How far is to far to push voltage

Robzere31 · 18 Feb 2016 at 13:34

Now my watercooling loop is finished & I'm happy with temps etc now is the time to decide whether to push my 4770k cpu further.
Currently it's sat at 4.5ghz with 1.27v (been that for 2 years) with temps around the 50c mark after gaming.

I tried some time ago when on an AIO cooler & achieved 4.8ghz with 1.35v which seemed stable in a few benchmarks & games.
Temps rose to high 70c, something I didn't want to run at 24/7 so dropped back to 4.5ghz

What I'm wondering is, is it worth pushing the chip to 4.8 - 4.9ghz with higher volts even though the temps will be lower.
I don't really think I'd see a noticeable performance increase from a couple of hundred mhz but I may be wrong.

Bluntwrapped · 18 Feb 2016 at 13:56

Without delidding I would say it will be a struggle to keep your temps in check @ 1.35v, even under a custom loop.

You're not going to notice any difference between 4.5 & 4.8 so it's really down to whether you'd like to do it just because you can lol.

I run my 3770k at 5.1GHz with 1.35v. Completely over the top for how I'm using it but since it can do 5.1GHz I feel it would be a shame not to

Robzere31 · 18 Feb 2016 at 13:59

Thats pretty much what I thought, but like you say it's just because you can, not that you need do.

I might give it a try over the weekend, just to see what sort of temps I get for a benchmark run, but stay at 4.5 - 4.6ghz for everyday use.

Bluntwrapped · 18 Feb 2016 at 15:40

Nice one. You'll be safe enough up to 80c for a quick bench run. Maybe best to set up a couple of profiles, one for benching and the other for 24/7 clocks. Have you tried 4.6GHz at 1.27-1.3v? You might be using a tad more voltage than you need for 4.5GHz.

Robzere31 · 18 Feb 2016 at 15:44

Bluntwrapped said:
Nice one. You'll be safe enough up to 80c for a quick bench run. Maybe best to set up a couple of profiles, one for benching and the other for 24/7 clocks. Have you tried 4.6GHz at 1.27-1.3v? You might be using a tad more voltage than you need for 4.5GHz.

Yeah I tried 4.6ghz with 1.28v & it was fairly stable, but had the occasional crash when gaming.
I did have 4 sticks on memory at that time though which I later found was causing a bit of a problem.

I've since gone to 2x8gb rather than 4x4gb so may try it again.

Bluntwrapped · 18 Feb 2016 at 15:55

Yeah worth another try and see how you get on. Depending on the IMC you might need to tune VCCIO and VCCSA with 4 sticks installed.

Robzere31 · 21 Feb 2016 at 14:08

Been having a bit of a play & found the following

4.6ghz - 1.29v
4.7ghz - 1.32v
4.8ghz - 1.38v

I can run firestrike slightly under these, but gaming requires the above to be 100% stable.
For the marginal increase in performace over 4.5GHZ @ 1.27v I think ill stay at 4.5ghz

However, i've found a couple of small gains with memory timings.
I've always run the at auto with X.M.P enabled, however for some reason at 2133mhz they default to 2T timings & 9-11-10-248 with 1.65v

Had a play & now have them running 2400mhz 1T 9-11-10-128 1.65v

Not much of a performance increase but every little helps if its for free!

I'm guessing there is more available from the memory, but overclocking memory has never been one of my strong points.