Overclocking Pentium K CPU?

tjrwelch · 23 Jan 2015 at 18:32

Hi folks,

Haven't yet but thinking of purchasing Pentium K to go in a budget gaming rig, instead of an i5, and then overclocking it with this cooler http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-035-CM

Is this a good cooler? And is this a sensible idea? I was thinking the Pentium K would be a good placeholder to save money for now, replacing it with a higher-end i5 or i7 in a year or so. I've heard it's very overclockable and will still play modern games on decent settings. Hoping to be able to run FarCry 4 - think that will be doable?

Grateful for all thoughts!

stulid · 23 Jan 2015 at 18:48

Yes it is a good cooler.

Yes overclocking the CPU is a good idea.

Farcry 4 depends on other factors including your GFX card.

Make · 23 Jan 2015 at 18:55

Overclock.net has tested that the G3258 bottlenecks a 970 / R9 290 pretty badly. That basically means that you're stuck with a lower-end GPU with that CPU. Farcry 4 is a very demanding game, so you you'd be stuck to low settings with that CPU on it, even if your GPU can do it.

tjrwelch · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:02

Fair play, thanks for responses. Was thinking of getting the MSI GTX 750Ti, which I know is a lower end card anyway.

Whilst we're at it, will the Asus Z97-P mobo support overclocking? That's the one I'm thinking of getting currently.

stulid · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:03

Yes a Z97 board certainly does support overclocking.

pastymuncher · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:05

All Z97 boards will overclock. The cheaper ones will typically have less options in the bios and less power phases (Z97-P only has 4 phase). All you really need to clock Haswell is vcore, multiplier, maybe vring and LLC. I wouldn't go for too cheap a board though if you are going to drop a i5/i7 in later.

If I was looking to buy a board now my money would be going on the Asus Pro-Gamer.

tjrwelch · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:16

That looks like a nice board, can afford that given the savings on CPU. How do you find out about the overclocking capabilities of these boards?

stulid · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:20

Guess you need to look at reviews that show the BIOS screen pages so you can see what options are available.

Like so - http://www.ocaholic.co.uk/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1501&page=5

You do have a suitable PSU, drives, case etc?

tjrwelch · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:27

Reusing old case, drives, Antec 430W PSU, getting new mobo, RAM, CPU, GFX, SK Hynix SSD.

stulid · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:30

Drives all SATA? any old Sandforce controlled SSDs?

tjrwelch · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:32

Yeah drives just standard SATA. Think it must be 10 years since I built it, havent been using it much recently.

stulid · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:34

If the PSU is old, then be wary that its not degraded over time and has all the connectors needed for the board and GFX card etc.

tjrwelch · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:36

I'm getting it out of the loft tomorrow, so going to have a good look inside and make sure before I buy anything!

Armageus · 23 Jan 2015 at 19:37

Make said:
Overclock.net has tested that the G3258 bottlenecks a 970 / R9 290 pretty badly. That basically means that you're stuck with a lower-end GPU with that CPU.

Not really, nothing wrong with still buying a decent GPU, as he said he will be moving to an i5/i7 at some point.

pastymuncher · 24 Jan 2015 at 11:47

tjrwelch said:
That looks like a nice board, can afford that given the savings on CPU. How do you find out about the overclocking capabilities of these boards?

It doesn't really matter with Haswell cpu's. The cpu will run out of steam long before you run out of options in the bios.

gjc10212 · 25 Jan 2015 at 18:06

Tried to install farcry 4 on my sons pentium k, it black screens. Apprarantley the game requires a quad core to run now.

pastymuncher · 25 Jan 2015 at 19:06

I would have thought that it should still run though and not black screen. It would just have poor performance.

MasterOC · 25 Jan 2015 at 20:09

Paired a 270x with my wifes pentium . I thought it wise going not putting anymore power in , CPU gets battered in BF4 most likely due to core / thread count on dx11, hopeing when get five mins to test mantle my choice of GPUs will be justified. Everything else I've tried runs great and get great frames

nails666 · 28 Jan 2015 at 11:12

I took a similar route to what you're planning and paired my Pentium K with 2x 6950s in crossfire. It did bottleneck them a bit but still gave me perfectly playable frame rates if I wasn't too unrealistic with the game settings. If you are looking at 750ti level gpus then I'd have thought the Pentium will do fine. I got mine up to 4.6GHz in the end.