200 x 21 will get you 4.2ghz with mem at 1600 and uncore at 3200
Odd multipliers sometimes are more stable than even multipliers. I found anyway.

As stated keep your temps in check, I like to stay in the 50s max doing Primegrid or PG95
I think that is the name, Intel burn test is another good tester

SLI you may want to raise IOH and ICH to 1.2v

Thats how I go about it. Good luck

Thank you. I've OC'd to 4ghz now and pass Intel's burn in. I've set the ram to XMP profile @ 1600mhz. Temps are a little higher than advertised however. Any tips?

temps look fine to me with air cooling....thats exactly what mine does

primetime said:

temps look fine to me with air cooling....thats exactly what mine does

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Yeah I think 70c-ish is normal for this. From pushing this more, I remember that it doesn't get any hotter than 80 and ends up crashing instead.

Any tips on what I can try next to get it to 4.2? Also I've seen some guys set the vcore to 1.4v+. Is that okay?

Delatroy said:

Yeah I think 70c-ish is normal for this. From pushing this more, I remember that it doesn't get any hotter than 80 and ends up crashing instead.

Any tips on what I can try next to get it to 4.2? Also I've seen some guys set the vcore to 1.4v+. Is that okay?

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its perfectly normal and zero problem....IDK where you live but its peak of summer at my house and those temp are very good! I been using x58 for at least 6 years straight lol...I know whats completely normal for that voltage on air! Like gotham said drop the vcore if your worried about nothing! And 1.4 volts is NOT advisable unless on high end water. IF it were below freezing in your pc room then it be a tad high, but thats it. These cpus start loosing stability over 80 only In my experience.

Edit: one thing i just noticed is your running the test wrong. Stress level should be on max for a true stress test. lol Its way harder the standard level...run the test when your away from the pc cause it will lag pretty bad if you need to get work done. You should be able to run 168 blck for 4.2ghz unless a problem comes up. (i dont recall off hand what memory divider options are at that blck)

One more edit: What cooler are you using? Not the stock intel right?

Thank you I will try to 168bclk without increasing voltage tonight. I don't expect to have this CPU for that much longer - maybe 2-4 years so I'm not that worried about risking shortening its life. Using a big thermal take heat sink with dual fans like this:
Idle its 25-35c at 4ghz

Well I did one burnin pass at 4ghz at maximum and it passed. Need to go for 10 to be sure but looking stable so far with games or anything. 8 year old machine no less. Max temps were 72c on 2 cores. Quite amazing how nice this system is at this point

I'm going for 4.2ghz as my 24/7 target and I'll be content with that.

Delatroy said:

Well I did one burnin pass at 4ghz at maximum and it passed. Need to go for 10 to be sure but looking stable so far with games or anything. 8 year old machine no less. Max temps were 72c on 2 cores. Quite amazing how nice this system is at this point

I'm going for 4.2ghz as my 24/7 target and I'll be content with that.

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I think your being a bit conservative - I would shoot for the moon (4.4, and work backwards from there).

While the 980x wasn't as good as an overclocker as the Xeon's (from what I remember anyways), I know alot of them did between 4.2 and 4.5.

The keys to squeezing every last drop of performance are to drop UNCORE to ~3000-3200Mhz, increase VTT to a max of 1.35, and Ram Voltage to 1.65. QPI Link speed should also be set to the lowest setting.

I would say you have a 50/50 shot of hitting 4.4, and about 90% chance of 4.2 assuming your cooling can keep up.

Thanks for your help guys.
I've set it at 4.239ghz (27 multi x 157blk) now which appears quite stable at 1.3875 vcore. Also increased the PLL two notches. I've seen others running at 1.4v+ so I feel okay with this much juice!

The increase has impacted the temps by around +9c but still tipping 80c which I'm cool with at max load. What do you think? Would you be comfortable with this as your 24/7 OC?

Also why is core 4 performing so much better than the others? It's consistently lower temps - is this just lucky or could it be indicating a thermal paste issue?

Finally assuming the they both result in the same ghz, does it make any difference to performance of having a high blk low multiplier or low blk and high multiplier?

The 10c difference seems to be a normal thing most people see.
I have not seen one where there was not a core or two way higher or lower than the others.
In settings, you can calibrate the readout for each core you can set with a -5 if you are reading 5c high or just put in a 5 if reading 5c low.

Also I would not run mine over 1.35, knowing every time a CPU loads and unloads the is a .05v spike, so 1.35 + .05 spike is 1.4v
1.392 + .05 = 1.44. That's more than I like. It's your CPU and your board, I guess they are not all that expensive if they go bad and you have to buy another.

Generally speaking max over clocks are achieved with lowest blck possible, BUT 4.2 is a very common limit for these cpus anyway. For the most part after finding your clock limit most of us try and fine tune the voltage as low as possible. (usually lower blck is lower voltage to a degree.) So like Bill said IF possible tweak the vcore down.