Beginners Guide to Overclocking

Hi all i have a 2500k cpu and asus p67 pro mobo, its running at stock and as you are all aware its built to OC :), i have no idea how to tho, so if anyone had a good step by step link somewhere with the same setup as me i would appreciate it.
as you can tell i havnt overclocked before and i have the Efi bios. thanks
 
First of all, thanks OP. I'm going to be OC'ing my Q6600 soon and this will be very useful.

Just got a couple noob questions for now though and I didn't want to make a whole new thread for them:

1. If I OC my Q6600 and somehow fry it will I lose all of the data on my HD? I do all my uni work on this PC and I don't want to lose it.

2. If I was to find someone with my exact same CPU, mobo and RAM could I just use their settings to 'shortcut' my overclock?

3. How long does the process usually take?
 
1. If I OC my Q6600 and somehow fry it will I lose all of the data on my HD? I do all my uni work on this PC and I don't want to lose it.

It is unlikely you will lose the data unless you are overclocking the memory. Memory overclocks can corrupt HD data although that too is rare. It is always wise to make an image of your HD (Norton Ghost) if you have data you really cannot afford to lose. More often than not it is just the boot data that gets corrupted which can easily be resolved using windows recovery.

2. If I was to find someone with my exact same CPU, mobo and RAM could I just use their settings to 'shortcut' my overclock?

You can try those settings and this might be a good place to start from however each component will clock differently, especially CPU's despite having the same manufacturer product code. Do not expect the same results. Most if not all Q6600's will reach 3.6ghz (400x9) unless they are the B2 revision which clock comfortably to 3.2GHz.

3. How long does the process usually take?

5 minutes or months. It depends how determined you are and how quickly you find your limit. Nobody can answer this. I can usually find a CPU's limit in a day but then a new BIOS or setting will present itself and you start the whole process again. That's part of the joy of overclocking - where do you stop?
 
Jay794 said:
When overclocking in the BIOS, is it better to leave everything on auto and just change the multiplier or should I change other stuff too?
Click to expand...
I would be wary of leaving things on Auto, as these days motherboards tend to increase voltages on their own accord when you start overclocking with them set to Auto.
 
Got a question: just printed out this guide and am overclocking my i5 as we speak. I increased the fsb to 138 from 133 for an extra 100mhz of speed. (multiplier of 20) I'm running an OCCTstability test. You say once the test runs if it does an ok job you should then increase the vcore a notch before increasing the FSB some more and repeating. How much is a notch? :p

Is it a minimum 0.01 v increase or a bit more?
 
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I know this has been addressed in this thread before but I'm still not sure what to do.
How do you change the RAM divider ratio?
The only thing I could find in the bios (for a GA-890FXA-UD5 motherboard) was the "memclock". It was set at 6.66 which = 1333MHz and reducing it to (roughly) 5.55 = 1066MHz.
I can't increase the HT clock without the DRAM going up too.

EDIT

I'm also trying to update my BIOS because one of the updates offers better support for my CPU and more OC options. I've downloaded the update and extracted 3 files: FLASHSPI.EXE, 89FXAU52.F6 (opens with windows shell commor) and autoexec.bat. When I try to run the FLASHSPI in windows it says its not compatible with this version of windows (64bit) and there were no alternative versions to download.
If I burn FLASHSPI.exe on to a CD and boot from it will that update my BIOS? What precautions should I take in case something goes wrong?
 
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Just wanted to check that these numbers sound right to people. I'm running a 3570k at 4.2 GHz (42x100) on a P8Z77-V with a 212 Evo. I'm using offset voltage (-0.05) and I hit a max Vcore of 1.18v, with 1.16v at max load (50% LLC). At idle I'm using 0.93v. I idle at around 25C give or take a few degrees (depends on ambient temperature of course, which seems to fluctuate a lot of late). I hit a maximum of around 70C on the hottest core after 4 hours of prime small FFTs, and the same for IBT (max stress level). Thanks
 
trying 1st overclock...

got my i5 2500k 3.3ghz to 4.5 ghz at 1.350v.
seems stable under testing at 67c approx across 4 cores under the nh-d14.

stable temps are 39c approx, does this seem hot under no load?
(like i know i need more fans in the case right now)

using cpuz / realtemp / prime95 for testing.

my rig is;

z77x-ud3h
i5 2500k 3.3Ghz @ 4.5Ghz
2*4Gb ddr3 1600Mhz sammy greens
nh-d14
1gb gts 450
ocz vertex 2 120gb ssd
2tb seagate green hdd
corsair tx750m
fractal r4
benq xl2420t *2

update;

wasn't running prime95 for long enough.
switched to intel burn test and blue screens happened, so switch back to normal bio settings.

will get more case fans then try again.
 
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I would like to try overclocking to see what difference can be achieved, I have an i5 - 3750k with an ASUS Sabertooth motherboard and 16GB of Samsung Green RAM, what numbers should I be looking at for my first overclock? My Graphics card is a 7970 if that comes into question.
 
NOOOB here..after setting my 3570k at x40 (4Ghz), does this mean the processor is constantly running at 4Ghz or does it only do this speed as & when required, i.e. when its just ticking over downloading etc is it only running at say x30 or even less??? because I can see fluctuations of the speed in CPU-Z, or is something wrong? My PC is generally left on 24/7 so I dont want it going flat out all the time.
 
hi all, im a first time overclocker and would like to overclock my 8320 from 3.5 to 4ghz using the amd overdrive tool, but im still confused on how to get started, i know i have to increase the multiplier a bit and then run a test using intelburn (maybe???), the main question is do i have to mess about with the voltage or just leave that bit on auto, im sure its easy but i really aint got a clue, can anyone give me some easy to understand advice, cheers all
 
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