i760 Gigabyte P55-USB3 overclocking help please

I'm strungling to reach 4GHz atm. Most i have got is 3.94GHZ which required 1.3 vcore and qpi-vtt @ 1.27v. I have LLC enable atm as i was suffering quite a bit of vdroop. Its been a while since i overclocked and i'm not sure of all the new settings. I have turned off all the turbo/boost features. The guides I have read seem to have different names in there BIO which dont match with what i'm seeing in mine.

I raised the volts to 1.325vcore and 1.29 temporarly but this didnt net me any increase in speed. i'm using 21x multiplier 187 fsb(bclock?). using 20x and a higher fsb seems to make matters worse. ram is well underclocked and running at 1.65v so shouldnt give any issues. Running on an old but good water cooling setup, temps seem ok running maximum IBT runs back to back, 60c average across the cores while under load and dropping to <30c quickly after they stop.

I've currently backed off the volts and lower the cpu down to 3.8ghz. Could somebody advise what volts they consider safe for 24/7 usage on these chips? also there are other setting on the board i have no clue what they do pch? PLL? is it worth tinkering with these and what are the safe setting? If anybody has a same or similar board could they advise what setting they are using.

Might just need more volts. Mine isn't the best chip out of the factory - quite volt hungry. My settings for your information...

bclk 200
cpu multi 20
mem multi x8
qpi ratio x32
pci clock 100
ram 9 9 9 24 (XMP disabled, mem setup manual with performance enhance 'turbo')

vcore 1.375 in BIOS (CPUZ shows 1.36 at idle and 1.392 load with LLC on level 2)
qpi vtt 1.3
pch 1.1
cpu pll 1.9
ram 1.66

cpu and pci clock drive both 900mv

turbo boost, EIST, C states etc all off

Actually I think my vcore is one notch down now - when I got a decent PSU I found I could lower it just a notch and still be stable, maybe cos the PSU is cleaner than my old cheap one.

Performance difference between 3.9ghz and 4.0ghz is nothing. I left mine on 3.9, because there seemed to be a barrier just before 4.0ghz. Up until that point it only needed small voltage changes to get the increases. After 3.9, it seemed to want more and more volts, for smaller and smaller increases in clockspeed.

The extra 100mhz won't effect your system..... just your e-peen.

I'll give those setting a go when i get home and risk a few more volts. Once i get it over 4GHz i will probably bench it and then take it back down to 3.6-3.8 range. tbh even @3.8 the performance is a lot better in the types of games i play(Civ5 total war series) than the old E6600. I just like to see what the max it can do after i've spent £4-500 buying it.

The single most important consideration when overclocking is to keep an eye on your temperatures. That must be your guide. Take a note of your idle temperatures and what your temperatures are when under-load. At the end of the day you need to be comfortable with the temps. Please keep in mind that your max load temps will not be duplicated in normal everyday use. But those temps represent the top end of the scale.

There are many different applications that are useful for loading your CPU. I still like prime using a blend on all cores. enjoy your setup.

safe to say iam kind of addicted now lol cant stop tinkering. i was stuck at 3.8 ghz couldnt get anything higher stable. i realised when i lost my over clock must have been when i changed my ram from xms3 4gb 9-9-9-24 to ballistix elite 16gb 8-8-8-24. i swapped it back to just see if i could get more and straight away after updating bios its stable at 4ghz. going to see if i can push it a bit more. I forgot to mention in my earlier post the cooling i have is the corsair hydro h50. so going to look in to getting some diffrent ram (any recommendations appreciated). I dont wont to go to mad with my temps id like to not go any higher than 80 as i belive the chip max is 100 iam at 72 atm (under max using intelburn for 2 hours). Going to reapply some new thermal paste at weekend see if i can drop it some more.

Dam this is addictive lol i even overclocked my gpu since i made this post just to see what else i could get