Safe to overclock my i7-920?

Hey danz, shouldn't you be able to activate that RAM frequency within your BIOS? What's indicating that your RAM only runs at 1066MHz?

I have an i7 920 myself, currently running at 3.6ghz. It can be clocked up to 4.0ghz but there is a problem, heat. The idle temp is not the most important one, but instead look to the load temp. I'd suggest coretemp to measure this. The i7 runs hot, very hot, so it needs a very good heatsink. I presently have a TRUE with two fans on mine and it sometimes goes over 80c at 3.6ghz now that its summer. During the winter, when the ambient air temp was cooler, I could 3.8ghz, but not now. Some people I know have their 920s running at 4.0-4.1ghz, but they use water cooling. If you use air cooling, find the best heatsink that you can afford. I'm personally considering the Coolermaster V10, though I might switch to the newest of the Noctua coolers.

As to the ram speed, you can get a good reading from CPU-Z. The ram speed of 1600mhz is an overclock reading while the 1066mhz is the stock speed, so you have to adjust the clocks in the BIOS, as r-manic said. The ram speeds listed by Asrock only shows what the board is capable of running, not what it is running at any given time. Pretty much the same with ram. If you buy ram rated at 1600mhz, it only means that the company has tested it to be stable at that speed, but you usually still have to adjust adjust the BIOS to get that speed. Some BIOSs will adjust ram speed as you increase the CPU overclock, but such speeds will rarely be in exact readings such as 1066/1600/1866 or whatever.

Hope this is of help.

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