First time over clocking - advice needed

michaelc · 5 Nov 2015 at 07:10

Hi All,

I recently managed to get myself an i7 5930K 3.5ghz and a H100i watercooler and I wanted to give overclocking it a go! I currently have MSI X99 SLI Plus motherboard and an OC Genie function, but after having a look into it, I found that the OC genie actually isn't that efficient and might reduce the i7's lifespan quicker than OCing it yourself. OC Genie gets the cores to 3.9GHz. Is there any material out there that's newbie friendly which would give me a good info on overclocking as well as step by step guide for doing it yourself?

Can the i7 5930k even go higher than the OC Genie value of 3.9?

Thanks

dreamcat4 · 6 Nov 2015 at 14:34

I've been using the Intel XTU (Xtreme Tuning Utility). For a skylake i5. I recommend it as being very easy to use. Yet you still have a full manual control over the voltage, bclk, and the multipliers.

After you find your best settings, then make a note of what they are and set them again in then BIOS (to become persistent).

By using the XTU tool over a number of runs, you can just change 1 of those major parameter at a time. Until it's optimized, then move onto the next parameter.

Suggested order:

* Increase both the core multiplier + ring bus multiplier (also known as the cache / memory multiplier). Together (pegged the same). Until unstable.

* Then stop increasing the rung bus multiplier, but keep increasing the CPU core multiplier. Until unstable.

* Then try increasing the VCore voltage (if you wish). Depending if it has any affect, how many more bins will give you ^^ iterating the 1st 2 steps again. (wasn't worth it for me on skylake, b/c 14nm isn't good for that anymore).

* Then try increasing the base clock, from 100Mhz +. To get a little bit more than the coarse multiplier can give you. (This finally got me a stable 4.59 GHz overclock, nearly to the next bin, instead of a coarse 4.5 GHz).

Manually noted down values shown in Intel XTU --> recreated in BIOS settings. Job done.

ahasnaini · 9 Nov 2015 at 21:45

Intel XTU (Xtreme Tuning Utility) is very good, but if you are doing it for the first time buy http://click.intel.com/tuningplan/purchase-a-plan it is cheap and gives you a peace of mind incase you break something.

dreamcat4 · 9 Nov 2015 at 22:34

You are unlikely to break anything providing you don't raise voltage too high, e.g. above 1.5 volts.

Nickolp1974 · 9 Nov 2015 at 22:47

1.5v is too high for AIO, 1.4v max! Maybe 1.45v benchmark run, bench dependant!

Use Asus real bench for stabillity testing