Trying to restore my CPU overclock.

Malmortius

Malmortius

Malmortius

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16 Jun 2011
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Hi guys.
About 3-4 years ago i bought a pre-built PC pre-overclocked CPU from overclockers which still works great to this day.

Intel core i5 CPU 760 2.80 GHz 2.79 GHz overclocked to 3.9 GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM (Now 8GB)
HD6950 2gb
500w corsair PSU

It had 4gb and i added another 4gb 2 years ago which reset my overclock(stupid me!) I didn't realise that it would interfere with the overclock settings and restore to factory defaults.

When i tried to reapply the overclock a while ago (Restore optimal settings in bios) it did nothing. I tried it once before and it reapplied it, yet not this time.
I want to reapply the overclock so i can get a bit more performance on this ageing machine (And may buy a cheap GPU upgrade over my HD6950 in the future)

Any ideas on what i can do?
 
"Restore optimal settings" will simply restore the motherboard settings to their factory default which will be a safe default that allows everything to work. I don't know what the OCUK pre-builts were like that long ago, but they MIGHT have saved the overclock settings in a separate profile, if the motherboard allows different BIOS profiles. So you could try looking for BIOS profiles on your board.

If there's no BIOS profiles with a stored overclock, you will probably have to do the overclock yourself manually, which isn't that difficult and there's many on here who can help you with it.

What motherboard is in your machine?
 
OhEsEcks said:
"Restore optimal settings" will simply restore the motherboard settings to their factory default which will be a safe default that allows everything to work. I don't know what the OCUK pre-builts were like that long ago, but they MIGHT have saved the overclock settings in a separate profile, if the motherboard allows different BIOS profiles. So you could try looking for BIOS profiles on your board.

If there's no BIOS profiles with a stored overclock, you will probably have to do the overclock yourself manually, which isn't that difficult and there's many on here who can help you with it.

What motherboard is in your machine?
Click to expand...

Motherboard is gigabyte p55-usb3 (thats what it says in system information, at least)

Im sure the last time i reloaded the overclocked profile, i used "optimized settings"
I would imagine "fail-safe settings" are the factory defaults.
 
Malmortius said:
Motherboard is gigabyte p55-usb3 (thats what it says in system information, at least)

Im sure the last time i reloaded the overclocked profile, i used "optimized settings"
I would imagine "fail-safe settings" are the factory defaults.
Click to expand...

I don't think so D:! They usually have a overclock profile setting on them somewhere.

I think the difference between failsafe and optimized is things along the line of ACHI / IDE / PCI E speed basically turning MOST stuff off to increase likelyhood of booting in a bad situation

BUT i could be wrong but either way to me fail safe and optimized are both default none overclocked settings


EDIT on the bios both of the settings you mentioned display optimized defaults and failsafe. Im looking to find the profile location for overclocks but with lots of bios layouts being different and not having the board it's not that easy. Any chance you could take a look in MB intelligent tweaker MIB - Miscellaneous settings as thats the only tab i can't see videos or screenshots of people entering.

Merry xmas by the way hope we can sort your OC out soon :)
 
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Malmortius said:
Motherboard is gigabyte p55-usb3 (thats what it says in system information, at least)

Im sure the last time i reloaded the overclocked profile, i used "optimized settings"
I would imagine "fail-safe settings" are the factory defaults.
Click to expand...

I have no experience with that motherboard, though I do have a 990XA-UD3 (AMD) and it has multiple profile settings in it's BIOS.

And as harry mentions, failsafe and optimised are two different profiles. Failsafe BIOS is like booting into Windows failsafe. It turns a lot of stuff off just so you can get into the software for fault finding.
 
I used the above guide to reapply a lost overclock on my ocuk i3 530 bundle. Originally it was at 4.02ghz which I pushed up to 4.62 without much hassle. Since upgraded to an i5 750 and taken it to 4.2 using the same guide. I was completely unfamiliar with overclocking these processors before and found the guide very well written and garnered great results :)

For reference I use 210 bclk, 20x multiplier with 1.3625vcore, 1.41vtt/qpi, 1.58vram, 1.3pch and 1.9pll ( if I've remembered that lot correctly). With all 4 ram slots populated it won't run above 200 bclk so limited to 8gb.
 
forteh said:
I used the above guide to reapply a lost overclock on my ocuk i3 530 bundle. Originally it was at 4.02ghz which I pushed up to 4.62 without much hassle. Since upgraded to an i5 750 and taken it to 4.2 using the same guide. I was completely unfamiliar with overclocking these processors before and found the guide very well written and garnered great results :)

For reference I use 210 bclk, 20x multiplier with 1.3625vcore, 1.41vtt/qpi, 1.58vram, 1.3pch and 1.9pll ( if I've remembered that lot correctly). With all 4 ram slots populated it won't run above 200 bclk so limited to 8gb.
Click to expand...

Ok, after reading that guide, this is RIDICULOUSLY complicated. For someone who got a D in maths, this is torture.

There is no way im going to ever understand this. 2 years of trying to find someone to help me get my overclock back and its getting frustrating coming up with nothing. I understand its definitely a lot to ask for someone to go through it, people just dont have the time.
 
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Malmortius said:
Ok, after reading that guide, this is RIDICULOUSLY complicated. For someone who got a D in maths, this is torture.

There is no way im going to ever understand this. 2 years of trying to find someone to help me get my overclock back and its getting frustrating coming up with nothing. I understand its definitely a lot to ask for someone to go through it, people just dont have the time.
Click to expand...

We're are you geographically ?? Maybe someone who is close to you can pop round and help you out ??
 
I'll talk you through it best I can :)
What are your idle and load temperatures at stock clock speeds? Are you using stock cooling or aftermarket? What ram do you have and what speed is it rated at? Check the memory tab on cpuz and it should give you a table of speeds the ram is rated at; it should be 1333 or 1600mhz.
Let us know the above info and I'll start talking you through the bios settings :)

edit: if your local to Lichfield I'm happy to give you a hand:)
 
forteh said:
I'll talk you through it best I can :)
What are your idle and load temperatures at stock clock speeds? Are you using stock cooling or aftermarket? What ram do you have and what speed is it rated at? Check the memory tab on cpuz and it should give you a table of speeds the ram is rated at; it should be 1333 or 1600mhz.
Let us know the above info and I'll start talking you through the bios settings :)

edit: if your local to Lichfield I'm happy to give you a hand:)
Click to expand...

Hi there. Im so appreciative of your help, man. Along with anyone else.

Righto. For cooling, the computer came with a H55 Hydro Corsair liquid cooler which i'm still using today.

Idle CPU temperatures are 35-45min - 51-53max idle on each core. (What are stock clock speeds? The speeds that come from the pc default optimized settings in bios?)
Load (As in when running a benchmark? i used novabench) At 100% load the highest core temps were 67c 67c 66c 66c

I have 8GB DDR3 ram. 2x4gb

In CPU-Z it says:
Size: 8192 MBytes
Channels # Dual
NB Frequency: 2120.4 MHz (fluctuates very slightly)
DRAM Frequency 663.2 MHz
 
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Cooling wise you shouldn't have too much issue as long as you airflow is ok and the rad isn't blocked with dust. The temps don't look too far out, obviously you needed to check on the constantly whilst you're setting up the overclock.

Check on the spd tab on cpuz, there should be a chart which lists the speeds and timings that the ram is capable of. The highest speed rated will be on the right hand side, as it's an ocuk overclocked bundle I'm guessing that it will probably be 1600mhz. Make a note of this and the numbers below it as you will need to put these into the bios later on.

The processor speed is determined by the baseclock (bclk) x cpu multiplier (multi). To overclock the cpu you increase the bclk until you are limited by either voltage, temperature or stability.

For example if you have a bclk of 200 and a multi of 20 you will have a 4ghz cpu (200x20=4000). The i5 760 has a stock bclk of 133 and multi of 21 giving a stock cpu speed of 2.793ghz (133x21=2793).

As you increase the speed of the bclk the ram speed also increases which can lead to instability because it can't overclock like the cpu can. You can force the ram to run slower by altering the ram multiplier. At default the ram multiplier (also called memory ratio) is set to 10 with a bclk of 133 giving a ram speed of 1333mhz. If you increase the bclk to 200 the ram would be forced to run at 2000mhz (200bclk x 10 ram multiplier) and will cause instability, to bring the memory speed back down to what it's rated for set a lower ram multiplier. For example setting a ram multiplier of 6 with a 200 bclk would give a ram speed of 1200 which is then below its rated speed of 1333 and will be stable. If you have faster rated ram you can set a higher ram divider to take advantage of the increased memory speed.

I've got to go out now but will update later on, in the mean time go have a look through the MIT section in your bios and get familiar with the different settings :)
 
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forteh said:
Cooling wise you shouldn't have too much issue as long as you airflow is ok and the rad isn't blocked with dust. The temps don't look too far out, obviously you needed to check on the constantly whilst you're setting up the overclock.

Check on the spd tab on cpuz, there should be a chart which lists the speeds and timings that the ram is capable of. The highest speed rated will be on the right hand side, as it's an ocuk overclocked bundle I'm guessing that it will probably be 1600mhz. Make a note of this and the numbers below it as you will need to put these into the bios later on.

The processor speed is determined by the baseclock (bclk) x cpu multiplier (multi). To overclock the cpu you increase the bclk until you are limited by either voltage, temperature or stability.

For example if you have a bclk of 200 and a multi of 20 you will have a 4ghz cpu (200x20=4000). The i5 760 has a stock bclk of 133 and multi of 21 giving a stock cpu speed of 2.793ghz (133x21=2793).

As you increase the speed of the bclk the ram speed also increases which can lead to instability because it can't overclock like the cpu can. You can force the ram to run slower by altering the ram multiplier. At default the ram multiplier (also called memory ratio) is set to 10 with a bclk of 133 giving a ram speed of 1333mhz. If you increase the bclk to 200 the ram would be forced to run at 2000mhz (200bclk x 10 ram multiplier) and will cause instability, to bring the memory speed back down to what it's rated for set a lower ram multiplier. For example setting a ram multiplier of 6 with a 200 bclk would give a ram speed of 1200 which is then below its rated speed of 1333 and will be stable. If you have faster rated ram you can set a higher ram divider to take advantage of the increased memory speed.

I've got to go out now but will update later on, in the mean time go have a look through the MIT section in your bios and get familiar with the different settings :)
Click to expand...

I'm starting to understand this a bit better now. Voltage is also important for overclocking, right.

I forgot to mention, this bundle came with 4gb RAM but i added another 4gb (Which actually reset factory defaults and reset my overclock) will that be a problem?
I see the max bandwidth is PC3-12800H (800MHz) so im guessing its 1600MHz (800x2)

Also, make a note of which numbers on the SPD tab? theres so many.
 
The additional sticks of ram can cause instability because the memory controller on the cpu has to work harder to drive all four sticks. With 2 sticks my memory controller is stable up to 219 bclk whereas with 4 sticks it won't go over 200 bclk. Not a major issue but needs to be considered when pushing overclock limits.

As you have 1600mhz ram, just record the spd timings for the 1600 column, these will be used when trying to determine the maximum speed the ram can run at.
 
forteh said:
The additional sticks of ram can cause instability because the memory controller on the cpu has to work harder to drive all four sticks. With 2 sticks my memory controller is stable up to 219 bclk whereas with 4 sticks it won't go over 200 bclk. Not a major issue but needs to be considered when pushing overclock limits.

As you have 1600mhz ram, just record the spd timings for the 1600 column, these will be used when trying to determine the maximum speed the ram can run at.
Click to expand...

My ram is 2 sticks of 4gb.
I think originally it was 2x2gb, and i tried to add the other sticks and my pc bluescreened and reset the overclock. I removed the others and added my bought 2x4gb instead.
Also, dont i have 1333mhz ram? "DRAM Frequency 663.2 MHz"
 
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Your ram will appear as 1333 on your system unless you manually overclock it or set x.m.p to enabled in BIOS. My RAM for example runs at 1333 unless I clock it or enable x.m.p at which point it runs at 1866. Unless you bought 1333 in which case it'll run at 1333.
 
OhEsEcks said:
Your ram will appear as 1333 on your system unless you manually overclock it or set x.m.p to enabled in BIOS. My RAM for example runs at 1333 unless I clock it or enable x.m.p at which point it runs at 1866. Unless you bought 1333 in which case it'll run at 1333.
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ah right, i just checked my order history.

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual
 
The ram will be running at stock speed for the cpu which is 1333, but the fact you have 1600 ram gives you more leeway and options for overclocks :)

Just about to start a 90 mile drive down to hereford in the snow so will update later :D
 
forteh said:
The ram will be running at stock speed for the cpu which is 1333, but the fact you have 1600 ram gives you more leeway and options for overclocks :)

Just about to start a 90 mile drive down to hereford in the snow so will update later :D
Click to expand...

Awesome, i cant wait to get all this upgrading done so i can run dragonage inquisition better :P Im holding off on playing it until then.
 
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