the Fast iFive - is it golden?

[caramis]

Before I ask anything, apologize for earlier invasion to a super-old topic. But I'm new here, so I hope it's ok for one time

So - I have this i5 2500k that has been my workhorse for over half a year now and it's been running at 4.5GHz since the first week I got it. It was perfectly Stonehenge-stable, crunched the ones and zeros like a boss under the air cooler. Until two weeks ago I got bored and decided to take a roll into the green world with elves and monks and turned the OC down to 4GHz with just 1.2 volts. It worked fine, I even think it could do it with 1.15 but at that moment I was lazy and wanted to play some games so it was there for a while..

Until yesterday. I decided to go to BIOS right after I woke up. So I turned on the computer, wearing only boxers and one eye still closed, I spammed the Delete key to get in the BIOS and turn the voltage down. But oh man, there was this last profile named "OC5gigs unstbl". I thought for a second, "what if..?" and then I loaded it, looked for the setting for few seconds, booted it and oh man, it worked. Until IBT BSOD-ed it. I loaded back to the working profile and did some research about the LLC my board has and what are the safe voltages I could actually go for. So, reboot and back to BIOS and then the set-boot-test-BSOD-restart cycle began. After 2-3 hours I managed to get the unicorns and fairies in my computer so cheered up, that I started to play a game and then I took a BSOD to my computer screen.

End results are same as I set them after that last BSOD according to CPU-Z: 5000MHz @ ~1.4v (CPU-Z validation @ http://valid.x86.fr/zk0e87) How good is that? Do I have the luck (again over a long time) to actually own a golden chip after AMD Athlon X2 255, that was rocking 4.2GHz? Let me know your opinions and sorry for the long text. I thought I might try to make the post more interesting although internet likes cats and potatoes, but I don't have any

 

[SieB]

1.4v is good for 5ghz but if you had a BSoD that means you don't have a stable OC and you need more voltage.

If you can run benchmarks without a BSoD @5ghz with 1.4v then you might have a very good overclocker. Run OCCT or Prime 95 for a few hours and if you don't get a BSoD then you have a good OC.

 

[caramis]

well, it gave me BSOD with 1.4v, added 0.01v and so far it's working fine. will do testing at night. i think 6 hours P95 small FFT should do?

 

[SieB]

6 hrs should be enough, if you get passed 1 then things are looking good.

 

[theDTP]

Yeah dude, that's nice with headroom too as long as you can keep the temperature down

I ran my 2500k at 4.8GHz 1.31v 24/7 for 18 months. Benched 4.9GHz @ 1.38v and 5.0GHz @1.39v but couldn't get 5.1GHz until 1.55v (0.03v over the recommended maximum [validation in my sig], also benched it at 5.2GHz and 5.3GHz with the same voltage.

What I would recommend is put the voltage up to about 1.425 for safe keeping and see how you get on, as long as you can keep the temperature below 75c with 100% load. Hopefully you don't need the HUGE voltage increase to go beyond 5.0GHz.

 

[caramis]

well, got H80i in the meantime and with the weather around here it kisses temps of 80-85 degrees on the hottest core 5GHz 1.41v. we had a LANparty here with overclocks planned but because it was 30+ degrees Celsius ambient in those days even my usual 24/7 clocks crashed because it was too hot and CPU wanted more voltage to stay stable

not sure, if it's correct to ask it here, but what fans you'd recommend for H80i. going to cut some old dead fans to make shrouds and searching for the custom screws aswell.