Overclocking a i7 4790K or i7 4770K with the B85 chipset

s6545 · 12 Jul 2019 at 01:13

Hi guys,

I'm considering buying a used i7 4790K or i7 4770K and overclocking it to over 4ghz, as I think this would be the most cost effective upgrade from an i5 4440.

I have an Asus B85 Plus motherboard. Will multiplier overclocking be possible? Have any of you managed to increase the multiplier on a B85 board?

A forum member reached 4.1Ghz, with the same motherboard in 2018, please see link below:

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/978307-upgrade-motherboard-asus-b85-plus/

Am I likely to get similar results? Or, would a B85 chipset only allow increasing the multiplier upto the Turbo boost speed of the CPU?

EDIT - I also have the same BIOS version (2.10.1208).

Rroff · 12 Jul 2019 at 03:07

From what I recall the 4770K pretty much hits a wall at ~4.4-4.6GHz unless you delid or get lucky with one that is a golden clocker - the 4790K does single core turbo to 4.4GHz out the box and atleast 4GHz all core so even if you don't get much overclocking out of it you'll already be in a good position.

tombomb · 12 Jul 2019 at 07:39

Ive hit a wall on my 4770k at 4.5ghz. I may try the delid option in the future too see if i can get any more out of it

Jumper118 · 12 Jul 2019 at 13:05

Some boards will let you go to the single core turbo on all cores, but others don't, as Rroff said you are best off getting a 4790k if you want the best chance.

s6545 · 12 Jul 2019 at 16:55

Thanks your help. I think I'll go with the i7 4770K, as the 4790k is expensive atm. If needed, I'll try to buy a used cheap h97/z87/z97 motherboard on Ebay.

I think my chances of overclocking are quite good though since it appears to be the same motherboard and BIOS version as the forum member on LinusTechTips.

Upgrading the mobo wouldn't be the end of the world though, cause the USB 3 controller on the B85 Plus is crap and causes my USB 3 HDD to cut out occasionally (works fine on USB 2).

EDIT - I have an old Evo Hyper 212 which I originally brought to cool an overclocked i5 750. Interestingly, the motherboard died (the voltage regulator I think) causing me to upgrade to a i5 4440. I hope it doesn't happen again! But I think the Haswell boards have more features in them to prevent failures like that from happening (like overcurrent protection).

drakulton · 12 Jul 2019 at 22:58

Any intel CPU of that era will need delidding as the thermal paste will have turned to concrete or dust with the resulting degradation in thermal conductivity.

s6545 · 18 Jul 2019 at 17:41

Hi guys,

I got a used 4770k for £110 and it's working. I've overclocked it to 4.2Gghz on all cores, but under a CPUz stress test one of the cores reaches 80 celsius, so I don't think I'll run it any higher.

Overclocking it was easy on the Asus B85 Plus, I just increased the CPU core sync multiplier to 42 from it's default. I left the Vcore on auto (1.2v).

I tested it at 4.5Ghz, but I had to put the Vcore up to 1.375v to keep it stable. Under stress testing it went to 90 celsius in a few seconds, so I stopped there...

Will a Haswell quad core at 4.2Ghz be enough for 2019/2020 games? I only have a R9 390 at the moment, but I may upgrade to Navi 20 / the rx 5800 series when it's released.

s6545 · 19 Jul 2019 at 02:02

Update:

My 4770k running at 4.4Ghz with HT off during a stress test:

https://i.imgur.com/AheO2HA.jpg

It seems to run around 7 degrees cooler with HT off, I'm quite happy with it. I had to turn off virtualization too because it's not supported by this CPU weirdly and this fixed a problem with the Bus Speed reporting incorrectly. Vcore is currently set to 1.260 in the Bios, I can increase it a little if needed.

Rofflay · 19 Jul 2019 at 02:29

Turn off all the power stuff 1.25 is what i had to put into mine for 4300 it refuses to go higher so i sync the uncore too at 4300. Try that for 4k around this speed with good 2400mhz ram i oc mine to 1T timings you are pretty good.

Certainly if i had money yea i would buy a Ryzen 3000 but given the right game engine say Overwatch boy does it make use of it 4k at 170fps on a 1080 with only textures kept max. As you see thats very good.

s6545 · 19 Jul 2019 at 14:55

I had to increase the voltage to 1.295 to get it stable at 4.4Ghz with HT off, tested with the Civ 6 Gathering Storm AI benchmark.

I got a score of 43.76 seconds with HT off, running at 4.4Ghz.

Interestingly, this is less than with HT on, running at 4.2Ghz, with a score of 41.07 seconds, so the game likes Hyper Threading.

I think I'll run it at 4.3Ghz for now as it was reaching 82 degrees on one of the cores at 4.4ghz.

s6545 · 19 Jul 2019 at 15:13

Rofflay said:
Turn off all the power stuff 1.25 is what i had to put into mine for 4300 it refuses to go higher so i sync the uncore too at 4300. Try that for 4k around this speed with good 2400mhz ram i oc mine to 1T timings you are pretty good.

Certainly if i had money yea i would buy a Ryzen 3000 but given the right game engine say Overwatch boy does it make use of it 4k at 170fps on a 1080 with only textures kept max. As you see thats very good.

Yeah, I thought about getting a Ryzen 3600 as they seem to perform well in pretty much everything, maybe because of their high multithreading scores. But, I decided this would be a more cost effective upgrade, I can save the £200 (that would've been spent on a new motherboard and RAM and part of the CPU cost) for when an affordable upgrade to my R9 390 (that can run games at 4K) is released.

s6545 · 19 Jul 2019 at 15:24

Does anyone know of any games that really benefit from Hyper Threading (by an increase of 5-10FPS)? Just wondering if it's worth the significant increase in temps.

Presumably, HT mostly benefits games that utilize many cores?

s6545 · 19 Jul 2019 at 15:32

I ran the Civ Gathering Storm AI benchmark at 4.3Ghz (HT off, Vcore set to Auto) and got 40.79 seconds this time. So, maybe there's just some variation in the benchmark? Who knows.

s6545 · 20 Jul 2019 at 16:23

So, would anyone recommend turning HT on for games?

Rroff · 20 Jul 2019 at 16:30

Some games will be noticeably smoother with HT on versus off with just 4 cores - but most noticeable if you are doing 120+Hz gaming - less so at 60Hz + V-Sync. There isn't always that much of an FPS difference but you can feel the difference as the game will "feel" more sluggish at the same framerate.

I know there are some games that struggled on a 4xxx series i5 that ran much better on the i7s with HT on but I can't remember specifics off the top of my head - I think BF4 was one of them.