I need your word of advice before overclocking my CPU

sedoun · 14 Oct 2010 at 10:53

Greetings everyone and thank you for accepting me as a member of your forums.
I would like please to get your feedback on my system before I start overclocking my CPU.

this is my system specs:

Code:

Windows 7 64 bit
CPU Intel Core i7 920 2.66 GHz
Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD7
Memory 12288 MBytes
Graphics Card RADEON HD 5850
Monitor(s) Displays 2 SAMSUNGSyncMaster T260HD
Screen Resolution 1920X1200
Keyboard Logitech dinovo SetPoint
Mouse Logitech dinovo SetPoint
PSU Thermaltake Key 3
Case Thermaltake Spedo
Cooling Noctua D14
Hard Drives 2T WDC

I just want to overclock the CPU from 2.66 to 3.00 GHz.
I was told that I have to be very carefull in overclocking the CPU since I'm utilizing all the memory slots (12 Gigs of RAMs) of the motherboard.

please advice.

geoirv23 · 14 Oct 2010 at 10:56

Have a good read through the guide in the overclocking/cooling section, that should give you a good idea of the basics.

wilko49 · 14 Oct 2010 at 11:08

I imagine that should be a fairly easy clock to achieve, even with 6 DIMMs. Just read through all the guides in the OC section and watch your voltages.

Snooble · 14 Oct 2010 at 11:31

As geoirv23 says. Read read read. Until you think you could do it without documentation. Then read it again systematically whilst OCing. Good luck

Liampope · 14 Oct 2010 at 11:45

You ought to be able to bump it up to 3GHz easily without even going above stock voltages. You should be setting your sights much higher

. Out of interest is your 920 a C0 or D0 stepping?

BigBruiserAl · 14 Oct 2010 at 12:28

TBH if you have a i7 with a d14 even with 12gb 3.4ghz is fast enough for most tasks and will be a good balance between power saving a performance. cant see vcore above 1.25 if it a average cpu QPI voltage may need a bit of boost with the extra ram

sedoun · 15 Oct 2010 at 15:49

Thank you guys for the replies.
I just want to make sure that overclocking a cpu with 12 gigs of rams is the same as overclocking it with 4.

again, thanks

Liampope · 15 Oct 2010 at 16:29

It's identical in principle - you just may need extra volts on the memory controller and may not get as high overall as you might with only 3 sticks of RAM. I'm assuming here your 12GB is 6x2GB sticks rather than 3x4GB sticks.