Newbie to overclocking

Nayab · 1 Mar 2022 at 21:51

Hello everyone and thank you for having more knowledge than myself. I would be very grateful for some advice on what to try next, and now that prices have dropped on upgrade parts, I am happy to spend a little bit of cash on improvements. Please talk to me in small words, like you would to a small child, or a labrador. I appreciate that what I have done is the easy way and has given the greatest results. I want to know how much further I might be able to go. Thank you again for reading thus far.

Reasons - Not so much gaming as I do not play the latest titles. This is a "Because I can" exercise so no problems if I have lost out on the silicone lottery.

Equipment -
PSU CoolerMaster Vanguard V 750W 80 PLus Gold
RS750-AFBAG1-UK

Board Asus X99-AII
BIOS latest from ASUS
BCLK 100MHz
Ratio 4100MHz All cores

Intel i7 6800K
Stepping 1
Ext Model 4F
Revision M0

Corsair Hydro Series H80 High Performance 120mm Liquid Cooler

RAM
2 x 8Gb 2666Mhz, DDR4, Non-Ecc, KHX2666C15D4/8G
XMP2.0
15 17 17 35 60 1.200V
CPU-Z reports Uncore frequency 3100MHz Dual Channel

ASUS Phoenix GTX 1650 SUPER OC
PH-GTX1650S-O4G

Cinebench R23 scores
Stock
6400
Overclocked (Temperatures never go above 65C on any core)
7500

Actions taken so far -
1 Use easy overclocking in BIOS/UEFI to increase all core multiplier and enable XMP (This yielded 14%)
2 Set TPU to TPU II (This pushed to 20% improvement)
Both of these I tried (bravely) after looking at hours of YouTube material. They now start to confuse me beyond this.

Questions -
1 What RAM can I get that will help push a little but further? My theory is 4 x 8Gb sticks to go from dual channel to quad channel as long as they can handle XMP but I am happy to be educated.
2 On my ASUS board, how can I safely mess around with voltages to tweak maybe a tiny bit further?
3 Given that I am on a PCIe 3.0 board, what specifications of NVMe drive should I get? I have never seen or used one. Currently on SSD.
4 What else could I tweak without thinking that I might as well spend £2500 on a new rig.
5 I have a 60Hz 4k monitor that I got from FB marketplace. I didn't know that 100Hz and above monitors existed. Given that I am currently playing Tomb Raider AOD, should I chuck it and try one?

Huge thanks

Nayab · 1 Mar 2022 at 22:00

To add, if I have missed out any specifications, please do let me know. I have tried to be as detailed as possible.

mickyflinn · 2 Mar 2022 at 09:55

Hi.

Lots slow down and re evaluate , you just purchased a 4k @60hz monitor have you tried it and what fps are you getting ?

Overclocking probablly wont have much affect at 4k resoloution as the gpu does most of the work. 1650 super is not a bad gpu for 1080p gaming but 4k is a diffrent ball game hence the above question.

Haz123 · 2 Mar 2022 at 10:28

Nayab said:
Actions taken so far -
1 Use easy overclocking in BIOS/UEFI to increase all core multiplier and enable XMP (This yielded 14%)
2 Set TPU to TPU II (This pushed to 20% improvement)
Both of these I tried (bravely) after looking at hours of YouTube material. They now start to confuse me beyond this.

Questions -
1 What RAM can I get that will help push a little but further? My theory is 4 x 8Gb sticks to go from dual channel to quad channel as long as they can handle XMP but I am happy to be educated.
2 On my ASUS board, how can I safely mess around with voltages to tweak maybe a tiny bit further?
3 Given that I am on a PCIe 3.0 board, what specifications of NVMe drive should I get? I have never seen or used one. Currently on SSD.
4 What else could I tweak without thinking that I might as well spend £2500 on a new rig.
5 I have a 60Hz 4k monitor that I got from FB marketplace. I didn't know that 100Hz and above monitors existed. Given that I am currently playing Tomb Raider AOD, should I chuck it and try one?

Huge thanks

Actions taken so far -

1 - You have an Asus mobo and in general their auto overclocking settings will push the voltages far higher than are actually needed and lead to higher temp. It does not sound like you are at the thermal limit but you do need to keep this in mind and you would be better off resetting to stock and doing the settings yourself.

Questions -

1- Do not look for insane fast DDR4, keep to sensible budget with future purchases for this system. Try to get matching ram to what you already have for 4x8 gb and see how that effects performance. You will see almost no increase in gaming performance with more ram , especially at 4k , but synthetic benchmarks could get much faster by going to quad channel.

2- You need to read and learn what each setting actually is.

3- Just get a cheapish pcie 3 drive and enjoy. Do not over spend or overthink.

4- Nothing.Your 4k gaming performance is massively limited by your 1650. If you are just playing around and seeing what you can achieve then great but there are limits to what can be done with that gpu.

5- If you want to stay at 4k res then to get a high refresh rate monitor is a real challenge. Lots of new ones coming out this year and I am no expert on these. Check out hwunboxed on youtube for their monitor roundups and they will steer you in the right direction.

Nayab · 2 Mar 2022 at 20:11

mickyflinn said:
Hi.

Lots slow down and re evaluate , you just purchased a 4k @60hz monitor have you tried it and what fps are you getting ?

Overclocking probablly wont have much affect at 4k resoloution as the gpu does most of the work. 1650 super is not a bad gpu for 1080p gaming but 4k is a diffrent ball game hence the above question.

Thanks. I see the difference. Using Furmark at 4k is less than 60fps. Running at 1920*1080 some tests give 120-300fps. I think a GPU upgrade is only required if I play games that would need the extra power. Thank you for your time. I do appreciate the advice.

Nayab · 2 Mar 2022 at 20:27

Haz123 said:
Actions taken so far -

1 - You have an Asus mobo and in general their auto overclocking settings will push the voltages far higher than are actually needed and lead to higher temp. It does not sound like you are at the thermal limit but you do need to keep this in mind and you would be better off resetting to stock and doing the settings yourself.

Questions -

1- Do not look for insane fast DDR4, keep to sensible budget with future purchases for this system. Try to get matching ram to what you already have for 4x8 gb and see how that effects performance. You will see almost no increase in gaming performance with more ram , especially at 4k , but synthetic benchmarks could get much faster by going to quad channel.

2- You need to read and learn what each setting actually is.

3- Just get a cheapish pcie 3 drive and enjoy. Do not over spend or overthink.

4- Nothing.Your 4k gaming performance is massively limited by your 1650. If you are just playing around and seeing what you can achieve then great but there are limits to what can be done with that gpu.

5- If you want to stay at 4k res then to get a high refresh rate monitor is a real challenge. Lots of new ones coming out this year and I am no expert on these. Check out hwunboxed on youtube for their monitor roundups and they will steer you in the right direction.

Thank you for your thoughts on this. I never knew that this would automatically push voltages beyond what I would expect. Given that the system is stable and the Asus software has done most of the heavy lifting, I suspect that 2-3 days of learning and tuning will not push performance to a level any more noticeable that I have now. A reputable brand of NVMe will deliver the most bang per buck moving forward. Especially given that they are cheaper now than the SSD was when I first got the system. So I will just be happy with what I have and spend again when tech has moved on in 3-4 years.