Overclocking Noob - Looking for Advice

[Shakes McQueen]

Hey Guys,

So I've built my last few computers myself, but never had the nerve to dive into CPU overclocking. With my latest build, I've decided I'd like to give it a try (see specs in my sig). Forgive me if I begin to ramble past this point

Basically, I'd just like some advice on how far you think I could comfortably go, with the cooling I've got. I'm not looking to push the envelope too far, but just want a "comfortable" overclock that won't kill my CPU, and will be very stable.

Right now, my CPU idles between 25-30C, and tops out around 50C under load. I've replaced the stock fans on the Corsair H100i cooler with a pair of Corsair SP120 Quiet Edition PWM fans (push config), and replaced two of the three case fans with a pair of 140mm Noctua PWMs.

My ASUS board actually comes with a TPU switch for "automatic" CPU overclocking, but I've read that automatic mobo overclocking often sets the voltage unnecessarily high, so I've stayed away from it thus far.

My question is basically what CPU ratio you think I could comfortably get away with, plus what voltage you'd recommend, as well as any other advice you've got. Thanks!

 

[Kevin5255]

the notion of how "comfortably" you could overclock is entirely up to you. How much risk of crashing are you willing to run? How high temps are you willing to run? How much are you willing to shorten the life of you hardware? Answer those questions and you'll have the answer on how comfortably you can OC.

You can find out if your mobo's auto-overclocking feature is any good by looking around on amazon/newegg reviews and around here. Don't dismiss it right away, some are great and some are terrible.

As far as cooling, back when I overclocked you would push it to about 70/80C at load, then dial back a bit for dependability. I usually stuck to just a nudge higher than stock voltage, but I dunno anything about your CPU so I can't give you any info on that. Start with the smallest increases possible and then work your way up. You've got a Haswell K CPU so there's some knowledge floating around here regarding that stuff.

 

[Bluesun311]

Put the voltage mode for both cache and core on manual. This is the setting people warn about "Auto". Overclockers tend to leave this setting at manual 24/7 with Haswell. There are other ways of forcing the voltage to idle lower.

Set the 2 manual voltages at:
1.265v for the core.
1.200v for the cache.

Then you can use the auto overclocking and see what happens if you want. The asus auto config is quite good, in my experience. It will give you a ballpark figure, if not do a better job than you could.

As an example, the auto on my M7Hero (very similar to yours) basically hits my same settings, but it gets cute with the BCLK, which I do not recommend touching at all. The BCLK is very "potent". By using a multiplier of 45X the auto OC from the UEFI BIOS gets almost 4600Mhz with a *2Mhz* bump to the BCLK and thus runs my RAM at a higher frequency, but it just looks weird to me so I use a 46X multiplier instead and leave the BCLK at 100. Running the BCLK too high can actually damage your core components, iirc. Leave it at 100Mhz or Auto if you are just diving in is my advice

IF
you don't want to use the automatic OC config your Mobo can provide:
Using the same voltages as above, 1.265v and 1.200Cache
Try booting at 4.5Ghz (45X multiplier and run all cores same). Set the Cache multiplier to 42x for a start. Run your desired stress test if you get into windows, see if it crashes. I usually use prime 95 28.5 for Haswell but you will find that the test it starts out with on "Blend" is pretty weak compared to "Low FFT". I usually just run Low FFT for maybe 30 seconds to see what temps I'm looking at (they will be shocking if you haven't delidded--like ~95C on low fft). It will usually insta crash if you aren't pretty close to stable and when you hit the right voltage it just stops crashing--you don't need to run this test for long periods of time. A serious overclocker might for 2-24 hours or something to prove it is highly stable but it's not necessary for gamers, imo).

If you are looking good, then push on to 46x, if it crashes, add more voltage in .01 increments until it stablizes or until you get towards 1.284v. That's my safe cutoff about, it ends up being 1.3v or so in OS. Some people run much higher voltages. It adds more heat and not everyone is sure it's safe for the processor. Similarly, I try to keep the cache voltage low. Personally I wouldn't want to run a cache voltage any higher than 1.27 but that's also going to add heat.

Ideally your cache and core multiplier would be the same and as high as possible, but Core is more important, and generally people get a higher core multiplier stable by using a slightly lower cache multi. For me, as in sig, I use 46X core, 44X cache.

Honestly that's basically it. Usually should be able to hit 45x with an i5 np. They are actually easier to overclock higher usually than the i7. 4.8 is doable 24/7. You can't really hurt your chip by playing around with this stuff as long as you follow the color coded guidelines on the input values in the UEFI/BIOS. Yellow is OK but that's OC territory. Red values could be dangerous. White is pretty much in stock territory.

There are 1 or 2 settings that should be enabled or disabled. One of them is SVID support. It should be disabled and is enabled by default, iirc. Then there are the settings for Speedstep and C-states, which I think are also important to mention but really don't have anything to do with overclocking. I like c-states. I don't like Speedstep. Depending on the application and it's status in your operating systems catalog as important or not, Speedstep can cause strange latency problems and stuttering in both windows 7 and 8/8.1 (it will underclock your processor as low as 800Mhz). Similar with manual voltage mode vs Auto/Adaptive/Offset--these settings help save power... which since we are plugging our machines into the wall we really don't need at all. Turning them off, allows us to get the full speed out of our Haswell procs (which are sort of hybrid laptop processors with incredible Hulk abilities). Playing around with c-states will allow you to get the benefit of lower voltages while idle, which still works even when you are pegged at 4500Mhz 24/7.

It is recommended to set your RAM to 1600Mhz while initially finding max multiplier because higher core frequency is much more potent to pretty much everyone than a higher RAM frequency. Some processors will supposedly overclock higher if you set the RAM lower, but I have not yet found a scenario where this came into play.

Edit: Wanted to add a few things--Haswell is stubborn. It likes a certain voltage for a stable overclock and then if it's not stable at the next multi you may be looking at the end of your OC experience. Trying to find the "key" to that next multiplier can be fun, but it can also be totally pointless with Haswell sometimes. I had a bunch of 4770k chips that couldn't clock very well (completely stuck at 4.2Ghz) and I got a bit obsessive about it. There is a lot of luck involved. As in, your chip is 50% chance to be prime95 stable at 4.6Ghz and 25% chance of 4.7, etc. These are just random figures though, I don't know what the real ratio is. My personal opinion about testing the 4770k is that yields of Haswell silicon improved as the year since it was launched has passed--but it's still pretty random how "good" a chip you end up with will be. I've owned 6 4770k's and mostly resold them here on H, couple on eBay--it's a massive money sink. I've also tested 2 others that I built for friends. Mine is the only chip that was 4.6Ghz stable with prime95 28.1+ at Low FFT's for any proper amount of time. The majority were... completely stuck at 4.2Ghz.

Also, I think stress testing these suckers repeatedly can damage them--particularly if they have their lids on. Kyle's 4.8Ghz 4770k mysteriously stopped being stable at some point. Use your stress time wisely and keep your chip healthy. Look for a good overclock and then go play games and stuff. Or just enjoy the gains you'll see in any CPU-bound applications.