Where to go from 2500k

[Skidder]

Good chip, I had my AMD FX-53 clocked to FX-57 speeds. All the people moaning like peasants about CPU prices these days, that chip cost me around £500 back in 2003, lasted a good 4+ years though lol.

Yeah it was a belter but expensive. I pretty much always get 5 or so years out of a processor.

 

[Skidder]

You do but the new 6 core 8400 that just came out is plenty fast enough without overclocking and is £100 cheaper than the unlocked k one and comes with cooler.

Seems like admitting defeat to buy something that can't be clocked

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I looked on Reddit to check out the motherboard:

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/74qgme/i5_8400_bclk_overclocking_to_52_ghz/do1gmtx/

So lets start off by saying that the Z370-A bios is very buggy at the moment, it does not show your applied clock speed in BIOS so you have to boot to windows every time to see if it works. I spent the first hour with the board thinking it was ready for RMA.

So onto the bclk overclocking, sadly it doesn’t work. The best you can get out of it is 102.5 MHz, which gives you a 100 MHz boost to 3.9GHz on all cores and a 4.1 GHz 1 core turbo. You can however lock the all core turbo so it stays at that frequency at all times whilst still having the 1 core turbo active as well. This definitely makes it an impressive chip for the money.

As for the voltage, I’m pretty sure the changes I applied to that sticked.

The chip didn’t get very hot either, doing about 77 degrees celsius on VRAYBench with an Intel stock cooler. It’d still be advisable to put on an aftermarket cooler if you’re going to run heavy multithreaded tasks on it, since that’ll keep it from throttling.

So lets start off by saying that the Z370-A bios is very buggy at the moment, it does not show your applied clock speed in BIOS so you have to boot to windows every time to see if it works. I spent the first hour with the board thinking it was ready for RMA.

So onto the bclk overclocking, sadly it doesn’t work. The best you can get out of it is 102.5 MHz, which gives you a 100 MHz boost to 3.9GHz on all cores and a 4.1 GHz 1 core turbo. You can however lock the all core turbo so it stays at that frequency at all times whilst still having the 1 core turbo active as well. This definitely makes it an impressive chip for the money.

As for the voltage, I’m pretty sure the changes I applied to that sticked.

The chip didn’t get very hot either, doing about 77 degrees celsius on VRAYBench with an Intel stock cooler. It’d still be advisable to put on an aftermarket cooler if you’re going to run heavy multithreaded tasks on it, since that’ll keep it from throttling.

Also with Kaby Lake onwards apparently Intel made changes to their management engine to try and block non-K overclocking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/5nh4mf/bclk_oc_on_kaby_lake_thanks_to_asrock/

 

[jigger]

The problem with the 8400 right now is a chip and board cost the same as a Ryzen 1700 and B350.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Seems like admitting defeat to buy something that can't be clocked

Well Ryzen does not overclock that well,but OTH it comes with such a decent stock cooler you can pretty much get a few 100mhz on the Ryzen 5 1600 using the Wraith Spire.

Having said that the Core i5 8400 is still a very good CPU,especially for gaming. OTH,the Ryzen 5 1600 is a bit of a multithreaded monster of a CPU for the price,has a great cooler,and the motherboards are a bit cheaper. I expect AM4 will be somewhat longer lived and AMD generally has a good track record(not a perfect one) of making future motherboards compatible with older CPUs,ie,if your motherboard goes say in a few years time I would be more confident AM4 will still be around. My main concern is the Z370 chipset looks a bit of a rushjob and is based on the Z170/Z270. The Z390 looks to be the chipset Coffee Lake should have been launched with it as it will be compatible with the Intel 10NM 8C/16T CPUs late next year or in early 2019.

 

[imginy]

Seems like admitting defeat to buy something that can't be clocked

Yeah it does feel that way but when I priced it up it if I go for 8400 I don't care what board I get or what cooler I get etc.... If I get the 8600k I probably wouldn't even notice the difference and it be £200 more.

I can always throw in second hand 8600k/8700/8700k at a later date.

 

[Nelly]

But 3700+

You totally bamboozled me lol! I could not for the life of me think then why I actually blew all that cash on the FX lol. It was a silly amount of money to pay just for an unlocked multi at the time but I had the cash to splash, the overclocking with it was pants really. I blew just as much on motherboards playing around; Asus A8V Deluxe Rev 1 - S939, Asus A8V Deluxe Rev 2, Abit AV8-3rd Eye, Asus A8N-SLI Premium - bought all this from OcUK.

I remember Gibbo around 2004 posting about some bug on the Asus A8V Deluxe - it was the only motherboard released with no AGP/PCI lock lol, I can't remember how serious it was, but he posted on these forums of a Revision 2 being on a separate skew to pre-order, ended up with that.

Yeah it was a belter but expensive. I pretty much always get 5 or so years out of a processor.

Yeah I'm kinda similar, this 2500K is the longest CPU I've ever had, between the FX-53 I've had Intel E6600, Q6600, Q9450, AMD Phenom II X4 965 and X6 1090T.

I'm guessing this is just Asus with marketing crap?

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-Z370-A/

BCLK overclocking was doable on a range of motherboards,hence places like OcUK offering Core i5 6400 bundles. However with Kaby Lake they cracked down on it - the few motherboards which can still do it require an external clock generator and that motherboard is £175.

However,have you noticed the lack of overclocked Core i5 8400 reviews,ie,anything really past 4GHZ.

So whats the point?? You might as well get a Core i5 8600K and a cheaper motherboard.

Plus we have no clue how well Intel is binning these,especially with the K series SKUs being so rare which would hint Intel is binning these CPUs for sale from the normal stock.

Have you noticed they only have tested a Core i7 8700K too??

Hence for all intents and purposes,the situation has not changed since Kaby Lake.

Cheers for the info, so I'm guessing Intel ended up locking them down later with a microcode update?

I saw on another thread someone with an ASRock Z370 Extreme 4 clocking the 8700K to around 5.2GHz no problem. Seems like any person thinking of getting a Hero or similar board with a normal retail 8700K might as well get a cheapo board and a binned 8700K lol. I guess it really doesn't matter if you have an high end board or not for these CPU's; I wonder how toasty the VRMs get on the ASRock Z370 Extreme 4, it does say 12 Phase rated at 60A though, doesn't seem bad for £150?

EDIT: ASRock Z370 Extreme 4 review >> https://www.eteknix.com/asrock-z370-extreme-4-motherboard-review/

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah,check post 23. TBF,I am more miffed Intel rejigged parts of the socket again - imagine if you could have upgraded from a Core i5 7600k on the same platform on a Z270 motherboard!! OTH,it might have not been so good for AMD though!!

£150 used to be the price of the "decent" motherboards years ago with the £80 to £100 ones being the more entry level ones,so I would certainly expect the £150 ones to do the trick fine whether they are AMD or Intel! If not I am screwed since I use a mini-ITX system!!

Plus for VRM cooling,sometimes air coolers will do a better job since they pass air over them and the AIO water coolers don't,but you can always fix that by making sure you have a fan blowing over them.