Overclocking an i7 2600K on air

to0kenZA

to0kenZA

New member
Hi guys,

I got my new i7 and ASUS motherboard last week and I've been thinking about playing around a bit with the overclocking. Anyone with the Sandy Bridge chipset, please shed some light! :D

I have done some research and I see people are overclocking this beast up to 5.2GHz on air and even higher than that with more extreme cooling. How mad is that?

My only concern is, someone told me that DDR3 RAM can only go up to 1333Mhz on this chipset so how the hell do these okes manage to get their RAM speeds so high? In the regions of 1833 - 2000MHZ?

Also, I've seen that there are two methods of overclocking. One would be the conventional system where you just input the values manually in the BIOS, like with all old boards.

The other method is to use the Stepping where it overclocks only when it needs the power and not while it's idling. That's very cool.

Has anyone here overclocked their i7 yet?



My PC specs:


ASUS P8P67 Deluxe
Intel i7 2600k
ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II
Kingston HyperX DDR3-2133 (They didn't have Corsair in stock :(- but this is good as well :D)
Coolermaster V8 air cooler
 
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I was also thinking of overclocking. These rigs are too slow. lol! OC is just for fun probably just to see what the rig is capable of! 5.2GHz is mad though.
 
Lycanthrope said:
Why would you want to overclock it? Is it slow? :rolleyes:
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:rolleyes:


Who wouldn't want to?! If this bad boy can go safely up to 5GHZ I'll want to do it sooner or later! :p Maybe not JUST YET, but you can definitely make this CPU work for you for much longer than you intended it to, if that's the case! It's an enthusiast thing :P:D

frank007 said:
I was also thinking of overclocking. These rigs are too slow. lol! OC is just for fun probably just to see what the rig is capable of! 5.2GHz is mad though.
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Yeah dude, way too slow! I'm so dissapoint! xD

No but on a serious note, this is one monster of a processor. I could never have imagined.... Currently, it overclocks itself to about 4.4Ghz on "stock" ASUS settings, with the stepping, so I just want to see how far I can take it manually. It's not like it's my first time overlocking a machine, just my first time with Intel.
 
to0kenZA said:
:rolleyes:


Who wouldn't want to?! If this bad boy can go safely up to 5GHZ I'll want to do it sooner or later! :p Maybe not JUST YET, but you can definitely make this CPU work for you for much longer than you intended it to, if that's the case! It's an enthusiast thing :P:D
Click to expand...

You know what they say: don't fix it if it isn't broken :p
 
well


i cant really shed light on your i7

but it seems the general trend is that the newer CPU seem to be able to reach higher clockspeeds

i pushed the X6 1055T to 4GHZ this weekend, howver it went well over 60 degress so my cooling which i might add is after-market is plain K@K

im actually now looking for a better cooler, however i have not benched what 2.8 GHZ to 4.0GHZ on an X6 really adds to oevrall FPS etc cause of the heat issue

plus really i dont think OC'ing is really needed, its doing VERY well in-game as is
 
Lycanthrope said:
You know what they say: don't fix it if it isn't broken :p
Click to expand...

Not fixing things that aren't broken is for simple minded people! :D Haha, kidding- but seriously, I like playing around.

@buzz: The reason the new Intels can go so high is because of their improved architecture. I've got a lot to read up on still, but these CPUs are something else.

@Plassie: Thanks for the input there buddy! :P
 
frank007 said:
Jees man did you also do that? I tried it this weekend and got it to ready HD DVD and then BluRay with a bit more tweaking! Its insane!
Click to expand...

I was also playing around a bit with my RAM and managed to get it to read CDs and make coffee, thus rendering my DVD ROM obsolete and I sold it for R150. What a bargain! Way to save some bucks!
 
Simple quick way of overclocking : enter your bios and find the cpu multiplier setting. Change this to whatever clock you want to achieve. eg. multiplier at 42x will give you 4.2 ghz. Obviously you would need an aftermarket cpu cooler to avoid things getting too hot.

Then theres the more advanced method where a couple of more settings are tweaked such as voltage, power saving, stepping, etc.
check these links out :
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/266189-11-alternate-sandy-bridge-series-ocing-guide
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/265056-11-2600k-2500k-overclocking-guide

In terms of 'stepping', you can either have whats called a full time/permanent overclock, in which case your cpu will always run at say for example 4.2ghz, even when idle. or you can have it so that it steps down to about 1.6ghz when idle, and then speeds up to your full overclock of 4.2ghz (for example) when needed. Im not sure what the pro's and cons are of each though.

And about the ram - sandy bridge sets all ram to a default of 1333mhz, even if the ram you install has a higher stock speed (such as 1600, 1866, 2133 etc.)
Im not too sure about this one, but i think it involves activating XMP in the bios, and then you are allowed to change the ram speed. I've done it before on a friends system but cant remember exactly what i did, was a while ago!

However, you shouldn't worry too much about your ram speed. In terms of real world performance, the gains of going from 1333mhz to 2133mhz isn't anything great. Also, you shouldnt increase your ram speed if you purchased and installed ram that is rated only at 1333mhz.
 
Yes you did Kuga...but you turned the thing into a crispy piece of bacon while doing it :p

/joke

Anyway, these cpu's can clock sic. My 2500K is running 4.5ghz 24/7 (non turbo OC) at a tepid 1.285 vCore with prime maxing out at 53'C after a few hours.

If you not a bencher then clocking your cpu to over 5ghz does not serve a purpose in my mind actually. When running high end gpu SLI/CF setup then clocking to around 4.7 makes sense as you eliminate the bottleneck. But if you running single gpu...4.2ghz should be more than enough.
 
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