Viability of overclocking a CPU

[Harveywoo]

Hi guys,

I have a question to those who are more in the know than me

at what level do you see the performance gains slowing down for CPU overclocking because it surely gets to a level when it is not worth the extra stress and heat on the chip?

I have an i7-2600k at 4.6ghz and I don't see much difference in benchmarking scores than when its at 4.8 or even 4.4

so I guess what I'm really asking is what is the optimum overclock level for an i7-2600k? I know not every chip is the same and some will OC further than others but as a general rule if there is one?

Also my CPU is custom water cooled so temps are not an issue, just curious as to how far its worth pushing the chip?

Thanks in advance

 

[BrianB]

Imo, wherever the temperature is best is the best level.

I can take my delidded 3570K to 4.7GHz but at 4.5 the temps are about 60 under Prime95.

If I were in your position with watercooling, I would choose a safe voltage and set my overclock to whatever is stable at that voltage. For a 2600K for me I wouldn't want to take it over 1.38-1.4V but I'm sure under water you could go higher. I would like to keep the temps under 70C also. Which would really limit the vcore to that temperature.

Also it's real world difference that matters to me. If I can score more on a benchmark it means nothing as I only really use my CPU for gaming and can't notice the fps difference unless I benchmark it, thus is not worth me overclocking higher.

 

[Harveywoo]

That's exactly the position I'm in I couldn't care less about benchmark scores as I play games and that's all so I guess it makes no real difference pushing it to its limits other than for bragging rights