New game PC setup: Intel Core i7 8700K running at 3.7 GHz, upgraded to 5.1 GHz.
New game PC setup: Intel Core i7 8700K running at 3.7 GHz, upgraded to 5.1 GHz.
Hey everyone, so im really brand new to Overclocking and am super scared about messing things up, so please tell me if you can handle this or give some easy advice. I recently decided to speed up my CPU after a friend (who is more experienced) told me that it might be necessary because my processor was too slow for my RTX 2070 card when playing games at high speeds, especially in ones that need the CPU to work hard. Here is what my general setup looks like: Intel i7 8700k running at 3.7 Ghz with a Corsair H100i Platinum cooler. It has an MSI RTX 2070 Armored Edition card with 8GB of G-Skill Trident Z RAM running at 3200 MHz. I also have two 8GB sticks, and my case is the Tomahawk from MSI with a Corsair RM750x power supply (this one is full-modular, I dont remember the series number but it looks like Gold standard quality if not better). Aside from my memory problem where antivirus software seemed to steal all my RAM causing big issues until i turned off the protection and everything went back to normal after checking again, here is what happened: After setting up the overclocking for a few hours, I decided to try it out. I used a guide by "derbauer" for the i7 8700k along with my friends advice. Derbauer had an Asus board in his video but he figured out that his options were similar and got it running fine. I started at 5.0 Ghz and set the voltage to 1.35V. In the guide, he said to change the ring frequency from 44 down to 42. It stayed there without any problems. I thought about adding an AVX offset of -2 but my friend told me just put it at zero. I ran Cinebench for 1 hour and 10 minutes on both normal priority and high priority, and Prime95 for one hour (the non-AVX version) with zero errors or warnings on all cores. Top temperatures were around 82/83 degrees Celsius, the average hovered in the 60s to 70s range. When I was idle, temps stayed below 40 degrees. Obviously, I turned up my cooling settings to the highest possible level. We decided to go higher and found that 5.1 Ghz with 1.35V voltage became unstable. During some Cinebench tests, i got a blue screen of death (BSOD). I went back down to 5.1 Ghz at 1.36V and was able to run Cinebench several times and Prime95 for over an hour without any issues. The chip is not delidded yet. It is getting winter here, so outside temps are low (under 20C or lower) and probably maxed out around 20C inside my room. I am kind of worried about summer next year and if i should keep watching closely in spring to see if i need to turn this back down to the 5.0 Ghz / 1.35V settings just like that gets too hot. My main worry is mostly with the very short spikes seen on HWMonitor sometimes, where some cpu cores go to 68 or 70 degrees at relatively idle state. I watch videos and type a bit and have background programs running but generally i do nothing. The real-time temps mostly hover between 33C and 40C, but the max temp says something is going to 68 or 70. Are these very brief instances normal and okay in idle mode? To sum it up: I just want some reassurance on those temps and see if they are acceptable, and maybe a guess as to how they might change during summer next year so i should still have the same system. (PS: Also played Overwatch at low settings with 400 FPS stable and around 50C temperature. And AimLab gave me 1600 FPS with about 54C without too much variation. I might test DOOM on Ultra or something similar soon just to see how it goes). All that aside, what do you guys think about the overclocking? Im new to this and tried setting it up at 5.2 Ghz and going all the way up to 1.41V during testing but couldn't get it stable. I did not want to go any further so i set it back down to the 5.1 Ghz / 1.36V that Im at now. EDIT: I'm having CPU LLC at "Level 6" in my MB power settings and "CPU Current Capability" at "140%" as instructed in the video