Getting the best out of my system-i5 2500k build

[troysanders]

hey, new around here and overclocking in general... but anyways on to what this thread is about.

i've recently started looking into overclocking and decided to checkout my presets before i tried anything on my own.. there were several preset in my bios one of them being 4.8ghz.. decided to give it a go (on stock cooler..shh i know bad idea but this is just to test if my cpu could hit what it was asked to..this being that some cpus cant hit certain ocs i heard) what really happened was a core voltage that was too high and a speed of 5.2ghz and a really hot cpu but seemingly stable (didnt stay at 80*c for too long, probably less then 30 minutes in prime 95)

now im wondering, what could i sit at with a pretty good safe zone? i was thinking about 4.5ghz now that i got the c14? (no i have not tried the presets with the c14 because the core voltage was WAY too high)

build:
cpu: i5 2500k
mobo: asrock pro3-m
ram: 8gb g.skill sniper 12800
gpu: asus 550ti
psu: antec neo eco 520w
cpu cooler: noctua nh-c14
case: sentey bx1 4243

room temp 15*c (unheated basement, although not for long as im moving back to brazil and my average temps will be around 20*C)
~stock clocking ~
idle temp:18-21*c on all cores
under load: 29-39*c on all cores



i think i got everything needed for this kind of request (if needed just ask ill post more.

 

[leenoshiro]

General consensus says 1.3v is max for safe 24/7 and anything under 80C is good. I stopped at 4.2ghz on my 2500k, the next bumps just wasn't worth it to me. Too much voltage, for so little gain in performance imo.

 

[troysanders]

yeah the 5.2ghz put me at 1.5v.
another thing i noticed, my ram is set at 11-11-11-28 while its meant to be at 9-9-9-24. lower the cas or maintain at the current 11-28?

 

[leenoshiro]

Are you using the software to overclock you system? Or are you manually setting them? If its software or set to auto, maybe they increased your ram speed, but loosened the timings to keep it stable. Most people prefer lower Timings to Higher Speeds, as do i.

Edit: If you want to keep your lower timings, then you would have to set them manually in the bios and set the speed back to stock as well.

 

[troysanders]

hang on.. 11-28 is faster than 9-24? because i thought a lower cas meant faster ram... perhaps i just misunderstood things xD

im just ocing from the uefi bios, asrock has 5 or 6 presets in there but they all seem to put way too high of a core voltage. a friend of mine said i could hit 4.5ghz and maintain a stable oc with the stock voltage and still not worry about heat because of the c14.

but after looking at several 2500k guides/tips they all seem to contradict each other on several things so im not exactly sure on what settings i should keep the chip.

 

[leenoshiro]

sorry if i confused you, 9-24 is faster. Presets usually overclocks your Bclk as well, which in turn overclocks your Ram speed.

Highly doubt it about hitting 4.5ghz on stock volts...that would be one beastly chip lol

 

[PurpleHayes]

There are two measures of the "speed" of RAM-the clock speed (E.g. DDR3-1600MHz is faster than DDR3-1333MHz) and how tight the timings are (lower cas-tighter). Your stock settings are 9-9-9-24 (faster than 11-11-11-28 at the same clock speed), and 1600MHz clock speed. I'd probably recommend resetting it manually to its stock settings.

The C14 is a great cooler, so you might be able to do 4.5 GHz on stock voltage, but remember that nothing is guaranteed when overclocking. Your temperatures are really low--that's good, because it means you have a lot of room to overclock. The best way to overclock is to do it manually, without the ASRock presets.

The i5-2500k overclocks simply by raising its multiplier--you have a 100MHz base clock, multiplied by whatever your multiplier is. If you want to overclock, just go to the BIOS and change the CPU multiplier-it should be 33 at stock (33x100MHz=3300 MHz=3.3 GHz). My recommendation would be to bump it to 40 (4.0 GHz), and check your temperatures by stress-testing, then bump it up 100-200 MHz at a time until you hit your goal. If you start to get system crashes at a certain point, you can increase the CPU voltage--most people say between 1.3 and 1.4V is safe, I think Tom's uses 1.35V as its safe limit. Just keep bumping up your CPU speed and voltage (within safe limits) until you hit what you want--safe 24/7 temperatures for an i5-2500k would be <40C idle, <60C load. Hope that helps!

 

[troysanders]

prurple that was a pretty damn good explanation, also thanks leenoshiro

i'll give it a go and let you know how things goes.

 

[troysanders]

4.4ghz stable. 25*c idle-60*under load.

 

[leenoshiro]

Nice OC.

I don't consider an overclock stable until it passes 24 hours of Prime95, but that's just me.

 

[troysanders]

oh for sure, that one only ran for around 3 hours but i will have prime and intel burntest longer once i dont need the computer for work.

120gflops seems a bit low no?

 

[k1114]

Rams speed is not affected by bclk for SB. The simplest way is to just select xmp in bios. It'll set the timings and speed to 1600, 9-9-9-24 as the ram is rated for. 1.32v is a bit high for 4.4ghz, try lowering the voltage. I get 4.6 @ 1.3. Tom's uses 1.35v as the safe but others say 1.4v. 72C in normal operation is the the more common max temp as that is what intel rates the tcase at.

 

[troysanders]

i'll lower it a bit, hmm how does 1.25 sound?

xmp is enabled and the voltages on the ram is the exact same as it was before.


~~EDIT~~

strange i had it set to 1.250 on the screen shots up there but the system autos it to 1.320 only really noticed that now that u mentioned 1.320 is high. the 1.320 was used for 4.5ghz which was unstable (4.7 with 1.36v 5.0,5.2 were all stable for at least an hour with almost 1.4v )

hmm i've saved my preset at 4.4 with the 1.25 and loaded it like 6 times now and it stays at 1.320. strange, anything you guys would suggest in that case?

 

[troysanders]

yeah this confirms what i mentioned above... i have the vcore set to 1.250 but instantly jumps back to 1.320

 

[k1114]

Did you change any other settings? What is your llc? You're using fixed vcore, I would suggest offset if you want it to lower when you idle.

 

[troysanders]

i had it on a preset 4.4ghz so i couldnt chnage all the settings, i saw that the vcore wasnt high so i thought it was alright... but i just went through and set everything manually, he is everything that could be changed (most of it was left on default)

~oc tab

multiplier/ratio- 44
pll over voltage- on
speed step- on
turbo power limit- auto
additional turbo voltage- auto
core current limit- 150
bclk- 100.0mhz
spread spec- off
power saving- off
cpu voltage- 1.250
llc- level 5
igpu- 1.250
dram- 1.545-auto
pch- 1.059-auto
pll- 1.892
vtt- 1.057-auto
vccsa- 1.016

~advanced tab> cpu settings

active cores- all
hardware prefetcher- on
adjacent line prefetch- on
c1e- off
c3- off
c6- off
package c state- auto
cpu thermal throttling- on
intel virtualization- off
no excuse memory protection- off

type out everything in this post>prime95>bsod>instant regret of not hitting "add a reply" before prime95>restart>chrome backed up everything>

 

[madchemist83]

Two high voltage on ram a bit lower

 

[troysanders]

Two high voltage on ram a bit lower

stock ram voltage mate
G.SKILL SNIPER 1600 12800

 

[madchemist83]

Stock is 1.5 mate

 

[troysanders]

Stock is 1.5 mate

there is no plain 1.500 its either 1.540 much higher or much lower.
the voltage on it was the xmp stock/default/auto voltage even with the normal 3.3ghz clock.

 

[madchemist83]

Hm strange. Mine is at 1.5 stock and xmp 1600 mhz

 

[troysanders]

average of 124 gigaflops on intell stress test out of 100 tests.
stable for about 6 hours now on prime95 (the cpu temp in the screen shot is my load temp)
lowered the vcore quite a bit. what do you guys think?

 

[madchemist83]

looking good.
Mine 4.5 ghz gives me only 112 Gflops with 1.285v

 

[troysanders]

i kinda want to do a longer test on my 5.2ghz oc (but i would never have it 24/7 unless i buy my uncles phase cooler) i ran prime 95 on it for 30 mins and it seemed stable enough for me to keep testing it but because im sticking with 4.4ghz i didn't want to push it.. (-- 5.2ghz, 40c idle and 75*load, but with 1.4v --)

 

[k1114]

You can turn your c-states on and shouldn't have any issues. 1.545 on dram is not strange and is not too high. You really don't have to change any settings other than multi and vcore but the other settings won't hurt. Are you doing blend or large fft in prime? Or IBT on extreme?

@madchemist, you posted in another thread you were at 1.3v and unstable which might have something to do with the lower glfops at a higher clock than troy. But then I really don't pay attention to some synthetic benchmark, I gauge performance increase in render times.