Help needed to surpass the 4.9GHz limit on i5 8600K
Help needed to surpass the 4.9GHz limit on i5 8600K
I'm just starting out with overclocking and have noticed how far I can take my chip. Until now, everything was working smoothly until I reached the 4.9GHz mark. The challenge here is that pushing the clock speed to that level demands a big jump in voltage, which also raises temperatures. Earlier, I managed a stable 4.8GHz overclock at 1.275v, with temperatures ranging between 75 and 85 during stress tests on RealBench and Prime95 (using the latest version without AVX or FFT). In gaming, I only reached high 60s to low 70s with Apex Legends.
When trying to hit 4.9GHz, I've been raising the voltage up to around 1.34v, but it hasn't stabilized. Either the temps climb too high (up to 85-95°C according to HWMonitor), or I encounter instability—like rounding errors in Prime95 and crashes in RealBench. Increasing the voltage doesn’t seem to fix these issues; I still face instability and temperatures are rising further, nearing the high 90s.
I also noticed Prime95’s small FFT test failed at 1.34v even faster than at lower voltages (like 1.32v), which is concerning.
My setup includes a Dark Rock Pro 4 air cooler, an AsRock Z370 Extreme4 motherboard, all housed in a Meshify C case (with x2 140mm front intake, x1 120mm back exhaust, and x2 120mm top exhaust). I also have a GTX960 and HyperX 2400MHz 2x4GB RAM DDR4.
My BIOS settings so far are:
- Core Clock Speed: 49
- AVC Offset: 2
- LLC: Level 1 (highest setting for this board, tried Auto)
- Vcore: 1.34v (this is the point I’ve reached)
My questions remain:
- Did I simply get lucky and hit my limit?
- Are there specific settings I should adjust to stabilize the overclock?
- I’m curious about Cache Ratio and Power Limits—I’m not fully sure what they do or how to set them properly. I also don’t want to risk damaging the system.
- Shouldn’t the Dark Rock Pro 4 be adequate for cooling at this stage? It feels like it might not be enough, even though it’s marketed to handle it.
- If anyone has any advice or corrections, please let me know! Thank you!
Your nuts... But that being said, so I'm and xD dumb your RAM down as you're okay with the CPU slightly overclocking a bit to make up for it. You could tell the motherboard it's a step or two behind what it should be. If it's DDR3 1866MHz, just say it's 1600MHz. But I doubt you have DDR3, hardly anyone does anymore.
Honestly, anything under 5ghz works well for a gaming PC—don’t waste CPU power unnecessarily since it’s mostly luck. Last week I overclocked my I7 700k to 4.8ghz and was concerned, but the temperature stayed normal. After checking the BIOS, I saw the setting was at 4.8ghz and I changed it back just in case.
It seems like the lottery is on processors, but your RAM is set to default. This means it’s trying to run them at stock settings you need to lower because as you increase the CPU, the CPU automatically raises the RAM usage. It doesn’t change in BIOS—it just keeps increasing while you boost the CPU. This is something all computers do when the CPU gets overclocked; the computer tries to compensate with more memory.