Planning on my first OC, bit nervous.

remtard

remtard

remtard

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Hey guys,
I want to overclock my i7 920, its currently at 2.66ghz but I was hoping to push over 3ghz out of it. I currently only have the stock cooler on the pc, but my case is a HAF 922 so the cooling itself is very efficient.
I was wondering what kind of power I could push out of this processor with a new cooler like the noctua dh-14, I think it was called :/

Any recommendations for overclocking or tips for when I am doing it, also what kind of temperature do I want the processor to read after overclocking it to make sure it will still run efficiently and not degrade rapidly?

Thanks
 
No matter what cooler you have there is one thing that you have to monitor when doing a over-clock. Temperature. Write down what your idle temps are and what your load temps are at stock.

Up the BLK a touch and repeat that exercise.

When your over clock fails you can nudge your voltages up a bit. Repeat the process and keep doing so until your temperature are no longer with in acceptable range.

That is pretty much it. There is no definitive number that can be provided for your vcore max for a stock cooler. Some CPU's use way less voltage to achieve a massive over-clock, yet another will require huge amounts for a modest over-clock. Just luck of the draw mate. Temperature is your only true guide.
 
ahh is there any chance of actually blowing the processor or reducing its life?

I'm planning on buying a new cooler before I even attempt just for my own safety ;D also what program do you use for temperatures? is it called CPUid or something like that? My friend did tell me about it, but I cannot remember the name ><

cheers for the reply though mate :) i'll keep everything in mind.
 
HW Monitor is what I use most of the time. And yeah you can download it fromthe CPUID site.

If you want to you can do this test. Not telling you to do it mind. Put your CPU in the board and set everything else up. Power on. NO COOLER. :D

All that happens is that your system shuts down. The CPU will not burst into flames it just shuts the system down.

How do I know this. Well had a mate bring a system in and it was shutting down. He could not understand it. Yeah you got it. The cooler was not mounted. CPU is fine and now trundles along at a solid 3.6GHz 24/7.

The point of the example is simple. As long as you keep an eye on your temps you will be fine. You really need to work hard to kill a CPU. It is much easier to kill your motherboard in truth.

As to reducing its life, how long do you want to keep using it? I have had CPU's that were nearly 80% over-clocked (my old E6420) 24/7 and that puppy kept going and going and is still going as far as I know. Bought it on the day it was released. You see what I am getting at. Every two or three years there is a new CPU range or socket that comes out. So really how long do you want to keep it for?
 
+1 for RealTemp

I like this program cos it logs your highest temp, so if you run a stress test and leave it to run (I'm sure we don't all sit there watching while we run prime for 6 hours lol) when you get back to it you can see straight away what the highest temp you hit was :)

Modest little feature but I like it :)

Another one I use is Open Hardware Monitor - Looks almost identical to HW Monitor but it has a little sidebar style gadget to monitor everything and stay out of the way :)
 
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wow thanks for the replies guys :) i took all of them in and I overclocked it to a nice 3.7ghz. It seems to be running fine, with a stress it recorded a highest temp of like 85 celcius, which my friend told me was not that bad. But most games maxed it is running at around 52-55 celcius, so if i look into a new cooler I'm sure that will drop even more :D

And yeah, I know what you mean about the constant release of new CPU's so I guess by the time the i7 range is... well considered slow, then it'll be the time to change ;D

Thanks again guys, appreciate it. :)
 
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