Safe overclock for 2500k?

[ares640]

I just built a new system and I was wondering what I should overclock my 2500k for general usage. I do not want to play around with voltages too much, as I do not have any experience in that regard. Most people I see suggest around a 4.5Ghz overclock, but I have to ask is that really necessary?

How much general performance increase will I get going from 3.3 to 4.5? What are the cons of this? Gaming shouldn't make much of a difference since I am not bottlenecking my GTX 570.

Heatsink: Hyper 212+ with dual fans
Case: CM HAF 932 with stock fans

MSI Z68A-GD55
MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozr III PE/OC
Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600 Mhz
Crucial M4 128GB SSD
Hitachi Deskstar 1TB HDD
Corsair Professional HX850 watt

 

[Yargnit]

4.0-4.2 if you want to be extra safe. 4.4-4.5 if you want to be somewhere in the middle. 4.2 is a pretty good point to aim for that you should hit w/o getting your voltages up there to the point where they'll affect your CPU lifespan.

 

[RJR]

Let me just state this since I keep seeing newer overclockers (all the time) state I've overclocked to ***.*Ghz and I'm using stock voltage (ie:auto).

If you don't manually set your voltages, the BIOS WILL increase them for you, taking away voltage control from you. And I don't just mean vcore.

Just FYI.

 

[ares640]

Best answer selected by ares640.

 

[4Ryan6]

This topic has been closed by 4ryan6