Need some advice for OC with Asus P8Z77-V Pro + i5-3570k

[matta85]

Hi guys,

I just assembled my new gaming rig at friday, and startet reading up on how to OC ivy yesterday.

My rig consist of theese parts:

MOBO: Asus P8Z77-V Pro
CPU: i5-3570k w/ CM Hyper 212 +
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD7970 Ghz Edition 3GB (Vapor-X)
PSU: XFX ProSeries XXX Edition 850W PSU
CASE: Fractal Define R3 (Black Pearl Midi: 2x120mm Front/Back + 3x140mm Bottom/Top fans)
MONITOR: BenQ XL2420T (1920x1080 w/120hz)

I OC'ed my chip to 4.4GHz last evening, first at vCore 1.2 started Prime but then BSOD after 3 mins ish. Then I up'ed the vCore to 1.225 an ran Prime for solid 6 hours stable with max temp 76C. I used manuall voltage and set vCore to 1.225 in Bios. Though in CPU-Z it shows 1.232v and VID@1.2810. I'm going to try 1.220 and i see if stable and continue down until I find the sweet spot.

Do you guys think 4.4GHz is enough to not bottleneck my gpu to much, and keep up with i.e. BF3 Ultra MSAA4 at 1920x1080?

Now over to offset voltage. Because I don't want it to run at vCore 1.232 all the time and also wan't to reduce the Idle temps I wan't to change to offset voltage.

I'm under the impression that I should OC with manuall voltages first to find lowest possible voltage as possible for the clock I want to achieve. And then change to offset voltage and (-) subtract until CPU-Z shows vCore around what I found out manually lowest voltage it needs to be stable. Just wondering if I'm on the right track or not?

All tips and help is greatly appreciated

 

[steddora]

Absolutely, you're doing great in my eyes. However, I don't think your CPU is going to bottleneck that card at 3Ghz, much less than at 4Ghz+.

Offset voltages, I'd start LOW like -0.250v or more just to get an idea where it goes. It took me quite a while to find my offset voltage and keep it stable. From my viewpoint, so far you got this in the bag bro! Just remember, offset voltage makes about 10x more instabilities then fixed. Not only do you have to worry about it being stable at a load, but sometimes the low end voltage will actually cause instability at idle and even instabilities when going from idle to load.

So keep the temperatures in check, and even if programs like IntelBurnTest push the voltages a little higher than you wanted; it may be better to have it that way when compared to having an instability when idling. Just remember, nothing is going to push and tug on that CPU worse than IBT and Prime95 is pretty rough on it as well.