Is it possible to run an i5 8600k at higher speeds with a darkrock 4?
Is it possible to run an i5 8600k at higher speeds with a darkrock 4?
Hey everyone, I'm building a setup to make things look good for 3D stuff like modeling and animation. I have an i5-8600K processor. Can the Dark Rock 4 handle a higher speed? Is it better than normal chips to keep my temperature down while I do these tasks?
OCs are never 100% stable. Even at their best, they only hit a 99.99% mark. When people gamble on that tiny 0.01%, you might lose a little bit, but it's not a big deal. The worst case is having too much data corruption and forcing a full restart of the Windows system and the game. It's just a game for fun. But paid work works differently. Even though time costs money, if you're 59 minutes into an hour-long render when things glitch, it doesn't mean much compared to running Prime95 all day in the heat. When you spend the next few hours fixing your PC, how much was that OC actually worth? You can experiment with toys and spend whatever you want on them, but don't mess with the ones that make your money. If you need faster render times, check out software that's more effective or look at platforms like GPU vs CPU rendering instead of trying to tweak a toy.
The Dark Rock 4 is a solid CPU cooler that lets you overclock, but only if your case has good airflow too. I've seen people push the Dark Rock all the way up to 4.8GHz, but that causes super high sustained temps. Instead, something like an all-core 4.6/4.7GHz should work well enough. Just test it with your specific games or apps to see if you can keep temps at 80 degrees C or lower and you'll be good. Vcore is also very important; keeping the voltage around 1.3V or below will really help cool things down too. One thing that makes a big difference is delidding, especially with Intel's 8th Gen chips. It can drop temps by 15 to 20 degrees C using Liquid Metal thermal paste. I used this on my 8700K and it was way easier than expected; lots of great guides on YouTube if you want to try it yourself.
Cut down rendering times? My idea is that if you buy a K CPU, overlocking and unlocking extra headroom go together. Why leave that extra power idle when it could be used? Some testing shows stable overclocks on Intel aren't hard to do, they can save minutes per render which saves time and lets you work more efficiently... But I'm just saying so!
@vMax You've been doing this for a while and have some skills. But neither you nor I really know what the OP knows back then. I think if they aren't already experts, they're probably greenhands by default. So unless they tell me otherwise, we'll stick with that assumption. It's actually not hard to do it right—just need to be patient and take your time. From what I've seen, most people just want a quick fix without thinking about fixing anything later. That's why it matters so much for us now.
OCs aren't 100% stable. Even if they are only 99.99%, it's not a big deal when you gamble with it. If the system crashes and forces a restart or reinstall, you lose just a tiny bit of time. It's all a game. But paid work is different because money matters more than speed. If you're running a render for 59 minutes into an hour, that's not much difference between Prime95 and your OC working hard. If it crashes halfway through, you spend the next three hours fixing it to get back on track. Just how valuable was that extra time really? With toys like this, you only have to worry about them breaking if they're making money for you. To make faster progress, look into better tools or more powerful platforms instead of just swapping out your CPU or GPU.
I really appreciate your reply, and I got the answer to that question too! Thank you very much. And here is another one I've been asking: since I'm using an i5 8600k in this rig for rendering work, do any cheap air coolers exist? You can't get performance like a Dark Rock 4, but these should still be great for my CPU and all the render and 3D modeling tasks. Can you recommend some air cools that are affordable?
I believe you are right, so I should focus on stability. Thanks for your reply! There is one more thing I'm asking about because I use an i5 8600k in my rig just to do rendering. So what matters most? Do I need a specific type of cooler that costs low and still works well? I get it, those coolers won't boost performance like the Dark Rock series does. But for doing all my render and 3D modeling tasks, they work perfectly fine. Could you recommend just air coolers for me? I already asked this to another person too so I'm looking at your advice as well.
I don't know what software you are using to render, but many programs already use more threads (both physical and logical), so switching from your i5 8600K (6 cores/6threads) to an i7 8700K (6 cores/12threads) can speed up rendering significantly. You can keep the same cooler as before, like a DR4, for the i7 model. Besides the CPU, how much RAM and how fast it is also matters a lot for 3D modeling and even for rendering.