noob overclocking questions

chrisgregory

Honorable
Oct 12, 2013
143
1
10,685
Kay guys, I plan on grabbing a new psu probably a corsair cx 600 and the evga gtx 650 ti boost graphics card and throwing it in my rig which is here http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1416421

Now id like to try overclocking however I know nothing about it. So my first question: what ELSE do i need? Im aware i probably need a better cpu heatsink and fan as i only have the stock heatsink attached currently. i wanted to replace my current one with something with a blue led in it anyway so is there any good recommendations as far as that is concerned? blue led prefered not absolutely required so im open to any suggestions. id ask how overclocking is done but im sure that subject has been beat to death and theres probably a ton of threads covering the same thing as well as a ton of visuals on youtube so ill do some looking around first before i ask...unless it varies from system to system? again its very new to me. any tips would be greatly appreciated. thank you!
 

mr1hm

Distinguished


how far your CPU will overclock is unique to itself. every chip will vary on how much voltage or how far it will overclock; only testing can show you it's potential.

just go into your BIOS and try raising your cpu clock multiplier by 1, then run a stress test (maybe like P95/AIDA64 for about 15-20m). if all seems fine then raise the multiplier again by 1. do this until you run into stability issues such as BSODs/random crashes; this is when you generally need to raise CPU voltage (raise by smallest increment possible) and then test it again to check if you achieved stability or not. just make sure your CPU temperature doesn't exceed 60-62C along with the CPU voltage being no higher than 1.475v-1.5v. also, you'd want to run the stress test longer (run the test for about 45m-1hr) to confirm it's stable when you've reached the speed you're satisfied with.

it's pretty much a rinse and repeat process and results will vary according to your chip. later down the road, you may run into some stability issues that may not point to CPU Voltage being the cause but that's for later down the road after you've stress tested and etc.