Could I get ANY OC with this i5 2500k?

Drake5 · 22 Mar 2013 at 22:37

Basically got an i5 rig together recently with some spare parts I had laying around.

It's very budget, running along side a 560Ti 1GB and 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM.

The motherboard is a H61M-P25 running with an aftermarket cooler.

Could I squeeze a little bit of an OC with the mobo?

alex_123_fra · 22 Mar 2013 at 22:44

Why wouldn't you?

Drake5 · 22 Mar 2013 at 22:48

It's just a really budget motherboard isn't it? Wouldn't want to OC only for it to end up exploding or something.

alex_123_fra · 22 Mar 2013 at 22:53

It isn't the best motherboard no, but I'd be surprised if you don't get at least 4.2 GHz esp when you have an aftermarket cooler. It has OC genie. No harm in trying. If the mobo fries itself it is cheap as chips anyway.

Drake5 · 22 Mar 2013 at 22:55

Thanks, will take a look into it. The case isn't the best and doesn't offer much cooling. The CPU at the moment is sitting idle at 30c. Is there still room for an OC?

Drake5 · 22 Mar 2013 at 23:15

Weird, I can't move the frequency past 33 for some reason...

EDIT: Updated BIOS, max I could get it to was 3.70GHz.

Better than nothing!

alex_123_fra · 22 Mar 2013 at 23:52

You mean the multiplier? Is it allowing you to modify voltage?

What automatic settings does OC genie give. Any auto overclocks on it?

Drake5 · 22 Mar 2013 at 23:59

alex_123_fra said:
You mean the multiplier? Is it allowing you to modify voltage?

What automatic settings does OC genie give. Any auto overclocks on it?

The the multiplier allowed me to just go up to 37 max. No higher so I just set it to that and everything seems to be OK. Should I really need to modify voltage or anything?

alex_123_fra · 23 Mar 2013 at 00:04

If x37 is all she'll give that is a shame. Really doesn't allow the 2500K to be unleashed. I would have expected OC genie to give you at least over 4 GHz. At 3.7GHz you don't need to touch voltage most likely. It should be stable.

I would personally ditch the board and get a Gigabyte Z68 D3 for 60 quid and overclock to 4.6+ easily.

Drake5 · 23 Mar 2013 at 00:06

I didn't really notice any OC Genie? Just something to do with the GPU? The bios seems pretty limited but then again I'm not an expert so not fully sure what I should be looking for...

EDIT - All's I see with OC Genie is the option to enable/disable but with it enabled it literally does nothing? No new settings open in the bios or anything.

Nuclear Fusion · 23 Mar 2013 at 00:41

I seem to recall that H61 board can only overclock 4 speed bins above the maximum turbo frequency- not the full range of multiplier adjustment like you would get with a P67, Z68 or Z77 board.
You are probably already aware that you don't really need to overclock your CPU for gaming, since you 560Ti will be the bottleneck in almost all games, but overkill power is always nice (I run my 3570k at 4.5 GHz- which is overkill but still nice)

Orcvader · 23 Mar 2013 at 01:05

Nuclear Fusion said:
I seem to recall that H61 board can only overclock 4 speed bins above the maximum turbo frequency- not the full range of multiplier adjustment like you would get with a P67, Z68 or Z77 board.
You are probably already aware that you don't really need to overclock your CPU for gaming, since you 560Ti will be the bottleneck in almost all games, but overkill power is always nice (I run my 3570k at 4.5 GHz- which is overkill but still nice)

This. Unlike the P67/Z68/Z77 boards, the other boards only allow you to up the limits of Turbo Boost. If 3.7 Ghz is the highest you can get then it's likely the speed when only one core is busy, meaning 3.6 Ghz for 2 busy cores, 3.5 Ghz for 3 and 3.4 Ghz for 4. Which i5 is it?

Drake5 · 23 Mar 2013 at 09:29

It's an i5 2500k

DoneADougalOnSofa · 23 Mar 2013 at 09:44

Yep, you need a Zxx chipset. Or a P67 at a push.
These had unlocked multipliers- you won't get far at all with an H61!

DoneADougalOnSofa · 23 Mar 2013 at 09:46

Oh, and Sandy Bridge chips don't appreciate the bclk (system clock) being messed with- leave it at 100!

gcaster · 23 Mar 2013 at 12:39

dougal1331 said:
Yep, you need a Zxx chipset. Or a P67 at a push.

P67 at a push? Very little benefit of going for a Z68/77 over a P67, certainly hasn't given me any more overclocking potential on my chip.
OP, should be able to get a second hand P67 from the MM pretty cheap. Definitely something worth looking into.

Drake5 · 23 Mar 2013 at 13:00

I'll try and get hold of a P67 from the MM. Cheers

DoneADougalOnSofa · 23 Mar 2013 at 15:43

gcaster said:
P67 at a push? Very little benefit of going for a Z68/77 over a P67, certainly hasn't given me any more overclocking potential on my chip.
OP, should be able to get a second hand P67 from the MM pretty cheap. Definitely something worth looking into.

Merely meant to imply that the P67 is an older chipset than Z68/77, so if an upgrade is made, it is a better plan to go for Z68/77 than a P67 board.
I'm not knocking the OCing capabilities of the P67!

And I believe that Z68 was the first chipset to support the HD3000 integrated GPU, which P67 does not support.

gcaster · 24 Mar 2013 at 03:46

dougal1331 said:
And I believe that Z68 was the first chipset to support the HD3000 integrated GPU, which P67 does not support.

True that. The H67 did support the iGPU but didn't support overclocking. Having said that, I doubt many people use the iGPU (OP included)...