Overclocking 2500K

[azibux1]

Only just found out today that by default I am running in turbo mode

Could I overclock it even higher, just a bit, but I do not want to damage ANYTHING, and do NOT want to void my warranty

Is there any recommended settings that people use when overclocking for a small overclock on a 2500K

I am a first time overclocker so please explain things

If it will void my warranty / shorten life of CPU then I do not want to do it

Hope you can help,

 

[azibux1]

I was in the same situation as you.
I just changed the multiplier to 40x and changed no other settings and it's stable and easily within safe temps.

A nice 700mhz increase with near enough no risk

OK, might try that

It won't void you warranty and yes your CPU will work shorter, 15 years instead 20

Will it really still work 15 years? Might try it, if so

 

[azibux1]

Put it this way, you would have probably sold it on waaaay before it would ever die

OK then

I will try a little overclock?

Should I disable turbo mode then do it, or will it not make a difference?

Also, do I literally just put the multiplier up to 40x and that is it?

Then stress test using Intel Burn Test and monitor temps using core temp

Right?

 

[azibux1]

Yes, disable turbo mode. Leave everything on auto and put multiplier on 40x, then once on desktop do a maximum stress test with IBT and record voltage and max temps. Then we can work it from there.

OK I can do all of that, but how do I monitor voltage?


Thanks for your help

 

[azibux1]

Just went into the BIOS, how do I do this lol!

Is it under advanced or ai tweaker?

All I can see is if I set ai overclock tuner to manual, I can then see the BCLK/PCIE Frequency, but no processor multiplier

I have disabled turbo mode though

 

[azibux1]

It won't void you warranty

Just found this in one of the overclocking guides:

Warning
Before we start, a word of warning, overclocking may void your warranty

I thought you said it wont

Will it?

 

[azibux1]

Every chip is different so one chip's setting will be different from another, not to mention the motherboard make/model. But it looks like we have motherbaords which are from the same family.

But you can try and start off with my settings and go from there.

4.6Ghz

Internal PLL Overvoltage - DISABLED
CPU Voltage - OffSet (minus 0.040)
DRAM voltage - set this to your manufacturer's recommended voltage (and timings)
VCCIO - AUTO
CPU PLL voltage 1.70

DIGI+VRM
LLC - EXTREME
VRM Frequency - AUTO
Phase Control - Extreme
Duty Control - Extreme
CPU Current Capability - 100%

Other settings are untouched

Under stress test, my CPU voltage fluctuates up to 1.366v
I'ts IBT stable for 10 runs (maximum)
Prime95 stable for 9 hours (turned it off because I had to go to work and didn't want to leave it)

Thanks for those, I'll have a look and get back to you

Does this void the warranty by the way? And how long would the life of the CPU be shortened by?


Thanks for your help,

 

[azibux1]

don't really know about warranty but as someone mentioned, they have to honour it because intel can't prove that you killed the cpu by overclocking. If you bought your cpu from OCUK, they will honour warranty regardless of you overclocking or not. You should be ok, as long as you keep your settings within the recommended limits. You cpu will becopme obsolete first before it dies if treated properly.

Good luck and happy OC'ing

edit:
I have a 6 year old Athlon64 that I overclocked and it's still running now.

I did not buy from OcUK, but it was another large online PC part retailer

OK, that should be fine then

Most of us who have the i5 2500k all run overclocks. If you dont go over the Vcore limit or exceed temperatures you will be fine. If you your system is unstable, notch it down a bit.

Never go for the highest overclock straight away. try a multi of 42. at auto volts and see what happens.

Dont worry about lifespan. You will upgrade long before you would ever notice.

Thanks, I'm not going for any huge overclock anyway, so I will try 40/42 for a start

Thanks for your help




I will probably be doing this tonight so I will let you know how I get on and no doubt be back with some more questions


Thanks,

 

[azibux1]

Update

Hi all,

I have done it

I set the multiplier to 40 and this image below shows temps/voltage after I just switched my PC on and nothing else (you can click the image to view a larger version):




And I then ran Intel Burn Test on 'Standard' mode, 5 runs and this is AFTER the test, not during (you can click the image to view a larger version):



During the test the voltage surprisingly seemed lower? It was at around 1.2XX V

How does that look?

 

[azibux1]

Run it on maximum to be sure, at about 10 loops. At that voltage, you should be able to get it close to 4.5ghz, depending on your CPU. So, keep it at that and just increase multiplier.

OK, but first, I just thought I'd mention that after the overclock (before running intel burn test, I think) it cold booted, I just ignored it and carried on.

Just now I rebooted to check something in the BIOS, finished checking what I wanted to (didn't actually change any settings), exited BIOS, and it cold booted (just had a little dash flashing at the top left of screen, tapped the power button and it went off straight away, tried again, cold booted again, tried again and to be honest I don't remember whether it cold booted this time or properly booted, but it definitely did NOT cold boot any more than 3 times.

The time it did work, before, I went into the BIOS, then just exited again, and then it worked

As you can see here I was having a cold boot issue but it hadn't happened for ages after I updated the BIOS, I currently have the latest BIOS revision

Hmmmmmmmm

 

[azibux1]

Little update on the cold boot issue

I just thought I would shut down to see what happens this time so:

- I shut down
- Turned on PC
- It cold booted
- Turned it off
- Turned it on and it worked this time

I did NOT go into the BIOS this time and it only cold booted once

Is this related to the overclock?

 

[azibux1]

Little update:

The image below shows core temp and cpu-z after playing Metro 2033 and APB Reloaded for about 2.5 hours

Temps look OK or a little high?




Also, anyone know anything about the cold boot issue above?

Hope you can help and thanks in advance,

EDIT: During the game if I quickly flicked to CPU-Z the voltage was high 1.2 / low 1.3 volts. Is that OK?

 

[azibux1]

Just thought I'd post here and update you all

I was reading online and found out that because I had my computer in the 'High Performance' power setting, speedstep was disabled, so I was constantly running at 4GHz

I have now set it to balanced so speedstep is enabled and this time when I booted the PC it did not cold boot even once, it worked properly first time

Could it maybe have been that it was something to do with speedstep being disabled that caused it to cold boot?

 

[azibux1]

just to set your mind at ease, the sandybridge cpus, were pretty much designed to be overclocked so dont worry to much about voiding any warranty, aslong as you dont put you cpu vcore above 1.4 you will be fine as this is was intel state as the safe limit

OK, thanks for that info

azibux i have the same board as you just few days ago. I too looked into overclocking and followed a video on youtube but like you when i set overclock to manual i get the multiplier greyed out and unable to change it.

How did you manage to change the multiplier?

Where the multiplier is it will say 'auto', you then click on that and type the number in. Is that what you're doing?

Also you have to have turbo mode (setting is in CPU config, next tab along from AI Tweaker) switched on, and have turbo ratio set to all cores

Let me know if you are still stuck and I will try to help

EDIT: Also, here is a link to my other thread, post 14 shows a picture and gives a bit of an explanation

 

[azibux1]

I've yet to try and look again but i remember trying before when first got the board and when i clicked the multipliers it was grey and i could enter a value (eg 45) but when i would click off it would return to 'Auto' again.
However i will check again and see if Turbo is turned on and if that then allows me to edit the multiplier setting and then go from there (very unsure about what to do with voltages and other settings so will probably be back for advice)

As a side question if i tinker with these settings and things go wrong how do i set the bios back to 'factory default' setting, i see there is a option to run 'optimised' but no kind of failsafe or default setting

I've left the voltage on mine as it was, because I didn't want to mess around with that, and I don't think you need to up the voltage unless you are going for a higher overclock

I think maybe removing the CMOS battery and bridging the correct jumper pins will reset it but I'm not sure on that. Maybe someone can confirm?

 

[azibux1]

So what is yours running at now?

4GHz

With speedstep enabled so it drops to 1.6GHz when idling / not doing demanding things

 

[azibux1]

I can't run Burn Test on Maximum, it uses all my RAM up and then I get a bluescreen lol, runs fine on Very High though, any idea why?

I've only run it on standard so far

Haven't tried it any higher yet

 

[azibux1]

Hi,

I just tried to run IBT on maximum but it causes core temp to stop responding (so I can't properly monitor the temperatures), it starts responding again when I stop IBT or when it is finished, then it shows what the max temperatures were but I don't really want to run it 10 times on maximum and then find out the temperature it reached afterwards, I want to monitor it at the same time so I can see if it is getting too high.

This also happened when running IBT on standard, but then it didn't really matter as I knew it wasn't going to get too hot anyway

So, what other software can I use to monitor the temps reliably?


Hope you can help,


EDIT: I did run it on maximum, 1 run, but I didn't let it finish as I couldn't see the temps properly, the highest temperature one of the cores reached was 74 celsius, is that OK? What temperature is too high?

 

[azibux1]

download CPUID hardware monitor and use that instead

Thanks, just downloaded it, will let you know the temp results from running IBT on max, 10 times once I've done it (might be tomorrow)

Also, what temp should I stop the test at if it gets too high? What is too high?



Thanks for your help,

 

[azibux1]

My chip reached 75 deg celcius when running IBT, just finished a 15x run just now that lasted for 2 hours, I'm happy with that temp, don't know about others. What cooler are you using?
sorry I just read your sig, so you use Tranquilo? Would you mind posting your temps as I'm considering that cooler for my 2nd computer.

Thanks for the info,

There are some temps on the first page of this thread, and I will post the temps after running IBT after I've done it

Also just for info, @ 4GHz, I am just web browsing and the current core temps are mide 30's except for core 2 which for some reason is 42. Should I reseat the cooler as the paste may not have spread correctly over core 2?

That's because it's not stable enough, you need to up the vcore or lower the multiplier. Don't go over 1.425v or 80C when running IBT. And about 1.38v max vcore and 70C for 24/7 use.

Running IBT on standard is a waste of time, it won't stress the CPU enough

If you set it to Maximum it will use all the available ram (but if a background process kicks in, it will force it to use the page file, which will slow it down to a snail pace)

The best way is to do it is either set IBT to maximum, see how much memory it will use, then switch to custom and set the memory to about 200mb lower than the max setting.

Or the way I do it is to open CPU-Z, core temp and a browser (Chrome). Then open IBT and set to maximum, then close the browser, which will give you some free memory. Then run IBT and take a screenshot halfway through the last run.

Thanks for all that info, will help a lot

Will let you know how I get on