Hey everyone. Just wanted to share my first OC story, and see if anybody has some additional feedback for me. I am now 3.75 Ghz and 18-1/2 hours stable in Prime95 running small-FFT at 67 degrees (71 peak) and HT off. Core voltage 1.275 (1.264 in CPU-Z) uncore at 1.3V. I think I can stop the test now...I chose to use the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility because I could see the proposed effects of my changes immediately as a learning process rather than going into BIOS and doing guesswork.
i7-950 Extreme (3.06ghz) on Asus Sabertooth X58 mobo and 8Gig Ram 1600 9-9-9-27 1.65V (was 10 gig ram 9-9-9-24 before) and a Hyper212 Plus air cooler, on an old case with 1 case fan and no A/C in the summer (don't worry, I'm getting a cooler master this week! LOL).
So, based on air cooling and such, I set my personal goal for a 3.75 Ghz level, 4 Gig if cool enough. I had no trouble finding my max stable host clock, though didn't bother to fine tune (somewhere between 220 and 230). Rather than getting Prime95 errors though like the guide suggested, my PC wouldn't post at all at some points. So, hit the CMOS reset button and up the voltage no problem. My difficulty came when I was at the step 3, reducing my clock, upping the multiplier, and going from there. Now, with my old stock cooler at stock speeds, esp in the summer my RealTemp temps were in the 80's, and knowing that the i7 "runs hot" (now I doubt that) I was clocking based on full load temps there. I had HT ON, but I was also using the 1.3 - 1.35v core based on the overclockers.net guide (wish I had used the 1.2v of the other one). So my clocks were testing unstable, or getting too hot. I didn't like the temps at 4 Ghz (87 degrees initially) and BSOD-ing, nor did I like the extra clock on my RAM, so I lowered it to 3.8 Ghz. I ran the test overnight, and it failed about 5 or 6 hours in with a PEAK TEMP OF 94 degrees!!!! At that point, I said screw the guide, I am gonna copy some leads from others online. I lowered my core volts arbitrarily to 1.275, left my uncore at 1.3, and turned HT off to save 10 degrees and it worked!!
My next steps: once I get the cooler master, I want to see the difference it makes, and feel out the path to 4Ghz to see if it is possible. I plan to have 3 or 4 profiles - original, 3.75 HT off (or 3.8), 3.75 HT ON, and 4Ghz HT off.
i7-950 Extreme (3.06ghz) on Asus Sabertooth X58 mobo and 8Gig Ram 1600 9-9-9-27 1.65V (was 10 gig ram 9-9-9-24 before) and a Hyper212 Plus air cooler, on an old case with 1 case fan and no A/C in the summer (don't worry, I'm getting a cooler master this week! LOL).
So, based on air cooling and such, I set my personal goal for a 3.75 Ghz level, 4 Gig if cool enough. I had no trouble finding my max stable host clock, though didn't bother to fine tune (somewhere between 220 and 230). Rather than getting Prime95 errors though like the guide suggested, my PC wouldn't post at all at some points. So, hit the CMOS reset button and up the voltage no problem. My difficulty came when I was at the step 3, reducing my clock, upping the multiplier, and going from there. Now, with my old stock cooler at stock speeds, esp in the summer my RealTemp temps were in the 80's, and knowing that the i7 "runs hot" (now I doubt that) I was clocking based on full load temps there. I had HT ON, but I was also using the 1.3 - 1.35v core based on the overclockers.net guide (wish I had used the 1.2v of the other one). So my clocks were testing unstable, or getting too hot. I didn't like the temps at 4 Ghz (87 degrees initially) and BSOD-ing, nor did I like the extra clock on my RAM, so I lowered it to 3.8 Ghz. I ran the test overnight, and it failed about 5 or 6 hours in with a PEAK TEMP OF 94 degrees!!!! At that point, I said screw the guide, I am gonna copy some leads from others online. I lowered my core volts arbitrarily to 1.275, left my uncore at 1.3, and turned HT off to save 10 degrees and it worked!!
My next steps: once I get the cooler master, I want to see the difference it makes, and feel out the path to 4Ghz to see if it is possible. I plan to have 3 or 4 profiles - original, 3.75 HT off (or 3.8), 3.75 HT ON, and 4Ghz HT off.
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