2500K Safe Voltages

[Aurus_OC]

Hi guys!

As I am starting with overclocking my 2500K I just wanted to ask about what you guys would consider safe voltages for a Sandy Bridge Processor (especially the 2500K)? Just by using the "Level-UP" in the BIOS it's using 1.38 Volts Vcore for 4.6 GHz. However I do want to overclock it manually so it would be great to know, how far I can push the volts for a great 24/7 overclock.

Thanks.

 

[SieB]

The limit set by Intel is 1.38v so as long as you keep under or at that level you should be fine just don't exceed it. I used the Asus AI Suite II to OC my 2500K and it gave me 4.6ghz @ 1.29v on a P8P67.

Have you updated your BIOS at all because with better BIOS the voltages are lower (on Asus and Giga mobos anyway) so if you haven't done so already give that a try as well.

 

[Aurus_OC]

The limit set by Intel is 1.38v so as long as you keep under or at that level you should be fine just don't exceed it. I used the Asus AI Suite II to OC my 2500K and it gave me 4.6ghz @ 1.29v on a P8P67.

Have you updated your BIOS at all because with better BIOS the voltages are lower (on Asus and Giga mobos anyway) so if you haven't done so already give that a try as well.

I'm on BIOS 1003, which is afaik the newest non-beta bios available. I did run the AI Suite II but it would display a frequency of like 180 mhz, so this still seems kind of buggy.

Looking to see what OC Tuner in the Bios, is going to do for me right now

 

[SieB]

I'm on BIOS 1003, which is afaik the newest non-beta bios available. I did run the AI Suite II but it would display a frequency of like 180 mhz, so this still seems kind of buggy.

Looking to see what OC Tuner in the Bios, is going to do for me right now

I'm using the the 1053 Beta BIOS, it's working fine for me with no problems at all, that I can tell of anyway.

 

[Aurus_OC]

I'm using the the 1053 Beta BIOS, it's working fine for me with no problems at all, that I can tell of anyway.

I'll try that one tomorrow, right now it is doing 4.3 GHZ with OC Tuner.

Oh and what CPU Power Management settings did you use?

 

[SieB]

I'll try that one tomorrow, right now it is doing 4.3 GHZ with OC Tuner.

Oh and what CPU Power Management settings did you use?

Sorry for the delay I got carried away on Crysis Warhead.

CPU power management in the EPU in the Asus AI suite? I set it to high. Apart from that I didn't change anything I just used the Auto Tune and pressed on extreme.

 

[Aurus_OC]

I just downloaded the update for the AI Suite, because I just now noticed that I am on a quite old version of it. I'm going to flash to that bets bios and try the auto Tune later today.

Thanks for the help, much apppreciated.

Oh and so you would say as long as I keep the volts under 1.38 Vcore, it should be fine? The temps are really good with those chips, I'm not even touching 60 at 4.6 Ghz and 1.38 Volts.

 

[Aurus_OC]

Well after 3 or 4 hours on messing about the AI Suite, I give up on that, it just won't overclock my chip properly and NOT using the baseclock. I guess I will try to overclock it manually again during the weekend.

One more question though, Intel specifies the use of 1.5 volts on dram, correct me if I am wrong, since my memory (Mushkin Blackline) is rated at 1.65 Volts, would it be preferable to run it at it's rated voltage or the one specified by Intel?

 

[Bungral]

I did a bit of reading about this as my RAM is also rated at 1.65v..

Now from what I can gather, Intel say 1.5v but quite a lot of people including reviewers have been running their ram at 1.65v with no ill effect. That's not to say there wont be any down the line but I don't think it'll be a problem.

 

[Aurus_OC]

Well, I did some more testing today. I ran OCCT at stock settings and after about 10-15 minutes it would detect a failure so I was like, wait what? That can't be it, my CPU can't be unstable at stock settings. So I ran memtest86 to check my ram. It turned out that one of my ramsticks was bad, since it fails that test. So I changed them out (lucky me, I bought a triple channel kit, because it was the same price as the dual channel

). And now it is completely stable at stock. Going to do some overclocked tests on my 2500K if I get some time today or at the weekend.