2600k pushing the bar above 4.4ghz with NH-D14

bungalowbuilder

bungalowbuilder

bungalowbuilder

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5 May 2011
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Hi Folks

I have recently built a new P.C - for HD video editing in Adobe After effects CS5 - And was hoping to work out a solid trustworthy overclock, so after a fair bit of research i put together the following kit:

Processor: Intel I7-2600k
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: 2x4gb Gskill RipjawzX 9-9-9-24
Cooling: Noctua NH-D14 (with both fans)
Power: OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU
Case: Coolermaster Storm Scout (with push and pull)

Everything currently works fine, and the Asus AISuite was able to push this to 4.4ghz without issue, Having looked at what it has done i can see in the BIOS that the BCLK has been pushed up to 103 and the mulitplier to 44 but i was hoping for something a little higher than that.(and i have heard that i shouldn't trust the AISuite) so i'm looking to play in the bios and see what pops up!

I have followed a few guides which suggest pushing up the VCORE to around 1.35v But this figure changes to pink and then a bright (DANGER) red colour - this reduces me to nervous wreck and so i end up bottling it. Rather then read a guide on what to do i was hoping someone out there could back these tweaks up for my piece of mind. Or at least point me in the direction of a good guide.

So here's what i have tried so far - i go into BIOS and change my Mulitplier up to 45 (nothing else) this gets me into windows - But running Prime95 then creates a BSOD after about 5 mins - So - Should i meddle with the BCLK like the AISuite did? Is it ok to push that VCORE up to 1.35 (even though the numbers change RED) - So far none of the above has pushed my core temps any higher then 63 degrees on full load even when BSOD. Finally Is there any other settings i should tinker with?

Oh and i see in some guides people disable stuff in the BIOS that isn't being used (secondary LAN, Marvel Controllers) is there any advantage to doing this?

Any help would be much appreciated.
 
I wouldn't worry about the colour too much myself - many people have been running at 1.35v (and much much higher) with no issues so far. As long as your temps are under control you should be perfectly fine.

I'd advise monitoring your voltages under windows though. My Asus board does some serious overvolting of my CPU. From what i saw it seems to add around +0.025 vcore for every multiplier number you go up without actually changing the vcore number or the offset figure. As such i'm running with a massive negative offset voltage to keep my vcore under control.

I'd also lower your BCLK back to 100 - not worth the issues that come with changing this.

What voltage you currently using out of interest for 4.4GHz?

Also - dont discredit AISuite. I was able to get to 4.7GHz no issues at all using it and it's much easier than switching out to your BIOS every time you want to change he odd setting.
 
Ok so based on this - i set my VCORE to 1.35v -
I've now wound my BLCK back down to 100
And set my multiplier to 46 - And it's got me into windows.
Having run Prime95 for 4 minutes - it took my highest temprature to 68 Degrees - i then chickened out and stopped Prime.

I chickened out because i'm not sure what a sensible temprature is - Maybe i'm being paranoid - it took me months to afford all this kit, i don't wanna burn it up straight away Beginning to think overclocking aint for me - (stop those chicken impressions!) - So what do your regard as temps being kept under control? Is there a limit of sorts, i gather that i need to choose a limit but i need some kind of range to begin with!

As for your question regarding which voltage i was using - when i went into BIOS it was set to auto - so the AI Suite must be leaving this as is? When i look in CPU-Z it tends to leap between 1.2 and 1.3.

As for monitoring voltages where do i do this and what do i look for?

Thanks for your help :cool:
 
68 degrees is a perfectly fine temperature - it's when you get to 80 you should bottle it.

It might be an idea if you have a hunt around the forums here (there's some Sandy overclocking stickies around) and Google for lots of tips and logs of overclocking from people with experience to give you an idea of voltages and temps - you've done some reading already, but I think you should do some more to give yourself more confidence and also faith in what the silicon can do.

And as far as that big red letters in the BIOS, they're supposed to **** you up because overclocking is pushing your hardware out of specification and does carry the risk of breaking - the colouring is doing exactly what it's supposed to!

But fight the fear and run that bitch to 4.5GHz and beyond!
 
Why don't you overclock manualy as you could get your vcore lower at that speed. and that will also lower your temps.

Set the BLCK to 100
and your vcore to about 1.28v that's what i'm at for that speed 4.4ghz.
Also remember to change your timings on your Ram to the spec of your ram.
I would not change the frequency until you have a stable Chip.
If your having problems with sleep mode not waking back up disable PLL voltage.

there's a few tutorials on overclocking your system just google it.
 
Hi bungalobuilder,

As this is for after effects I'd suggest you do some good overclocking tests as reccomended by the guys who know the 2600k better than me to get a feel of how far you can sensibly push it. In overclocking, temperature control is the key, so even if you are pushing the CPU voltage, as long as you can keep your temps down to a sensible level you'll be okay.

Then I'd suggest for your day to day working you drop your overclock back a bit to make sure you're keeping it absolutely stable and sensibly cool.

So to give you an example, I've got an i7 920 that has been overclocked from its standard 2.67 right up to nearly 4.3Ghz and is stable, however at that clock, the temperatures right at the top of the sensible range on my corsair H50 cooler. So for day to day I've knocked it back to 4Ghz, then spent some time tweaking how low I can drop the CPU voltage and keep that 4Ghz stable.

The result is a CPU thats massively faster than stock, but also runs reasonably cool and quiet and is absolutely rock solid.

The key difference for you, is that even the slightest instability could cause enough of a glitch to interrupt a long render or encode in after effects and can be a massive waste of time! Also bear in mind that when encoding from after effects you're going to have pretty much a sustained 100% load for a long time. We did a project recently where we had upwards of 200 layers within a 30 minute project at full 1080p, it took about 8 hours to render.

So to summarise, have a bit of a Banzai run to find out how far your CPU will go (keeping a careful eye on temps) then pick a slightly reduced sensible overclock for day to day use.

I'd definately use the overclock, as like my i7-920 the i7-2600k is such a cracking CPU you'd be daft not use the free extra available power, just be a little conservative for day to day running.

E-I
 
Hi Bungalowbuilder,

Sounds like you've done your homework with the choice of cooler and CPU you've got. I've built about 30 machines (for work) based around the Asus mobo, 4Gb of RAM and the same cooler/CPU combination - all of them I've managed to get to *at least* 4.8Ghz at low 60's for temps. As previously mentioned with the SB overclocks, you really need to look at your temps, however SB itself also has a voltage maximum that Intel (and subsequently Overclockers) recommend as being the absolute top on air cooling - that being 1.38v and NO HIGHER, with 1.345v - 1.355v being something which will not shorten CPU lifespan or cause any damage. I'd recommend looking at 1.355v as being your top voltage then seeing how high you can go there - most of the SB chips I've seen should easily do 4.5 - 4.6Ghz rock solid at this voltage - and provided you've attached your bad ass Noctua correctly, you're not going to see temps above mid 60's, which as previously mentioned is WAY below the 80 degree top out.

Hope this helps!

D
 
To kep my temps down a little I had to go to 4.5 rather than 4.6 (tops at 70-75), although for how I ue the PC I have never gone over 60 in use as its really hard (for me) to get maxed out CPU for so long at heavy prime95 workloads.

When I use photoshop/premiere, or truecrupt, game etc even getting high CPU workloads doesnt stress the CPU so much.

I only have the A50 cooler and want a d14 or a silver arrow to get the cooling even lower to push the speed up a bit more, but to be honest I decided not to spend the extra yet and just make sure its nice and stable.

You mentioned CS5 too in your post, One thing I really notice on CS5 is the startup speed of it and operation of is tremendous with a SSD, I went for the 128gig vertex 3, loads in 5seconds or so (default install for filters/brushes). Also the Win7 boot time is amazing too!! Id highly recommend a 128gig drive as a boot and app drive.
 
Thanks for your help guys!

It's definetly given me food for thought especially the advice on temps considering i will be working on full loads for large amounts of time.
I decided to sit back a bit to get a feel of how the system runs with just a 4.5 ghz overclock - rather then push it to the extreme straight away.

I managed a 2 hour HD multi layered render which did keep the system at 100% load and the tempratures peeked at around 65 - which i think is ok!

I'm beginning to wonder whether it is worth squeezing more out of it for the sake of another 200 or 300 mhz.

But i guess with it being quad that becomes upto 1200 and then with multi threading 2400, So yeah i think i may have just answered my question = Yes.

I'm going to have another play soon - i think the max temp i have in mind is 70 - any higher then that and i will step down - and i'll test this on not only Prime95 for a few hours - but the same render i mentioned above.

I think having now read a few guides - that i'll keep the overclock simple, here is what i have in mind:

Keep the RAM at it's intended settings - Push the multiplier up to maybe 4.7 to start with and then keep increasing the CPU voltage until it stabalises - all the time making sure the temp never tips over 70. Wish me luck.

Question for Evil-I? - with day to day use, i like the idea of running the system at something more sensible like 4.2 - but wouldn't speedstep take care of this for me?

Once again thanks for your help guys - wouldn't be able to do this without ya! :)
 
Also Apone2000 Thanks for your advice on the SSD - i do in fact have one (forgot to mention it in my original post/signature) i've only got the OCZ 60gb Vertex2 - and my golly what a difference this makes, i use this for W7 64bit and CS5 - They just fit on with about 20gb to spare.

I have a 2x 1TB 7,500rpm HD's in a raid0 setup as my secondary drive and an extra single drive for media and source files!

All i need now - is one more 1Tb drive for a secondary raid0 (probably a bit of overkill here), a decent graphics card GTX460 - and another 8gb to push me up to 16gb. Then i'll be grinning like a cheshire cat! :)
 
beh* said:
Hi Damo - For these 4.8Ghz chips I would be interested to know at what voltage and were you Prime Blend stable?
Click to expand...

Hi,

The voltage variations were interesting - I was trying to get a number of chips from varying sources initially so that I could get some decent yields on "golden chips" - have a couple of awesome ones that I got 4.8GHz at about 1.305v - amazing, however most of the ones I've had have been more in the vicinity of 1.340 - 1.375v. I'm not keen on pushing any of them beyond 1.375 as I've read in multiple places that Intel have said absolute max voltage is 1.380v. I'm sure I could very easily push some of these to well beyond 5.2Ghz, however based on the cooling solutions I'm using I'm not able to get them cool enough within a 3U form factor, hence the 4.8Ghz 24/7.

And yes, these were all Prime Blend and Intel Burn Test stable.
 
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