A little adive needed

[Crisis uk]

Hi guys,

So I have the urge to buy some new hardware but my bank account says otherwise so i though I would have a go at overclocking my CPU.

I currently have an i5-3570K which should be running at 3.4GHz, however, when I ran Prime95 I checked my current speed in task manager and it was at 4.18GHz. Now what i am wondering is if this is overclocked or is it boosting?

When I checked, The BCLK was at 103 and the ratio was at 42. I don't remember ever changing anything on this so has this been pre-overclocked for me when I bought the system?

I don't know a lot about overclocking so you may need to keep any answers pretty simple for me

 

[Double07]

Well it boosts upto 3.8Ghz on stock settings so yes its overclocked, by someone

 

[MartinPrince]

Yep, it has been overclocked. Not too judiciously I might add. You don't really want to set the BCLK at anything other than 100 Mhz for 24/7 usage as it can affect other components unless you have no other option, ie. a locked CPU.

 

[Danny75]

Yeah your drives and GPU and RAM are being overclocked too. Should set BCLK back to 100 and try using the multiplier/ratio, along with any Vcore (CPU Core Voltage) adjustments necessary. Take note of temps as you increase Vcore. Vcore should only be increased in small amounts, e.g. 1.25v to 1.26v. Suggest you treat 1.35v as the max (if temps are good), to begin with.

Which CPU cooler is it? Which motherboard?

Don't use Task Manager for anything meaningful to do with OC'ing. Download CPU-Z and HWiNFO64 to monitor. Use Cinebench R20 as a quicker, preliminary stress test for each multiplier/ratio increase. The temps you get for that will be more similar to max temps in games than Prime. Can always test with Prime and other stuff later when you think you've found a sweet spot. X265 video encoding is also a very good stress test for overclocks. Especially if you output to a big 5-10GB file that will take more than an hour with that CPU.