i7 2600k "safe limit"

striker2237

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I have here a i7 2600k@5.2 ghz as an everyday OC and was going to push it a bit farther but wanted to check in and ask if anyone knows what the max safe voltage is on this CPU?
 
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Warning: The information I'm responsible for sharing in this thread is do at your own risk!

We all want as much as we can possibly get but not at the cost of our hardware! :)

Intels highest tested voltage is 1.520v, Page 75, Table 7.1, that is not a 24/7 guarantee of a solid safe voltage to run that's a motherboards known spike jump of the voltage is within Intels tested parameters as OK.

I'm fully aware of the so called 1.400v safe longevity voodoo magic number that most have adopted as gospel here at THGF and I say that's doodly squat.

According to CPU-Zs monitoring you should already be seeing a 1.439v out in the...
no such thing. sure if you hit it with 2.0V you'll probably fry it, but that's about all I can say. even if you're not killing it, keep in mind that the added voltage and current will increase the rate of electron migration and other degredation processes, which will likely kill the CPU in say 2-5 years. these things are hard to predict, and can only be studied on a case by case basis (same with how overclockable a chip is actually).

I will say that in general you'll hit thermal throttling before you hit the voltage limit if you're cooling on air. as for water cooling I would never go past 1.50V, but many would say 1.45 or even 1.40 as the limit for an everyday OC. how far you want to go is up to you. and I take absolutely no responsibility if the chip does die (even under 1.40V) as I'm only sharing general observations, not making a statement about the safe voltage
 


have you tried running prime95 and monitor the CPU clock/temperatures on CPUZ and realtemp? I would think it's probably throttling the clocks down already
 


hmm, well, you have a damn good air cooling system there sir. also a damn good chip to hit 5.2ghz stable at those voltages

fire away. again I personally wouldn't go past 1.50v but it's your call. for most people they'll hit a limit where a small bump in voltage (0.10V or so) will do nothing to increase clocks further.

if you continue to be able to hit higher clocks, then I would honestly get a tank of LN2, get a few techie friends, and try to get at least a few regional OC records posted :)
 

striker2237

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So based on what you are saying this is a very good indivdual chip for being able to pull this? O im useing a modded coolermaster Hyper612 pwm if you care to know. If i would get an ln2 pot for records I should only do so if im no longer useing this as my main system because it may degrade the cpu/mobo right?
 

striker2237

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Because the whole goal of this is to boost my FPS in World of Tanks as the game is single thread and my cards (dual 680s at 1202 core 7.2ghz mem) keep outpacing the core and at 5760x1080 this leads to big fps drops. And the only way i know how to do this is to OC the core rly rly fast
 
yeah, if you want to run LN2, definately do it after you're no longer using it as the main machine. in fact, consider the chip dead after doing LN2 OC as there is a high chance it won't survive after (people call it suicide runs for a reason)

interesting that you're using the same cooler as me (I modded mine as well). out of curiosity, what mods did you do? I changed both fans and lapped both the cooler and my CPU and have been getting amazing temps (only beaten by custom waterloop).

as for your application... I really don't know how to get around that... you're definitely hitting a CPU bottleneck, but honestly you won't see a noticable difference going from 5.2ghz to say 5.5ghz (as I'm sure you understand). you'll definitely see improvement going beyond 6ghz, but at that point you might as well be doing suicide runs on your CPU (at least you can earn some money in a competition).
 


Warning: The information I'm responsible for sharing in this thread is do at your own risk!

We all want as much as we can possibly get but not at the cost of our hardware! :)

Intels highest tested voltage is 1.520v, Page 75, Table 7.1, that is not a 24/7 guarantee of a solid safe voltage to run that's a motherboards known spike jump of the voltage is within Intels tested parameters as OK.

I'm fully aware of the so called 1.400v safe longevity voodoo magic number that most have adopted as gospel here at THGF and I say that's doodly squat.

According to CPU-Zs monitoring you should already be seeing a 1.439v out in the operating system spiking to 1.450v or possibly higher, Right?

If that is the case you should still be on the safe side of increasing further if your operating system monitored spikes are not exceeding 1.520v, that's still within Intels tested parameters, no matter how you're accomplishing it.

Are you running hyper threading at 5.2ghz or have you had to disable it?

 
Solution


Not bad temps for air cooling at that overclock, but is that gaming load or stress testing load temps?



What modding have you done?
Changed to higher CFM cooling fans?

Since you're obviously curious regarding possible damage from voltage, what about temperatures the slow killer?





 


I agree 100%... I need experience to learn to make a well crafted message like this :)
 

striker2237

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As far as modding to the cooler i lapped the contact base and added in two very high cfm fans that are linked to a fan controller so they dont get too loud and the biggest change is that i replaced that large aluminum block right over the contact plate (the one under the huge fin stack) with a small TEC plate and put a plate with 4 heat pipes going upward into the center of the finstack on top of the TEC with the two "lightly" wielded together. Paste is formula 7.

In answer to 4Ryan6 im still using hyper threading and that temp is when im useing prime 95 for about an hour. And to my knowlege as long as temps are kept under 70ish it wont degrade too fast right?

The mobo im useing for this has a 12+6 power phase but it also has an option (witch i have enabled) to lower the voltages down to stock lvls when the cpu is idle, that something that i should or shouldn't be useing at this high of an oc?

I have not yet when and monitored the voltage spikes but ill do that today and see if its going past that 1.520 limit you told me about, if it is ill back the oc off cuz this IS my main system after all........
 
wow, clever trick with the TEC plate

degradation isn't ONLY based on temperature. it is through electron migration, which is essentially current. essentially when you have enough electron movement metal atoms can sometimes get "dragged" with it (such as copper). this will degrade modern CPUs since all the transistors are so small. of course when you have heat the metal becomes "softer" and easier to move, but what's moving it is the current not the heat. the Wikipedia article on electron migration explains a lot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration

at the end of the day, this is still a relatively slow process. I don't think you have anything serious to worry about unless you plan to run that machine for say 5+ years. otherwise I think you'll be dumping the CPU before it degrades to much (again, this is my personal opinion)
 

striker2237

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thx, took awhile to get it working. Thanks alot for that link, explains ALOT as to why some things just seem to die no matter how well looked after they are. Thanks for all the help with this, learned alot bout what can kill cpus. I thought i was just heat and over voltage but looks like there were other factors too.