Overclocking my i5-2500k on a asus z68 + an asus gtx 560 ti

[wienerdog]

So i just bought and built a new gaming rig. the parts are...
cpu - i5-2500k
gpu - asus gtx 560 ti
motherboard - ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
memory - Ripjaws 8gb DDR3 1600
power supply - 750 watt
i also have coolermaster hyper 212 heatsink on my CPU instead of the stock one, inside an antec 900 case, so i think the rig will stay pretty cool between the heatsink and the 4 fans on the case.

i would like to overclock the cpu and the gpu. this is my first time trying to do this, and most of the guides i have read have left me confused as i am new to this and still unfamiliar with the ASUS bios. id like to overclock, but be very safe about it. maybe around 4.2 ghz for the cpu. basically id like to be able to run battlefield 3 on relatively high settings without having to worry about burning out my parts from overheating or any other problems.

I have already attempted to overclock the gpu using the msi afterburner, but im still not really sure how to use it.

thanks for the help!

 

[inzone]

Asus boards are known for being very helpful with overclocking and since you want to go for an overclock of about 4.2 that should be very easy with that board. If you go into the bios and under Extreme tweaker there should be something like A I Overclock Tuner or CPU Level up. If you have cpu level up , select that and you should have some options there offering a couple different speeds to choose from. If there is one there for 4.2ghz then you could select that one and , save and exit , and when you reboot hit the tab key and it will show you the long version of the bios boot screen and you should be able to see that the cpu is now clocked at 4.2ghz.
MSI Afterburner is a nice software tool for overclocking the video cards. Depending how much you are overclocking the gpu you may or may not need to add voltage to the overclock. I haven't used the MAI Afterburner myself but I have used the Evga Precision and it is similar. Whan you raise the core clock you have to raise the shader clock along with it and it would be a good idea to link the two so it raises both at the same time. Then you also need to raise the memory clock after the core clock has been raised and depending on how much you raise the core clock you may have to raise the voltage just a small bit.
Your best bet is to do a Google Search on the two things and see if you can find some tutorials that will help you and you can use as a refernce. The cpu overclock should be pretrty easy and straight forward if the MB has that setting I described and the video card is going to take some work and you should be very careful and take it slow and verify stability with every change in raising clock speed.

 

[kajabla]

Afterburner and Precision both have stability/stress test tools that will put your GPU under just about the maximum possible stress and will tally any errors or artifacts that occur. I use Precision because I think it looks nicer, but it doesn't matter.
You should start with the core clock, bumping up maybe 30mhz. You probably won't see artifacts at that level. Keep bumping up 10mhz at a jump, testing about 15 minutes each time. If you get any artifacts at any time, clock down 10mhz, do a final test for 25 minutes or so and stop. No artifacts are acceptable. Once you've got a stable core clock, repeat for memory; this may be able to go a little higher, but you never know.
OC the 2500K as described by inzone. Just set the multiplier to 42, or the clock to 4.2ghz if there's an option for that.

What model is the PSU? 750W is meaningless if it's a junk box.

 

[wienerdog]

Afterburner and Precision both have stability/stress test tools that will put your GPU under just about the maximum possible stress and will tally any errors or artifacts that occur. I use Precision because I think it looks nicer, but it doesn't matter.
You should start with the core clock, bumping up maybe 30mhz. You probably won't see artifacts at that level. Keep bumping up 10mhz at a jump, testing about 15 minutes each time. If you get any artifacts at any time, clock down 10mhz, do a final test for 25 minutes or so and stop. No artifacts are acceptable. Once you've got a stable core clock, repeat for memory; this may be able to go a little higher, but you never know.
OC the 2500K as described by inzone. Just set the multiplier to 42, or the clock to 4.2ghz if there's an option for that.

What model is the PSU? 750W is meaningless if it's a junk box.

its a CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750

 

[kajabla]

Then you're good.

 

[k1114]

Have we seriously downgraded to auto OC on this forum? Sb makes it pretty simple to manually oc. Set the multiplier to 42 and adjust the vcore, auto tends to overvolt. You can start with a offset of -.05 or used fixed at 1.2v. I'd recommend offset so the voltage can lower when you're idling. I'm not sure if that will get you 4.2 but you can raise it til it's stable. Even with the auto oc you'll want to stability test.

BTW BF3 could care less what cpu speed you have. 3.3ghz gets the exact same fps as 4.5ghz. Other games may be affected but bf3 is gpu intensive.

 

[kajabla]

We did specify manually OCing.

 

[k1114]

Not for cpu. There's not really an auto oc for gpus.