Core I5 maximum?

non k processors can only go up to their turbo boost limit(not inlcluding the slight blck overclocking). if you wanted to overclock, you were supposed to buy a k series chip(2500k, 2550k, 2600k, 3570k, 3770k)

Or the K/X chips on LGA2011... i7-3930k/3960x/3970x.

Sorry but you can't really overclock your CPU. Your CPU is a non k version meaning it doesn't have an unlocked multiplier. You can up the base clock a little but that isn't really overclocking and the most it will give you is a couple MHz increase. That really won't give you any real world performance difference.

Thanks guy, no need for apologies... I'm still new to this.

So that being said, it's time to upgrade. What would be the best option? Stick with the i5 series, or go up to i7? I'm not sure I really understand the difference.

You can upgrade to either the i5 3570K or i7 3770K. the i7 has hyperthreading so can run 8 threads across 4 cores, slightly useful for encoding video and some 3D creation programs, but for gaming, pretty much the same as the i5 3570k.

I have that board and i53570K, its a doddle to OC, i just set the voltage to 1.92 and mulitplier at 42 and bingo 4.2Ghz stable as a puppy, have had stable 4.8Ghz but temps start to run with that.

Nice Board for OC btw!

My 2013 build I went to a Asus Z77 Sabertooth and a i5 3570K so far I am really happy with it. I had a AMD FX-8350 before this so there was really no upgrade path on the AMD side so I felt it was time to go back to intel. For gaming I really do not see the need to go any higher than a i5 as I really do not thing there would be any real improvement with HT but I have not been back with intel a long time so I can't really say for sure.

Either the i5 3570K or i7 3770K. Both have unlocked multipliers and both can be heavily overclocked with good cooling.

10-20% is "heavily"? Back in the P2/P3 days, "heavy" used to mean ~50% since most of the favorite overclocking chips could easily manage 33%, simply had to pair a 100MHz FSB chip with 133MHz RAM. Some people even managed to get ~100% overclocks on Celerons. Those were crazy overclocking days.

Most of what used to define and enable "heavy" overclocking back then has been taken away by locked clocks on mainstream models. The only "heavy" thing left today is the amount of effort required to go significantly beyond the overclockable chips' stock clocks.

Another reason why I think 20% (~4.7GHz on IB/SB) is not heavy is that most people would not be able to tell the difference without benchmarks or a stopwatch... 20% is just not enough to make/break most software and the user experience in general.

cpu voltage at 1.92v ???????????????????????

LOL.

If someone needs that much voltage to get 4.2GHz out of SB or IB, I doubt they will get to enjoy it for very long... most chips will do that with stock voltage and many will even do so with the stock cooler.

LOL 1.92 v is a typo man, meant to say 1.29V