OC Rookie - Get my i7 4770k to 4.2ghz?

dio_free

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Hi guys,
First time overclocker here. I have read a few guides but nothing is giving me much more than the "keep testing until it becomes unstable and then scale back". I'd like a bit more guidance if someone is willing.

I'm about to put together a brand new pc. I don't want to mess with system stability whatsoever but from what I've read I could push the CPU to 4.2 with very little risk.

I'll be using an ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer motherboard and a Kraken x60 water cooler.

Anyone care to lead a hand?
 
Solution
How to overclock your K edition Sandy/Ivy Bridge or Haswell chip to 4.2Ghz.
- Slap a decent cooler on it
- Change the CPU multiplier to 42
- If your chip doesnt overclock like a pig, it should work.

An overclock that conservative doesnt require anything special or that much work to do. The vast majority of chips can hit an overclock like that fairly easily. Its once you start hitting 4.4 - 4.5Ghz that you have to start manually tweaking voltage.
Its telling you that cause not all CPUs are made the same. Some will OC better than others, the ONLY way to find your max OC and stability is to go slow, change your settings, stress test it, if it passes, move on. There is no common setting with CPUs when you OC.
 

dio_free

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But does that mean I can just go into my bios and set it to 4200 and leave everything at AUTO? Like I said, I'm not looking for MAX OC.
 
How to overclock your K edition Sandy/Ivy Bridge or Haswell chip to 4.2Ghz.
- Slap a decent cooler on it
- Change the CPU multiplier to 42
- If your chip doesnt overclock like a pig, it should work.

An overclock that conservative doesnt require anything special or that much work to do. The vast majority of chips can hit an overclock like that fairly easily. Its once you start hitting 4.4 - 4.5Ghz that you have to start manually tweaking voltage.
 
Solution

dio_free

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Thanks manofchalk! This is precisely what I needed to know.
So here is a screenshot of the bios OC utility. Would I change the ratio field?
http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2014/05/z97-motherboard-group-tests/asrock-killer-2-1280x1024.jpg

Also, should i Investigate a similarly conservative OC of my RAM, or are the returns less noticeable there?

thank you
 
The Turbo and Cache speed seem to be the same as the advertised "normal" speed of the CPU, wouldn't change them at all. That, and I don't have much idea as to what they individually mean, my first thought was its related to TurboBoost but that's 3.9Ghz on your chip. I'm not an expert on overclocking and I cant recommend you mess with something I have no idea about.

Overclocking RAM is difficult and bears much less than overclocking the CPU. My advice is just to enable the XMP profile (ie; advertised speeds of the RAM) and leave it at that. RAM is too difficult to overclock for too little gain for the vast majority to bother.