Suggestions for overclocking 3570k w/ 6870 CF

[mcopinger]

Hey Guys,

I've just got my computer working again after my Asus sabertooth 990fx / FX-6200 died (not sure which one, little more complicated then I had time for). So I replace my AMD parts with an Intel i5 3570k on a AS Rock z77 extreme six and bought another 6870 while i was at it and put two in crossfire.

so here is what I'm looking for, just a safe base overclock for my CPU, RAM (cosair vengence 2x4gig 1866mhz) and GPUs. I've never done an intel overclock and never got into overclocking GPU's and right now I'm in school so I don't have the time to work on the 2-3 week overclock test I did over the summer (90% of the time was stability testing). maybe during the winter break I'll see what the limits of my system are but I like to have some overclock saved in the bios - helps me sleep at night

the complete specs for my system are

CPU: i5 3570k
EDIT: I have a cooler master cpu cooler hooked up now, don't remember what it's called. has 90mm fans though. i also have a water cooling loop but need to get a new mounting bracket for the intel board
mobo: asrock extreme6
RAM: corsair vengence 2x4gig 1866mhz
GPU: Sapphire 6870 x2 CF
PSU: antec 750w gold rated
Storage: 120gig kingston hyperx
WD caviler blue 500gig x2 raid 0
OS: windows 7 ultimate

thanks to anyone who pass on some suggestions!
Mike

 

[inzone]

Usually in the bios a motherboard may have some cpu overclock presets and since you don;t want to take the time to do a proper overclock this may be an option for you.
On my Asus board I have an option that's called CPU level up and when you hit enter you are given three speed options along with auto and disabled. In my bios the three speed options are 4.017G , 4.125G ,and 4.250G and when one of those are selected the bios then loads a set of preconfigured overclock settings and you will now be overclocked to that speed setting. This option is for a mild overclock and it is stable.
For the ram if you have the XMP profile availabe then you can select that for your ram. The video card you can always just up it by a few mhz to give it a mild overclock. Although with two cards in crossfire you really don't need to overclock the video cards.