What was the best CPU for overclocking of all time?

Rroff · 23 Jan 2025 at 07:50

ooStevo said:
Yeah I also had I think it was a Q8300 which had a fsb of 1333 as standard. Was difficult to overclock because of that. I ended up leaving it at 3ghz because I didn't want to burn the traces again lol.

I was just going through some of my old bits and pulled out my Core 2 CPUs and noticed the ones which had been massively overclocked have discolouration on the power supply pads while the ones ran at stock don't.

ooStevo · 23 Jan 2025 at 14:42

Can't say I ever noticed something like that tbh. But I did see some discoularation on the heat spreader.

Combat squirrel · 23 Jan 2025 at 14:53

Can you imagine overclocking a 9800X3D to 7.5GHZ these days ? Would be awesome, ahhh the good old days !

LePhuronn · 24 Jan 2025 at 00:22

Best ones I've played with were
Q6600
i7 2700K
i7 4790K

LePhuronn · 25 Jan 2025 at 16:11

MyBrainz said:
Found this image on my PC, not sure if this was a good OC for a Pentium 4 Prescott Almost 1.6v !!!

My 2700K did 5GHz (passed a few 3DMark benches at 5.1GHz) but it got a little warm so I didnt run it at that 24/7 lol

My 6700K did 4.8GHz https://valid.x86.fr/0ti35u 4.6GHz was rock solid with everything.

Holy smokes, I never got my 3.2GHz Prescott past 3.5. 3.8 is insane!

MyBrainz · 25 Jan 2025 at 18:41

LePhuronn said:
Holy smokes, I never got my 3.2GHz Prescott past 3.5. 3.8 is insane!

It was HOT.. but at the time I didnt care!

Not sure if it was 100% stable, at the time I was only playing Second Life, which needs a high clock freq. lol

ots3go · Monday at 14:51

For me, probably easily getting a 100% overclock on those first Core2Duo chips.
Intel Core 2 Duo E2140... £50 CPU back on... Thu, 31 May 2007, 13:42.

GeorgeStorm · Monday at 14:59

My first build I did was with an e7300 which looking back I got to 4.5-6 on air cooling from 2.66 I think, and then later up to over 5 using a single stage phase change system, and is when I started to really get into overclocking, with a q6600 at 4.8 not too long after.

Took an e4300 to almost 4.5 with my first time using liquid nitrogen I think, still got that chip and had another go with it almost 10 years later and did manage to hit 4.5 which was pretty cool.

GeorgeStorm`s CPU Frequency score: 4503 MHz with a Core 2 Duo E4300

The Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 4503MHzscores getScoreFormatted in the CPU Frequency benchmark. GeorgeStormranks #null worldwide and #11 in the hardware class. Find out more at HWBOT.

hwbot.org

Zom · Monday at 15:34

I remember the Athlon Thunderbird's were consistently very good Overclockers. My god that makes me feel old though.

John24 · Tuesday at 00:36

Not the best but I loved my Athlon 620 could do + 1 GHz WITH a slight undervolt via an FSB OC! I suspect the MB was holding it back as well.

Zom · Tuesday at 11:36

John24 said:
Not the best but I loved my Athlon 620 could do + 1 GHz WITH a slight undervolt via an FSB OC! I suspect the MB was holding it back as well.

Those were the days. I remember having to do multiplier unlocks etc, kids these days don't know how easy they have it! /s

pandem0nium · Tuesday at 13:39

My best was my Phenom II 960T. 2 cores unlocked for 50% more CPU! Then overclocked to 4.2/4.3 with some extra gains tuning the CPU-NB.

Pete Tong · Tuesday at 18:02

What were the CPUs that stood out as a poor buy for overclocking? Anything AMD Palamino huh

AMDPower · Tuesday at 18:31

Pete Tong said:
What were the CPUs that stood out as a poor buy for overclocking? Anything AMD Palamino huh

not exactly the answer you were looking for but it was AMD socket 754 CPU's, as there was no AGP/PCI lock so if you overclocked the system the via raising the FSB you also ended up increasing the AGP/PCI speed, this was a issue with all nForce 150 boards, overclocking was very limited, they did release a socket 939 which addressed the issue with nForce 200. The good old days

dave_beast · Thursday at 13:58

I had my original i7 2600k up to 5.7ghz but ran it from purchase date (due to an OcUK mistake I got it early

) * thread * until it started failing in 2023. I replaced it with a second hand i7 2700k that runs 24/7 at 4.8ghz

Radox-0 · Friday at 13:31

Still have an old i9-7980XE in day to day PC now. All core clock as standard is 3.4 GHz but have mine at 4.8 GHz all core (Non-AVX), admittedly was a cherry selected chip already. But is a nice OC. When all cores going under heavy workload pulled stupid amount of power though!

wildman · 2025-02-01T00:58:50+0000

T Bird Axia Y. I think I got that to around 1.5 / 1.6 back in the day on a KT7A with a FOP38. SO for pretty primitive and cheap cooling it was a beast.

spudbynight · 2025-02-02T14:39:11+0000

Sem said:
E/Q6600s and 920/930 Nahalem

50% overclocks

And some

My 920 had a stock speed of 2.66 GHz. I ran it at 4Ghz on air. That was pretty normal. I remember though there were people who got lucky and had decent cooling and were getting them to 4.2/4.4 and in some cases 4.6

Sem · 2025-02-02T17:25:29+0000

spudbynight said:
And some

My 920 had a stock speed of 2.66 GHz. I ran it at 4Ghz on air. That was pretty normal. I remember though there were people who got lucky and had decent cooling and were getting them to 4.2/4.4 and in some cases 4.6

i was one of them my 920 D0 was a true golden chip in my 25 years of building PCs and overclocking its one of the best chips i had
most people needed 1.3v at least just for 4Ghz from what i remember

mine did 4.2Ghz @1.216 volts (underload) prime and linpack stable