What's the best motherboard/CPU/RAM upgrade for me??

[StevieP]

Very strange - the CPU setting had definitely saved - went back into the BIOS and everything there showed the frequency at 4.3 GHz!?!?!

Anyway, I exited out and rebooted and now CPU-Z is showing the multiplier as "x 43 (16-43)" - just gonna run AIDA64 for a bit and see what happens!

 

[Plec]

Very strange - the CPU setting had definitely saved - went back into the BIOS and everything there showed the frequency at 4.3 GHz!?!?!

Anyway, I exited out and rebooted and now CPU-Z is showing the multiplier as "x 43 (16-43)" - just gonna run AIDA64 for a bit and see what happens!

The PC was obviously contemplating the validity of your reasoning - force it to submit to your will!

See you 10... with good news hopefully.

 

[StevieP]

12 minutes in running AIDA and all seems to be well - temps hovering between 58 and 62ish (peaking at 64, 68, 66 & 66 for the four cores)

Anything else I should be doing at this stage or shall I just start gaming etc to see how it handles real-world input?

 

[Plec]

Great - start gaming...

 

[StevieP]

Just ran Cinebench and here are the results before and after the overclock:

Do these look in the right ball-park?? (I assume the fact it's reporting the CPU frequency as 3.30 GHz is just because that's what the program see's it as as standard??)

ps. out of interest, how high is too high in terms of temperatures??

 

[Plec]

Nice improvement for free (and yes it's reading the CPU information not the BIOS clock).

Anything under 80 degrees while stress testing is great.

 

[Plec]

How has the clock held up under general use and abuse, Stevie?

 

[StevieP]

Very well actually! No crashes last night and I spent about an hour on The Division and an hour or so just general browsing!

I left core temp running and they didn't go above the temps I got while stress testing earlier in the evening!

I'll try some different games tonight to see how it holds up!

Thanks for all the help and I'll report back on a couple of days with another update! (unless there is anything else I should be doing at this point??)

 

[Plec]

Great - all sounds positive.

Thanks for all the help and I'll report back on a couple of days with another update! (unless there is anything else I should be doing at this point??)

No problem.

Just keep keep using and abusing.

(Keep an eye out for cold boot issues.)

 

[FloppyPoppy]

Brill results . How are you finding the extra performance in games?

 

[StevieP]

If I'm perfectly honest I wasn't really noticing a discernible problem in games before the clocking - it was more the possibility of getting a Vive that drove me to think about upgrading and subsequently deciding to overclock first!

The one thing I tend to do when I boot up a game is change the resolution to suit my monitor - but I don't generally change any other settings so I guess I've not been stressing the CPU that much!

I don't have the frame rate running or anything like that so while I guess it was smooth playing The Division last night, I couldn't say for sure that it was any different to before!

The frame rate in the Unigine Valley benchmark test went up as follows:

FPS: 72.7 --> 75.7
Score: 3041 --> 3166
Min FPS: 23.9 --> 32.6
Max FPS: 137 --> 144.3

From this I'd assume it's a bit smoother while gaming!?!?

 

[Plec]

From this I'd assume it's a bit smoother while gaming!?!?

Very possibly as the CPU processes/calculates the data before its passed onto the GPU to be rendered. So the faster it can do this the smoother your experience should be.

That's why the clock on your 2500K, an additional 1 GHz (well 0.6Ghz after boost), is important as it will benefit your new GPU and make it run more efficiently/faster.

Try GTA V - that should have noticeable gains with the extra MHz, it's also one of the few games that really benefits from extra memory too.

 

[StevieP]

Hi all,

Just a quick update on my system - all is well!!!

I've done a fair bit of gaming, browsing, benchmarks, stress tests and even just left it idle for a spell (which has actually had some crashes/reboots in the past!) and yet all seems to be working nicely!

The new Vive should hopefully land tomorrow and so I guess I'm in a decent position to give it some hammer!

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has contributed, especially Harry and Plec - I can't tell you how comforting it is to try something new and have constant help throughout! There is nothing more frustrating than getting half way through a process, posting a message saying "now what?" and the thread dying a death!

I may well revisit the system upgrade in the future, especially if I get into using the Vive but for now I think I'm happy knowing that I'm getting that extra bit of performance for free!!!!

Thanks again...

 

[FloppyPoppy]

Hi all,

Just a quick update on my system - all is well!!!

I've done a fair bit of gaming, browsing, benchmarks, stress tests and even just left it idle for a spell (which has actually had some crashes/reboots in the past!) and yet all seems to be working nicely!

The new Vive should hopefully land tomorrow and so I guess I'm in a decent position to give it some hammer!

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has contributed, especially Harry and Plec - I can't tell you how comforting it is to try something new and have constant help throughout! There is nothing more frustrating than getting half way through a process, posting a message saying "now what?" and the thread dying a death!

I may well revisit the system upgrade in the future, especially if I get into using the Vive but for now I think I'm happy knowing that I'm getting that extra bit of performance for free!!!!

Thanks again...

No worries pal glad you are happy. In the future now you can always consider a gpu first before upgrading the rest as the cpu is much less of a bottleneck.

Jealous of the vive pal! Going to get one when o see one cheap

 

[Plec]

>snip<

NP Stevie - glad it worked out for you.

I'll be interested in your opinion of the Vive, once you've had a decent play - if you don't mind posting back with a small review.

I'm thinking of getting one for driving games and I've heard that it's good for space Sims too (plus my kids will think I'm Dad of the century if I get one).

 

[StevieP]

Yeah, I think a GPU might be my next upgrade - unless I can pick up 16GB of RAM from the MM at a decent price!

Looking forward to trying the Vive - I've never even tried one (the closest shop demo is Manchester!) so there is every chance I might not get on with it!

Some of the freebie games look fun but I'm looking forward to trying Elite Dangerous and Project Cars - and strolling around the globe in Google Earth should be great!

I'll report back once I get it up and running and have an objective opinion!

Thanks again guys...

*edit* I finally got to update my sig with my overclock!

 

[Plec]

Some of the freebie games look fun but I'm looking forward to trying Elite Dangerous and Project Cars - and strolling around the globe in Google Earth should be great

Those are exactly the games I'm thinking of - they're the only reason I've even given it a second glance. So will be particularly interested in your thoughts. (Didn't know you could do that with Google Earth - going to Google that now)

I finally got to update my sig with my overclock!

I've finally recovered my old Sig from 7 years ago - hasn't aged well...

My philosophy still applies though...

 

[FloppyPoppy]

Have you tried the steam VR benchmark? Good test for if your system can handle vr games

 

[Plec]

Have you tried the steam VR benchmark? Good test for if your system can handle vr games

Sorry Harry wasn't sure if that was directed at me or Stevie - but appreciate the info if directed at me I'll take a look.

I'm updating to Ryzen in September - but would still be curious in results on a clocked 2500k, 16gb and a GtX 1070.

 

[FloppyPoppy]

Sorry Harry wasn't sure if that was directed at me or Stevie - but appreciate the info if directed at me I'll take a look.

I'm updating to Ryzen in September - but would still be curious in results on a clocked 2500k, 16gb and a GtX 1070.

Nah was directed at Stevie curious about his results