Getting back into the Overclocking game

LEK-89 · 7 Dec 2016 at 08:37

Hi all,

Having recently moved back into the desktop scene and investing in the following that's in my sig, I am looking to get back into the world of Overclocking as well - primarily to see how much I can push my 6600K and settle with a daily stable clock.

I've done a bit of research already but it's been a good 3 years or so since I was in the world of overclocking and things are still looking pretty familiar but I just want to know a good starting ground as to how I can safely get started again. The 6600K in general is said to clock easily at 4.5Ghz and that it's recommended to keep the volts below 1.4V - preferably more around the 1.325V mark or below especially too. Besides obviously changing the voltage, is there anything else I need to change to be on the safe side too? Also what about the idle / energy saving features - I remember back in the Sandy Bridge days that all of these features had to be disabled and the CPU had to run at full speed of i.e. 4.5Ghz 24/7 to achieve a stable clock. Have times moved on now with Skylake and these energy saving features can be left on so it down clocks during idle?

RAM overclocking - please see the Corsair RAM that I have in my sig as well, by default my BIOS sets this to 2133Mhz as expected but I would like to bump it up to the full rated 3000Mhz. Besides turning on XMP, would I also need to set a manual voltage figure for it to be stable?

Many thanks - Liam.

wellibob · 7 Dec 2016 at 13:47

Set multi, increase volts to cpu (done leave on auto) and set xmp on ram. Try and test. Recommended volts just Google 6600k OC volts. Done.

LEK-89 · 7 Dec 2016 at 14:08

wellibob said:
Set multi, increase volts to cpu (done leave on auto) and set xmp on ram. Try and test. Recommended volts just Google 6600k OC volts. Done.

Spot on - pretty much how I though it should be as a starting point as well. I'll give it a go when I can and post my findings.

Many thanks.

LEK-89 · 10 Dec 2016 at 12:56

Well I've had some interesting findings in the last 24 hours or so...

Decided to go straight in and go for 4.5Ghz with a vcore of 1.300V & RAM set to XMP (3000Mhz), no other settings in the BIOS were adjusted. I started by running AIDA64 for a short while but then read up while it was running that it wasn't the best of stress testing programs so I decided to then go for Asus RealBench instead. I ran the stress test through there and left it to run for a good hour or so and it seems to be stable. Though CPU-Z seems to report though that under full load the CPU is only at 1.264V? Also, the temps were hoovering around the 62c mark overall as well throughout.

I then decided to bump it up to 4.6Ghz on the same vcore, ran RealBench again and it would BSOD after a minute. I did a bit more reading and then changed the vcore to 1.325V and also changed the LLC from Auto to Level 4 (I still need to read up more on the way LLC works on Asus boards but from what I've found out, Level 4 seems to be a good starting point if you're having stability issues). However after 15 minutes it would BSOD again, CPU-Z again reported a lower vcore under full load at 1.312V and average temperatures this time were around the 66c mark.

I would like to try and stable at 4.6Ghz but maybe it is a lot to ask for on my 6600K, taking into account that I've had some success out of 4.5Ghz so far and perhaps if I stuck to 4.5Ghz, I could work on lowering the vcore even more to test stability.

Are there any further adjustments that could be made in the BIOS to progress further?

Many thanks - Liam.

LEK-89 · 12 Dec 2016 at 19:50

Further update...

Saturday evening I attempted 4.5Ghz with a vcore of 1.280v but BSOD'd after 10 minutes, I even attempted 1.290v and it showed signs of being stable after 45 minutes but I ran out of time and had to postpone testing.

I think I sussed out why I wasn't able to stable at 4.6Ghz originally and also found a flaw up to this point in general... Like I wally I forgot to set the RAM tab on Asus RealBench from 4GB to my rated spec of 16GB! Therefore, I've undergone more testing tonight back at 4.6Ghz with a vcore of 1.325v again, XMP enabled for full 3000mhz RAM. and LLC set to Auto. I managed stable for over an hour (however CPU-Z reports 1.328v). Though temperatures peaked 75c at one point and averaged at around 65c throughout.

As listed in my sig I'm running on Mini ITX so I'm trying to keep a tab on temperatures as well as stability especially, therefore I decided to abort testing at 4.6Ghz and revert back again to 4.5Ghz & 1.290v (1.280v / 1.296v in CPU Z) to see if I can keep average temperatures down. 15 minutes in so far so good...

Temperatures of course also depend on the way I have got my fans configured (2 x on the CPU AIO Be Quiet & 2 case fans). I've got the AIO speeds set to 60% when temps reach 60c / 80c at 70c & both case fans set to 80c beyond 60c regardless.

Liam.

LEK-89 · 15 Dec 2016 at 08:13

Some more updates,

4.6Ghz with a vcore of 1.300v appears to be stable as of last night, peak load temperatures were still similar to as the above. I then decided to go a step further and attempt another test based on the vcore being 1.280v but it would BSOD within 5 minutes of stress testing in RealBench - again, when trying 1.290v it would BSOD within 10 minutes.

I think 4.6Ghz @ 1.300v is probably the sweet spot, I could tinker further perhaps such as slightly adjusting the other voltages / LLC for it to be stable below 1.300v but I'll have to look into this even more.

Going back to making it stable at a decent clock but with the lowest vcore possible for a 24/7 daily, along with minimising heat - ending last night's testing I went back to 4.5Ghz but this time with the vcore at 1.250v. RealBench testing was stable for over an hour before I ran out of time, I will continue more testing tonight but it looks promising - and even better the peak load temperatures with this vcore have been slashed by a good 10c (new average temps at around the 63c mark).

Liam.

LEK-89 · 16 Dec 2016 at 11:01

Final report FWIW,

Last night, decided to stick at 4.5Ghz but do a RealBench with the vcore set to 1.230v but it BSOD within 5 minutes, going back and setting it to 1.240v initially looked promising but again, BSOD after 40 minutes.

I went back to 1.250v once again and it remained stable for over 3 hours, so I think I'm going to leave it at that as I'm more than happy - average peak temperatures are only 62c and the machine still performs pretty quiet.

According to some rough calculations I think my 6600K could indeed be capable of up to 4.8Ghz but this would require at least 1.4V and also better cooling so I'm not going to delve into this territory.

Liam.

mickyflinn · 16 Dec 2016 at 11:13

4.5ghz to 4.8ghz is not really worth it .

DJ_Bucho · 16 Dec 2016 at 11:16

Nice result there mate, and I like how you've kept your thread updated with your findings, what you changed and the effects of your tests. Great work matey

LEK-89 · 16 Dec 2016 at 11:34

Mickyfinn - my thoughts entirely, the speed differences would be negligible but the added heat alone at 4.8Ghz would be far too much on my Mini ITX platform at full pelt.

DJ Bucho - Thanks a lot mate and for following this too

I like to keep a check on these things and also provide a rough guideline for other members who may be in the same boat as me & exploring the overclocking world. I forgot to mention that 4.5Ghz @ 1.250v displays as 1.248v in CPU-Z while under full load and also while idle, I was thinking about still playing around with the LLC settings to see if this could tidy things up a bit more but I don't think there's much point.

The next step is possibly experimenting with Adaptive voltage so that besides the main CPU clock being reduced when idle, so does the voltage but I need to do more reading into this.

Liam.

chilipeppersc · 17 Dec 2016 at 00:31

Thanks for sharing! Very useful. Enjoyed reading your findings

D1craig · 17 Dec 2016 at 10:23

I tried over clocking my 6600k. Seems OK at the auto settings for 4.4 now. But when I did up it to 4.5 it wouldn't even boot. I had to reset with a screw driver to lol. Never bothered after that as I have a full custom loop and it's very very tight in there so getting to that jumper was pretty hard lol.

LEK-89 · 18 Dec 2016 at 21:11

D1craig said:
I tried over clocking my 6600k. Seems OK at the auto settings for 4.4 now. But when I did up it to 4.5 it wouldn't even boot. I had to reset with a screw driver to lol. Never bothered after that as I have a full custom loop and it's very very tight in there so getting to that jumper was pretty hard lol.

Follow what I did mate - start from scratch again, set the clock radio to 4.4Ghz with a starting vcore of 1.350V and see how you get on. If it's stable after a few hours then lower the vcore to 1.300V and try again to see how you get on - the key really is to get the lowest stable vcore as much as possible, as this will also reduce heat.

I wouldn't recommend overclocking on auto volts though, even on a mild overclock as your motherboard will be pumping anything from say 1.2V all the way through to 1.45V to the CPU at any given time depending on the load, and anything over 1.4V isn't safe.

What motherboard have you got? In my experience some manufacturers / high end motherboards clock better than others.

Liam.

D1craig · 18 Dec 2016 at 21:33

i have - GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 Intel Z170

and my CPU VCORE in HWMonitor seems pretty reasonable. go upto 1.224

LEK-89 · 19 Dec 2016 at 12:24

D1craig said:
i have - GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 Intel Z170

and my CPU VCORE in HWMonitor seems pretty reasonable. go upto 1.224

From what I know after previous reserved you've got a good board there for average overclocking so that rules that out.

Is the vcore that you posted shown while being set to auto or manual?

Liam.

D1craig · 19 Dec 2016 at 19:52

its auto mate. i havent messed with it because the reset jumper is in a very awkward position so once i had that problem i decided 4.4ghz was good enough.

i am seriously considering getting a new case after xmas but other things are a priority atm. new case means better access to these thing and i can play more then

LEK-89 · 4 Mar 2017 at 17:12

Just a bit of a thread revival on some recent developments on my overclocking saga for the 6600K...

It turns out that perhaps 4.5Ghz @ 1.25V may of not been stable after all. I noticed back in December after settling on this overclock that despite it being stable in RealBench after a few hours, I kept getting random BSOD's when gaming (usually once every hour / 90 minutes), and also random lockups some days while in Chrome (I originally thought this could have been down to the hardware acceleration feature, disabling it did help but it still did it every couple of days). In the end I did narrow it down to be an XMP RAM issue due to the BSOD codes but I didn't investigate further to alleviate it at the time. Fast forward to a few weeks ago I downsized to a SFF case and still the issues persisted, even after re-seating the RAM but I also decided to go back to complete stock settings until today due to the increase in temps with downsizing to SFF (as to be expected - my 1070 mini alone heads up that case of the case !!). Thankfully since running everything back at stock for the past few weeks, the system has been 100% stable again and gaming has been flawless too. It's nice to see stock CPU temps only reaching 56c while gaming.

I have still had the itch to overclock once again, but this time taking into account that I want to achieve the modest overclock while keeping the temps down as much as possible. Therefore, I went down the path of changing the RAM to XMP again (3000mhz), but only changing the clock ratio to 4200mhz while leaving everything else at auto out of curiosity (a fair number of people have had success with running a modest overclock on auto volts). Running RealBench for an hour today looked positive with no BSOD / crashes, at 4.2Ghz CPU-Z reports that the voltage hovers between 1.232v-1.248v when at peak which is pretty reasonable and HWMonitor reported during the benching time that the peak voltage at some point reached 1.312v. Average peak temperatures were 65c too which is an improvement taking into account I'm now running SFF.

The real world testing continues, I'm still running this as I'm typing now and I intend on having a sesh on BF1 later to see if it lasts...

Liam.

Nichrome · 7 Mar 2017 at 17:39

Finding a stable 24/7 OC is a long process. I had my 6700k running at 5.1GHz (1.55V) quite nicely through benchmarks, stress tests, games etc. But also, was getting BSODs once in a while. Even though temps were fine (68C in games, 80C in stress tests), it seemed like a little but quick change in CPU usage happened and caused an instant BSOD. Sometimes could play few different games without issue, the other day it would BSOD at the moment of launching the game or opening up Notepad++. Turned it down to 5.0GHz (1.45V) and all fine ever since (59C gaming, 69C stress tests). Though as I am doing quite a lot of work on my desktop, I have it turned down to 4.6GHz, and I load my 5.0GHz OC profile when I intend to play games.

Be patient

And remember that sacrificing CPU OC is not worth for RAM OC. I had my RAM running at 3200MHz, but then CPU would simply refuse booting above 4.8GHz (lol). Sticking it down to 2400MHz allows it easily boot to even 5.1GHz. Not trying 5.2GHz or higher, as that would take 1.6V if not more

LEK-89 · 7 Mar 2017 at 17:49

Nichrome said:
Finding a stable 24/7 OC is a long process. I had my 6700k running at 5.1GHz (1.55V) quite nicely through benchmarks, stress tests, games etc. But also, was getting BSODs once in a while. Even though temps were fine (68C in games, 80C in stress tests), it seemed like a little but quick change in CPU usage happened and caused an instant BSOD. Sometimes could play few different games without issue, the other day it would BSOD at the moment of launching the game or opening up Notepad++. Turned it down to 5.0GHz (1.45V) and all fine ever since (59C gaming, 69C stress tests). Though as I am doing quite a lot of work on my desktop, I have it turned down to 4.6GHz, and I load my 5.0GHz OC profile when I intend to play games.

Be patient And remember that sacrificing CPU OC is not worth for RAM OC. I had my RAM running at 3200MHz, but then CPU would simply refuse booting above 4.8GHz (lol). Sticking it down to 2400MHz allows it easily boot to even 5.1GHz. Not trying 5.2GHz or higher, as that would take 1.6V if not more

Thanks for the post and you've just reminded me to post an update as well,

I've been running my recent 4.2Ghz overclock on Auto since my last post and all appears to be well my end now too, system stability right all the way through to gaming on BF1 - no hangs, crashes or BSOD's

I've closely monitored the voltage especially in the meantime too due to it being on Auto and even when gaming, HWMonitor suggests it never exceeds 1.317v and usually averages around the 1.250v mark. Temperatures as already reported never exceed 70c as well (bearing in mind my rig is currently in the kitchen & with the heating on in the evenings), therefore I may just keep it at this config if no other problems occur.

Liam