Overclocking my i7 920?

[Loz]

Gonna add my name to those with the i7 920 oc'd to 4 GHz with absolutely no problems.

Use a good cooler (H50 or the new H70) on a good motherboard. Mine is the Asus Rampage II Extreme.

[Succellus]

I really wonder if heartz its everything, many reposrts saying hertzing the hell out doesn t make that much diference from a medium overclock.

I really think there s much hype and not that much results for 3 to 5 framerates gain. A computer depend on so much more factors.

[Fopeyducker]

I really wonder if heartz its everything, many reposrts saying hertzing the hell out doesn t make that much diference from a medium overclock.

I really think there s much hype and not that much results for 3 to 5 framerates gain. A computer depend on so much more factors.

 

Very true, I think the only time you notice the OC on a day to day basis is if you do a lot of number crunching and or multitasking. I do notice a difference when I'm in photoshop for example, running batch commands or complex filters etc. Encoding videos will also benefit from a decent OC. I also notice it in CPU intensive games like Falcon4 was or even the Total War series.

 

The only other time you will notice "in game" is if you have a high end GPU especially if it's an sli or CF rig. Where the CPU can become a bottle neck.

 

But even ignoring all of the above it is nice to know that you £200 CPU is performing as well, if not better than the one your mate paid £1000 for :lol:

[Konovalov]

Yep to the above and the other thing to consider is weighing up the OC with additional power consumption. Normally 3.6 to 3.8Ghz overclock is the sweetspot for power consumption. Certainly over 4Ghz means high power consumption.

[Steel Jaw]

My own experience is that DCS A10C does not respond well to o/c: tends to CTD

[Fopeyducker]

My OC had no effect what so ever performance wise with DCS A10C. Is your OC stable Mower? Can you for example run prime95 for an hour on the "In place Large FFT" setting? Not the blend option which is the default.

[MTFDarkEagle]

I've overclocked my system, so I can't comment the performance regarding the a-10c without o/c, but with the ka-50 I got a pretty big performance boost

[MadDogMcQ]

FD mentioned the PC case and yes, that's so important in terms of keeping temps down (CPU and GPU). I have 4 "regular" fans and 1 "large" fan on the side of the case. They were positioned to aid the flow of cool air in and warm air out.

 

And no, they're not noisy - I bought ultra quiet fans.

[Steel Jaw]

Is your OC stable Mower?

 

EDIT: make that a no, after running that test app under torture, system lock @ 70'C CPU temp.

Edited November 10, 2010 by Mower

[Fopeyducker]

Ah! So did you follow the guide I posted? What is your overclock at, at the moment? What version of the CPU have you got? What cooler? What case?

[CarneyUK]

Well I'm still taking many notes..thanks peeps!!

 

Have looked at the H50 and at £50 it may have to wait till after chrimbo (unless my wife get's me it when she buys me DCS A10 , hints already passed on LOL)

 

Have so far downloaded CPUZ and Realtemp. At the moment after 2 hours of the PC being turned on with the wife doing normal internet stuff, ebay facebook etc, it was around 40'c for the cores. The GPU was at 39'c. I still have stock cooler and will be looking into a small overclock just to see what I can do. Not gonna try for anything big, just 3.0Ghz or 3.2Ghz for now just to start an understanding for me.

 

See how the temp goes with stock cooler, then when I can get a new cooler may try and go a little bigger. I take it the GPU (GTX260) is also overclockable?

 

A few have mentioned Prime95.....is that the Realtemp thing??

[Rusty_M]

I know I haven't asked the questions, but I've found this thread really good reading. Thanks for the info.

[Steel Jaw]

What I have taken away so far here is that at best we are getting mixed results.

[CarneyUK]

Have just been playing DCS BS and Bad Company 2 for about an hour and an half. Had max temps on the GPU and CPU of around 72'c via Realtemp.

 

DCS BS seemed to only take the proccessors to about 63'c max but Bad Company was 72'c. I am thinking that with the standard cooling I have going for a 3.2Ghz overclock may push the temp upto about 80'c or more which seems a bit dodgy?

 

As Mower said, "had a lock at 70'c" I think I may wait and get cooling befoe I start playing!!

[Fopeyducker]

A lock up or BSOD at a non critical temp will most likely be down to lack of voltage and or dodgy memory. It is worth waiting for the better cooler then you only have to OC / experiment the once. :)

 

Do a google for Prime95 it is a seperate program to realtemp though realtemp does have a built in sensor test which will use Prime95 if it finds it.

 

Do you know which 920 you have? CPUz will show the Revision either C0 or D0 about half way down on the right hand side on the first page.

[Konovalov]

As Mower said, "had a lock at 70'c" I think I may wait and get cooling befoe I start playing!!

A lock at 70c on the CPU suggests that it may not be the CPU but a part of the subsystem such as the motherboard was the cause. i7's are fine running at 70c although not ideal. It may be that either the CPU or motherboard may not be getting enough voltage. In short the CPU is a major component in overclocking but it's not the only thing.

[bumfire]

As fopeyducker pointed out, a lockup of a OC'd 920 at 70oC is probably due to just a handful of things.

 

1, First and foremost, Software, Windows being the culprit.

 

If not then you start looking at these.

 

Totally wrong bios settings, wrong voltage settings, mobo not being able to handle it, memory not being able to overclock good, as remember, when you increase the BCLK you are also automatically overclocking your memory also, so relax the timings on the ram ( relax means increase the numbers i.e from 7 to 8 etc ) and try the same overclock again.

 

Or it could be a damaged CPU that was damaged due to previous OC attempts.

 

You shouldnt need to do anything other than increase the BCLK and maybe turn on turbo to get access to the higher multi, if turning on turbo to get the higher multi, then make sure its locked, so that the cpu freq wont jump about between 2nd highest and highest multiplier frequencies due to cpu load. Once locked you get access to 1x more which means you dont need to increase the BCLK as much for a given speed.

 

you shouldnt need to increase the voltage if you are not going above say 3.4, above that then you will probably need to add some extra juice whilst keeping certain voltages within .5v of each other.

[Steel Jaw]

It's doable, I just cannot be fecking bothered, so I "dummy o/c" it through the mobo bios to get 3.4 from stock 2.6.

[Slayer]

Best place for OC and hardware info:

 

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/index.php

 

Honestly if you are new to OC. Get a decent cooler and new thermal paste and make sure you clean all the old OEM junk off with some thermal paste remover and go for 3.2 - 3.6 ghz.

 

You will get a good stable overclock without really having to touch the voltages or anything else. On I7's power consumption is not linear after a point, once you get up around 4ghz it is really sucking the power so you need a good Power supply, also at 4ghz you will notice a difference in your electric bill.

 

Don't disable any of the power management stuff for the CPU like some sites reccomend.

 

Also another hardly mentioned thing on a lot of OC websites: I7's your Uncore speed MUST be double your memory speed or you will notice your memory is not running at the right clock speed so check your multipliers to make sure they are right. IE for 1600 mhz DDR3 your Uncore must run at 3200 mhz.

[CarneyUK]

Do you know which 920 you have? CPUz will show the Revision either C0 or D0 about half way down on the right hand side on the first page.

 

I have the DO Revision

[Fopeyducker]

That's good the D0's are the later chips and run cooler and OC better.

Looking at your current temps I think they're not too bad for the standard cooler. Quite good in fact if your case isn't particularly well ventilated.

 

As Slayer mentioned, (which I forgot), do buy some decent thermal compound when you purchase your new cooler. I've been using Artic Silver 5 for years and one little tube will 10+ CPU changes. It's about £5 or £6 a tube. Another brand that's meant to be good is Artic Cooling MX4. Either of these will give better results than the stuff that comes with either standard or 3rd party coolers.

[CarneyUK]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261892

 

Holy Crap.....5.4Mhz, I'll be happy with 3.2 LOL

[MTFDarkEagle]

Holy Crap.....5.4Mhz, I'll be happy with 3.2 LOL

 

I think you mean ghz ;)

Ah well, just try to overclock a slight level, and see how it goes. You can also try those asus o/c applications I suggested. Those programs do the overclocking for you. You can always try it :)

[EtherealN]

My own experience is that DCS A10C does not respond well to o/c: tends to CTD

 

CTD's have nothing to do at all with O/C's themselves. If it CTD's in any way specifically while the system is overclocked, then your system is broken and you should perform a full health-check - it is highly possible that your overclock is "at the limit" of what your silicon (both in CPU and mobo) can do for normal use and that DCS:A-10C stresses it just enough to bring it over the limits.

 

Overclocking my own system raises no problems with DCS A-10C.

 

A lock up or BSOD at a non critical temp will most likely be down to lack of voltage and or dodgy memory.

 

Totally agreed - the indicated symptoms would lead me to suspect the power supply. Cheap power supply = lots of trouble, and if you didn't build your computer yourself but was relying on a OEM (Dell, HP etc) the chances are your power supply is as cheap as it gets. Do NOT expect good overclock stability with such products. Also, incidentally, while an enthusiast power supply may look expensive at 100-200 dollars, they are actually moneysavers since they often are much more efficient. I've seen "noname" PSU's with efficiencies as low as 60 percent and in extreme cases even lower, which means that if your computer needs 400 watts at full load, your PSU will actually draw ~670 watts from your socket and dissipate the "excess" 270 watts as heat - which is ~350 dollars worth of electricity at my local prices and my computer habits for each year that is just dissipated as heat. Better to spend 200 dollars for a quality 80+Silver or 80+Gold PSU since they'll both supply "cleaner" (as in, less voltage jitter which can contribute to OC instability) and cheaper (as in, less inefficiency) power.

 

Basically, in my own opinion, a good overclock requires that you do not save any money on PSU and mobo. Processor choice is relatively secondary in this regard since there is less variability in those.

[Teej]

I think you mean ghz ;)

Ah well, just try to overclock a slight level, and see how it goes. You can also try those asus o/c applications I suggested. Those programs do the overclocking for you. You can always try it :)

 

Then there are those of us who remember having to overclock to get to 5mhz.