I'm trying to speed up my computer by overclocking it with an EVGA Precision X1.
I'm trying to speed up my computer by overclocking it with an EVGA Precision X1.
I need to run my PC harder to play games at a high refresh rate. My screen needs to show 3440 pixels wide by 1440 pixels tall when I do it, but only 100 times per second. If I set the CPU or GPU too much too fast, I will get black screens. That's what happened before and I want to avoid that. My goal is just to get better performance without hurting my graphics card. I am using Windows 10 Home for this stuff.
Here are my exact computer parts:
My processor is an Intel Core i7 6800K running at 3.4 GHz with a "broadwell" chip and the EP version that uses 14nm technology. It has 32 gigabytes of RAM, which I bought from a random seller for $1065 per megabyte when it was new (that price is still good). The memory sticks have a specific pattern of pinouts: they need to be set up in groups like 15-15-15-36.
My motherboard is an ASUSTeK X99-A II model that uses the "socket" labeled 2011 for my CPU socket. It runs about 37 degrees Celsius, which seems pretty normal. My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 from EVGA. The picture on it shows a resolution of 1920 by 1080 at 240 frames per second when I'm playing games on the high-res monitor. But for my actual game, I need to use a resolution of 3440 pixels wide by 1440 pixels tall at 100 frames per second because that's what my screen is set to.
My hard drive setup has two big drives: one 250 gigabyte Samsung SSD called an EVO that is very fast, and another 931 gigabyte Western Digital WDC drive for storing games or videos. The first storage drive is at 34 degrees Celsius while the second one runs cooler at around 32 to 35 degrees Celsius depending on which specific drive I am looking at.
I also have a ton of other stuff like an optical drive that can read discs, and some audio equipment from Razer called the Kraken 7.1 V2. When I get these things together, they all run fine without any black screens or crashes.
EVGA Precision X1 comes with a built-in OC scanner if you need one. Go to the bottom half of the main window, find the "VF Curve Tuner" page, and start with default settings or use the power and temperature sliders at the top right to set them high. Just press the "Scan" button, then make some coffee because it takes a long time, maybe 15 to 20 minutes. The number it shows is what you put in the box below "CLOCK" in the center of the main window. Then do a simple stress test like one from 3D Mark. If it mostly passes (with numbers in the high 90s), then your overclock is probably fine. Otherwise, lower it slightly, for example to 10MHz, and try again.
EVGA Precision X1 comes with a built-in tool to check if overclocking is safe for you. On the bottom half of the main screen, find the "VF Curve Tuner" page. You can start with default settings, or try setting power and temperature sliders to their highest values first. Either way, hit the "Scan" button. Then make some coffee or whatever since it takes 15 to 20 minutes to finish. The number it shows at the end is what you type in the box labeled "CLOCK" near the top center of the main window. After that, run a stress test like the one included in 3D Mark. If it mostly passes with good percentages, then your overclocking probably works fine. But if it fails or numbers drop too low, try lowering the speed by about 10MHz and do it again. You can also tweak voltage slightly just to make the clock run faster, but you have to change the memory settings manually instead. It's a bit like the VF Curve Tuner method, though: start with big jumps of 100 MHz, run a test or stress test, and keep going until you get a crash, bad graphics, or when performance stops getting better. Make sure to save your profile once you're done doing this. Just remember that GPU clock speeds are just suggestions, not guarantees. Depending on how other parts of your system are set up, it might not even matter if you actually overclock anything right now.