First time overclock?

Dayzed&Confused

Dayzed&Confused

Dayzed&Confused

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Joined
8 Apr 2012
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182
Hi,
I built a system with a 960t, 8gb of ram @1600MHz, an MSI R6450 and an MSI 970A-G46, with plans to overclock it, but as I have no experience in OCing I thought it best to ask for help, how do I overclock safely, and what sort of temps/speeds should I aim for?
Thanks,
 
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What CPU cooler do you have ? This will determine how far you can overclock and your temps.

If you only have a stock cooler, I'd forget overclocking.
 
I have an Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Pro Rev.2 CPU Cooler, planning to change paste to Arctic Silver 5, is this sufficient of OCing? Incidentally, my friend overclocked his 2500k on the stock cooler, so why is it so bad?
 
Stock coolers are not designed to cope with the extra heat generated when you overclock. For the i5 2500k, if you want a decent overclock, like 4.6GHz for example, a stock cooler will fail to dissipate the heat when the CPU is under high load. Your Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Pro is not a great cpu cooler to be honest. For a decent overclock, you should be looking at something a lot better.
 
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What cooler would you recommend for a cash-strapped teenager on a very tight budget? I think that liquid nitrogen is a bit out of price range, but given that my temps don't rise above 45 C when on 100% load for 6 hours, with patchily applied cheap thermal paste that needs re-applying, do I really have to get a better cooler?
 
Don't listen to the nonsense being spouted here.

Even with the best cooler you're only going to be able to clock to that coolers limit. If your cooler isn't as good all it means is you can't overclock as much, it doesn't mean you can't overclock though.

Basically your CPU is unlikely to overheat until you get to the point where you are increasing the voltage going through the chip to get even higher clocks. Overclocking in a modern PC creates too many variables to make it an exact science, but you can have a look at what other clocks people are doing to get an idea of where to start. You can then do some trial and error to get the best clock:heat ratio. That is as fast as possible without the chip being too hot.

Just have a play and as long as you don't do anything brashly then you'll be fine. And remember if you have any problems just take out the CMOS battery for a little while and your BIOS will reset to stock anyway :)
 
I don't know how to overclock AMD I'm afraid. I don't think you need a new cooler though.

If you had a budget, what would it be? £30 is the max I would spend on a budget. I have a Coolermaster 612S coming tomorrow at some point.

45C are good temps for Intel but don't AMD run much cooler? I would google overclocking guides for the 960t and give it a go. You won't blow anything up.

I would aim for temps under 60c for now, and wouldn't go over the top with the voltage increases.
 
The multiplier on the 960T is unlocked so go with that.

Also your 960T has two hidden and disabled cores. You should be able to attempt to re-enable them with your motherboard.

The Thuban dies are generally good clockers, 980BE speed (3.7GHz) should be doable at <1.4V on the CPU
 
JonSmith said:
The multiplier on the 960T is unlocked so go with that.

Also your 960T has two hidden and disabled cores. You should be able to attempt to re-enable them with your motherboard.

The Thuban dies are generally good clockers, 980BE speed (3.7GHz) should be doable at <1.4V on the CPU
Click to expand...

Tried unlocking in the bios, no luck, was stably clocked to 3.4 Ghz, but after a couple of days of non-use, the settings reverted to stock. Any ideas?
 
Clocked to 4Ghz stable with 1.41v but will need a better cooler before pushing further, Is it worth overclocking the CPU-NB or RAM, if so, how do I go about doing so?
With regards to coolers, what sort of temperature difference would I see from a £30 air cooler, a £50 air cooler, an a £50/£60 closed loop water cooler?
 
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