Diving into Overclocking
Diving into Overclocking
I want to start overclocking as a bit of a hobby. I've tried to read through some stickies but I'm feeling overwhelmed.
Is there a good place to start? I'm fine if you push me back to the stickies but maybe you can recommend one or two of them to start with?
Here's my build. I already had two 3TB HDDs in RAID 0 that aren't listed in the build. I also have an external NAS with two 3TB HDDs in RAID 1 where I keep some very important files. The NAS is backed up about once a month with an external HDD I keep offsite (due to my work, I can't lose them and don't want to keep them in a cloud). I can't imagine any of that is important.
PCPartPicker part list
CPU:
Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler:
Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Thermal Compound:
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste
Motherboard:
Asus X99-DELUXE/U3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard
Memory:
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
Storage:
Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card
Case:
Corsair 780T ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply:
Corsair 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive:
Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Operating System:
Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)
Case Fan:
Corsair SP140 49.5 CFM 140mm Fan
Case Fan:
Corsair SP140 49.5 CFM 140mm Fan
Keyboard:
Corsair STRAFE RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard
Mouse:
Corsair M65 RGB Wired Laser Mouse
A friend helped me pick parts based on me wanting to continue gaming but also wanting to be able to make some substantial upgrades over the next few years. I did the building myself.
I ran a PassMark benchmark and scored somewhere in the 3k range (I can find the exact number if that's important).
I'd really appreciate any pointers you can give. To be totally honest, I don't need to overclock but it sounds fun and I want to do it for the fun of it. The build already more than does what I want it to do and I probably could have achieved the same level of performance for less money. I don't care about scores - it's just a number - as much as seeing an actual performance increase in what I do.
Your hardware is all set and the cooler performs well, so the only thing left is adjusting the CPU multiplier. It’s quite straightforward—your CPU is currently running at 33x100, and you can gradually increase it to something like 35x100 or 37x100, etc. Over time, you should raise the CPU voltage in small increments of a few millivolts. I don’t have a current beginner’s guide to recommend, but any guide published within the last year would be helpful.
Your hardware is all set and the cooler performs well, so the only thing left is adjusting the CPU multiplier. It’s quite straightforward—your CPU is currently running at 33x100, and you can gradually increase it to something like 35x100 or 37x100, etc. Over time, you should raise the CPU voltage in small increments of a few millivolts. I don’t have a current beginner’s guide to recommend, but any guide published within the last year would be helpful.
Your hardware is all set and the cooler works well, so you just need to adjust the CPU multiplier. It’s straightforward—your CPU is currently running at 33x100, and you can gradually increase it, starting with 35x100, then 37x100, and so on. You’ll also want to raise the CPU voltage in small increments of a few millivolts. I don’t have a current beginner’s guide to recommend, but any guide from the past year should help.
You might find some controllers for this purpose (covering CPU and RAM voltages) in the BIOS software on your motherboard or in Windows software that manages it. It’s unclear if there’s a specific ratio, but the motherboard could adjust the voltage when necessary.
Thanks again for the advice.
Your hardware is all set and the cooler performs well, so you just need to adjust the CPU multiplier. It's quite straightforward—your CPU is currently running at 33x100, and you can gradually increase it to something like 35x100 or 37x100, etc. Eventually, you'll have to slightly raise the voltage in small increments. I don’t have a current beginner’s guide to recommend, but any guide from the past year would be useful.
I tried using the 5-way optimization tool that comes with my ASUS motherboard. It automatically increases the multiplier and monitors temperatures until it stabilizes. It managed to push the multiplier up to 45 from 33. I initially thought about letting it run independently, but I ended up turning off the monitor, which might have stopped the test early.
I’ll give it another go now that I’ve added two more 140 SP Corsair fans to the CPU cooler’s radiator. Hopefully, my GPU could use this software too—it only has an "OC" setting, which I’m not confident about. I’ll need to figure that out later.
Thanks for the guidance. Your explanation really helped me start correctly.