First time Overclocking!

[smittyt33]

Okay, so a quick run down of my build:

MoBo: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500k

RAM: 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance

GPU: Radeon HD 6870

PSU: XFX 850w.

So, I know my power supply is overkill, haha.
And I really only want to mess with overclocking the CPU. Obviously.
Is there is a complete guide out there somewhere that will walk me through step by step of overclocking this thing with my bios? From what I've read overclocking it to around 4.5-4.7 is reasonable.? Any recommendations?

And another question while we're at it, on my Windows system rating the ram is only rated at a 5.5 when everything else is rated at the high 7's. Should I worry about it? I didn't think I'd ever need any more than 8gigs.??

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Your RAM should certainly show better than 5.5 in WEI. You sure you didn't confuse it with the HDD reading which is 5.9 for most people w/ a standard 7200RPM drive. My 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM shows 7.9
Do you have a stock CPU HSF or an aftermarket HSF? On the same MB and same CPU I just went into the BIOS to overclock mode and upped the CPU multiplier to 4.2. There may be another toggle in there re: enable/disable Turbo or someting but you'll find out quickly enough. I can run at higher CPU clocks but sometimes can't get all the way thru benchmarks when going to 4.5GHz, which doesn't bother me, I don't need the extra clock cycles anyway.

 

[spankmon]

I followed THIS GUIDE here on Tom's. Now running at 4.5 ghz, 1.340 core volts. Speedstep and Turbo are disabled, so even at idle it's still 4.5. Idle temps are warmer than you'd expect, but full load temps just slightly kiss 80`C when stress testing with Prime95 for 12 hours. Using Hyper 212+ cooler w/included putty and 2 fans. Case fans= 1 120mm intake, 1 120mm exhaust. So far it's been good (2 weeks). Windows Experience Rating= 7.7, 7.8, 7.8, 7.8, 7.9 (fwiw)