My specs:

i5 2500k @4.5 Ghz

Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3

Kingston HyperX Blu 2x4GB

GTX 970

Cooler master hyper 212 evo

I have been running an overclock of 4.5Ghz on my 2500k for a few year. I really dont know a great deal about overclocking but I originally followed this guide as I have a very similar gigabyte motherboard.

At first (about 3 years ago)I was very stable with only around 1.3V but as time goes on I find I keep needing to increase the voltage more to get stability to the point where I need to run the chip at 1.416V for it to be stable. This is also increasing my temps a lot I get around 75 degrees after running prime 95 for 20 mins.

Could the chip be starting to die? is 1.4V+ even safe? and is 75 degrees under load okay at that temperature?

My other bios settings are pretty much the same as on the guide above as I don't really understand many setting like what the "QPI/Vtt voltage" and "system agent voltage" are. Could changing any of these improve my stability so that I can run at a lower voltage?

Thanks in advance

Temps are still fine and your safe with that voltage, all things degrade over time but make sure you give your cooler and fans a good clean.

2016 and I'm still running my i5 2500K at 4.5Ghz. I'm not sure about your voltage because mines overclocked through my ASUS motherboard bios settings.

To digress and to everyone else there's nothing this CPU still can't do in 2016. I've just bought a 21:9 4K monitor and when gaming my i5 is saying 'is that all you've got'. Still fast as anything, not bad for a 5 year old CPU...

albert said:

2016 and I'm still running my i5 2500K at 4.5Ghz. I'm not sure about your voltage because mines overclocked through my ASUS motherboard bios settings.

To digress and to everyone else there's nothing this CPU still can't do in 2016. I've just bought a 21:9 4K monitor and when gaming my i5 is saying 'is that all you've got'. Still fast as anything, not bad for a 5 year old CPU...

Click to expand...

Just about 6 years strong man!

albert said:

2016 and I'm still running my i5 2500K at 4.5Ghz. I'm not sure about your voltage because mines overclocked through my ASUS motherboard bios settings.

To digress and to everyone else there's nothing this CPU still can't do in 2016. I've just bought a 21:9 4K monitor and when gaming my i5 is saying 'is that all you've got'. Still fast as anything, not bad for a 5 year old CPU...

Click to expand...

Evian said:

Just about 6 years strong man!

Click to expand...

A good few years @ 4.5ghz Here. Great CPU even now.



Temps are still within safe limits. And dont forget Prime95 usually simulates the extreme of what your CPU will be doing. For gaming for instance you would probably never reach those temps. Maybe a change of thermal paste and a good fan/heatsink clean out might bring the temps down a tad again.

Im using a gigabyte z68 mobo and tbh i had real issues with the manual core frequency setting. I had to and am still to this day using the turbo function with EIST (speedstep) enabled. @1.35v vcore Never had an issue since.
I do think though i upped both system agent and QPI/VTT settings a couple of increments though and also LLC is set to 5/10.

Hope it isnt your CPU on its way out. If 1.4v cures it and temps stay safe. Leave it as is and get on with it

1.416v is too high, its far more than it needs! 4.5ghz typically needs ~1.32v - 1.35v
system agent 0.950v is fine
qpi/vtt (vccio) 1.1v should be fine

what was the BSOD error code? 101? 124? something else? what test was it failing in p95? small ftt or large ftt ?

zipp0r said:

1.416v is too high, its far more than it needs! 4.5ghz typically needs ~1.32v - 1.35v
system agent 0.950v is fine
qpi/vtt (vccio) 1.1v should be fine

what was the BSOD error code? 101? 124? something else? what test was it failing in p95? small ftt or large ftt ?

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The BSOD error I get is 101 and I happens in blend and small ftt, I havent tested large ftt yet. I have have also played around with lots of the bios settings such as LLC, I tried LLC enabled, auto and disabled and it seems to be more stable with it enabled. I also turned on PLL Overvoltage which I feel improves stability a bit?

Another annoying this is my bios does not let me set the Vcore directly, I have to use DVID dynamic vcore.

101 does tend to be vcore and small ftt is the cpu test. large is more ram and imc than cpu. llc and pll ov can help but those shouldnt really be needed where you're at.

check the actual vcore it gets under load on the small ftt test with cpuz(dont look at VID in other monitoring apps, thats not the vcore its getting). with dvid you would be at around 1.35v with +0.100v ??

zipp0r said:

101 does tend to be vcore and small ftt is the cpu test. large is more ram and imc than cpu. llc and pll ov can help but those shouldnt really be needed where you're at.

check the actual vcore it gets under load on the small ftt test with cpuz(dont look at VID in other monitoring apps, thats not the vcore its getting). with dvid you would be at around 1.35v with +0.100v ??

Click to expand...

I have now clocked it down to 4.4Ghz now to add a bit more stability.I get stable at 4.4Ghz with a dvid of +0.060V my bios claims that's a vcore of 1.404. I am reading my vcore in windows using aida64 as cpuz just doesn't give me a correct Vcore reading and after some googling this seems to happen with 2500ks. At idle Aida shows my vcore as 1.404V (same as the bios) and under load is drops to 1.368V.

I've tried multiple sandy bridge CPUs this year and it seems that after 5 years of use they are all starting to degrade. My original 2550K has boot issues at anything but stock, 2500K wouldnt do 4.6Ghz @ 1.4v, current 2600K does 4.5Ghz at 1.39v. I use OCCT AVX linpack to test and only say it's stable after 10 hours. Otherwise BF4/1 and black ops 2 stop working. Motherboard is a z77 sabertooth and I have a custom loop for cooling.

Have you tried increasing the llc instead of upping the volts? Saying that I noticed my old 2500k was going the same way.

I've had mine sitting happily at 4.4ghz for the last 3 years. Didn't even have to work hard to get to that OC. The ASRock bios did all the work.

It's seen three different GPU's in it's life - that's the only thing I've needed to upgrade to keep up. Still no real reason to upgrade it.

Am still rocking a i5 2500k at 4.5 ghz for over 4 years at least.

No problems yet although my motherboard a Z77x-UD5H by Gigabyte is playing silly buggers by logging me into the bios when I boot up every day.
But it been a quirky MB since the day I got it.

I've had my 2500k running at 4.49Ghz for well over 5 years now
temps (tonight) 33c idle - 71c load
VCore 1.320 idle - 1.368 load

Awesome little chip

I hope I never have to tweak the overclock (touches wood) -I have absolutely no idea how I clocked it back then. I'd have to read up on it again I think

[edit] Adjusted figures - I forgot about setting Prime95 to small ftt for CPU test -been so long since I last stress-tested it!

ooh that's interesting....

on the Prime95 Torture test if I select "in-place large FFTs" the CPU cores drop from 4490 MHz to 4290 MHz.
If I select "small FFTs" CPU cores drop from 4490 MHz to 4190 MHz.

Never noticed that before

FishPolice said:

ooh that's interesting....

on the Prime95 Torture test if I select "in-place large FFTs" the CPU cores drop from 4490 MHz to 4290 MHz.
If I select "small FFTs" CPU cores drop from 4490 MHz to 4190 MHz.

Never noticed that before

Click to expand...

TDP/pwr limit too low? overheating ? turbo not set to 45x all cores?

Think I'd lower the overclock a bit. And try and lower the voltage if you want it to last

My 2500k has been slowly doing the same. It used to be 1.3v @ 4.5, now it's at 1.35v @ 4.3... peaks at 80 degrees, despite a big AIO water cooler.

...but it's lived for so long that I've reached the point where if it dies, I'll just consider it part of the normal lifecycle. Suspect it has a year or two left in it, should be enough time to see the next gen

eddiew said:

My 2500k has been slowly doing the same. It used to be 1.3v @ 4.5, now it's at 1.35v @ 4.3... peaks at 80 degrees, despite a big AIO water cooler.

...but it's lived for so long that I've reached the point where if it dies, I'll just consider it part of the normal lifecycle. Suspect it has a year or two left in it, should be enough time to see the next gen

Click to expand...

80 degrees at 1.35 and 4.3 Gh seems a bit hot to me. I bet your thermal paste is degraded.

edited to say because you are using AIO water cooling.

sieze2 said:

80 degrees at 1.35 and 4.3 Gh seems a bit hot to me. I bet your thermal paste is degraded.

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Yeah, I keep meaning to have a look in there, but... I sort of want it to die so's I can replace it with a clean conscience. Can't justify the cost while this one keeps running

...now I've said that, watch it go pop on a bank holiday saturday just to mock me