First apparently stable overclock, Tweaking

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 14:48

Hi everyone, Ive been kicking around here for a short while and had a go at overclocking before (years ago), actually popped something on my old socket A board hahah.

Anyway Im lookinh to tweak my current clock, it has been running prime 95 blend test stable for 18 hours with an apparently stable voltage and core temps even in this heat only reaching 72.8 max and hovering around the 68 mark at the moment.

I am currently running an Intel I5 3570k clocked to 4504.03 Mhz

My motherboard is a the Gigabyte z77-d3h

I have a couple of questions and in need of a little help.

Firstly when under load (prime) Im monitoring my cpu with real temp and cpu-z, I am seeing my clock frequency fluctuate between 4504.01 and 4504.08.
I understand this fluctuation is tiny and probably insignificant But just wanted confirmation if its normal and that its not a sign of throttling?

Second question.

I have set my vcore in bios to 1.340 yet at full load cpu-z shows im putting in 1.668 imo this is way to high but requiring a few pointers on this.

I have other questions but I feel you probably need more info off me first so if I can clarify these I would be grateful for your help.

EDIT: just tried playing borderlands 2 and it BSOD on me so dropped the clock back to my 4404.03
just shows 18 hours of prime maybe doesnt do its job?

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 16:35

thanks for the response, I get what your saying ill try that in a moment, I should just clear one thing up I have not changed the cpu multiplier as such, I have clocked using the turbo function on my board for each core, setting each one to 45 (multiplier) this way when the cpu is not loaded it drops down in voltage and mhz.

I hope that makes sense.

I will go and change the setting recommended and stress and get back to you.

Also the BSOD turned out to be my GPU I was messing with it for 3d mark and forgot to change it back.

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 17:50

Ok so ive been in And changed to the above mentioned settings And it just bsod instantly then wouldnt even boot bios.

Ive gone back by resetting cmos
And set things back up again but dropped the muliplyer to 44 this got me as far as my desktop before bsod.
:rolleyes:

Gotta love it orr we wouldnt do it hahHa

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 19:56

What is classed as safe for the dvid as im now upto 0.045 its not a big jump but just wanting to clarify.

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 20:54

Ok I did use my head and research a little and pit dvid up to 0.065 and she booted and runs, currently running prime blend but voltage is up at 1.388 to 98 so a little close to the boundary but temps are stable in the high sixties with a peak at around 73.
So I'll leave this running for about another half an hour then go and drop the dvid to 0.055

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 22:19

It failed prime i had to nip out, ive just got back and it had shut down.

So i have raised the dvid again to 0.070 run prime to see how the v was all was good except on a couuple of ocasions the volts raised from 1,392 to 1.404 so i just tested f1 2012 as it has its own built in bench mark and the game played then black screened but continued playing as i could still hear everything.

This is really strange as the way i had done it originally worked but i would rather get it working this way now just out of sheer stubborness

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 22:20

It failed prime i had to nip out, ive just got back and it had shut down.

So i have raised the dvid again to 0.070 run prime to see how the v was all was good except on a couuple of ocasions the volts raised from 1,392 to 1.404 so i just tested f1 2012 as it has its own built in bench mark and the game played then black screened but continued playing as i could still hear everything.

This is really strange as the way i had done it originally worked but i would rather get it working this way now just out of sheer stubborness

bandyleg · 11 Jul 2013 at 23:15

Im running 8gb

yeh 1.40v at peak is far safer and better for temps.

I have figured out the black screen I went into the error reporting and found that it was actually my AMD driver for my GPU that had crashed and not the OC that was unstable. Seems a bit strange as it ran fine before at the clocks it was set at, anyway I knocked 10Mhz off the gpu's clock and 30 off the memory on it and it runs just nice averaging 59fps.

The GPU is an old radeon gainward HD 4870 so its needeing replacing.

My next step will be to run prime again until around 7pm tomorrow night then evaluate whats gone on and if all is good ill probably spend a good couple of hours playing some games.

Once that is done id like to make a couple more tweaks and lower the cpu clock at idle , I will update the post after its run prime.

Thanks for all your help Im much happier now things seem to be ok

bandyleg · 12 Jul 2013 at 22:28

kevbiss1 said:
Think you need to google some overclocking guides or at least start off with a lower overclock.set a fixed voltage of 1.25v and set your multi from there,start off with 42 and stress,then try 43 and so on till you blue screen,

Hi thanks for the tips, I would just like to clarify I had previously managed to clock it to 4.5 but rightly i was worried about a voltage issue where it spiked up to 1.6v.

wazza300 kindly offered me a better solution to my overclock that in his opinion was a safer a way to do it' so i took his advice on board and i am now sat at 4.5 and running smoothly. I will be continuing to read and digest information that good people are willing to put forward to help people like myself and will also continue to tweak my settings but not for any higher performance as I am very happy at the moment with what I have.

I am just setting up a new system so that I can use this one I have right now for learning on that way I dont have to worry too much if it all stops working.