Overclocked my i5 4440 successfully.
Overclocked my i5 4440 successfully.
So I can't afford a new CPU at all and started to notice a slight bottleneck in recent CPU intensive titles. There is also slight wear on my HDD so that doesn't help either. But determine to get that extra bit in games I set off as normal read all the articles on non-k overclocking and most of the articles just said something along the lines of either "it can't be done" or "the improvement can't be that much". And what I had read on forums seemed to confirm that. All of my tests are using the stock cooler too. So I ran userbenchmark to get a base line reading (using the Asus optimal configuration) on April 3rd 2017 and the result was nothing to write home about not the worst reading to the i5 4440 but also not the best. After playing around a little with the settings in the UEFI to see the limits of my hardware I managed to used the BCLK to overclock my CPU on the second run to be considerably faster but had to dial the BCLK back a little as it seemed to prevent any worth while ram overclocking as well as causing occasional crashes. So the same day I redid the overclock and on the 3 rd run got this result . And finally today I ran the last benchmark to make sure everything was stable and it is. Below is the link to ark for the i5 4440 and a few images to show CPU speed. below is ark for the 4440 and a few images showing core speed. including one uncropped with a timestamp for now so any doubt is cast aside. http://ark.intel.com/products/75038/Inte...o-3_30-GHz EDIT:Fixed wrong link
It's interesting to note. Many believe it's pointless, yet around 5-6% is the same amount Intel charges annually for a £30 increase over the previous model, making it seem unnecessary to pay extra just for better performance.
It's around 3.5ghz with a slight boost over the base frequency. I achieved 3.6 by adjusting the bclk to 107.6, but it became hot and unstable, so I'm hesitant to tweak the voltage for stability. However, with a better cooler and optimized voltage settings, I'm confident I can reach 3.7ghz.
I've owned this CPU for about four years and recently upgraded to a 1660 Ti. I'm experiencing some performance issues and don't have the budget for another one. It's encouraging to know there are ways to boost BCLK and I've upgraded my cooling solution. I'll see if my motherboard's chipset supports higher frequencies.