Recommend CPU overclocking guide?

[apoll]

Hi. I've got this sweet i7 975 chip on an extreme Gigabyte x58 MOBO running a huge cooler...but never really considered O/C'ing. It is running at stock speed of 3.33 Ghz. But I see other guys here have much faster CPUs. Can anyone recommend a reputable and conservative guide on the web to sensible overclocking? I am really starting from scratch in this field and am likely to be very conservative, for fear of porking my rig. Any ideas?

 

thanks

 

apoll

[Frazer]

Search on the web for your exact CPU and if possible, with your mobo. Youtube, tweakers websites, there is enough to find. You will learn from it gradually which is better then someone telling you do this and that.

 

To give you a kickoff: Cupid, COUID and Prime95 are the programs you will want to use for monitoring/stressing.

 

Good luck :)

[MadTommy]

Best thing to do is register and make a post asking for help here http://forums.tweaktown.com/

 

They are very helpful. As every system is unique guides are fairly useless.

[Outlaw24]

Here's another good site http://www.forums.pureoverclock.com/index.php

[Cibit]

Hi apoll,

most of the better MOBO manufacturers ship a tweak utility along with the drivers etc. IMHO that would be the place to start. It is easy to rectify and you actually do your oc whilst in windows. If it hangs you just reset. This method should also allow you to save different profiles.

 

Make all your adjustments carefully, by that I mean take it up very slowly and test each incremental change for stability using one of the stress tests mentioned by Frazer.

 

Once you are comfortable with your OC and have it running stable you can then if you want go and use the BIOS to get the same results as the MOBO utility, here you can also tweak other settings like voltage etc. But thats probably best left for another day.

 

When you say huge cooler what do you mean? A huge cooler is not necessarily the coolest cooler:music_whistling:

 

The CPU you have is made to overclock, the multiplier is unlocked and I easily got 3.7 stable on my 920, let us know how it goes.

 

If we dont hear from you we will assume you melted your board. Good Luck:thumbup:

[Scarface]

Just did my first overclock yesterday on my AMD 955 BE. Went from stock 3.2ghz to 4ghz on air on the stock cooler.

 

I set my multiplier to 19, bus to 210 and voltage upped from 1.360 to 1.425 in the bios.

 

Just search your proc name and mobo name and OC you should find plenty of similar setups. Also checkout speed fan if you need a program to monitor your temps. My temps went from 39c idle to about 47c idle, and caps out at about 62c when under full load on Prime95.

 

Going from 3.2 to 4ghz made hardly any difference in A-10C, I maybe got another 2fps, went from 28fps to about 30 on the runway in the pit. DCS beta 4 isn't using these new machines to their potential. It only uses 1 core fully and maybe a tad on another. Im running 2 gtx470s in sli which does nothing for DCS, unlike a game like ARMA2 which will fully use both cards and all four cores.

Edited February 15, 2011 by Scarface

[Toxe]

I was using this one for my i7 920: http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overclocking/22106-core-i7-overclocking-guide-beginners.html

[apoll]

Ok. Thanks for all who replied...very helpful and useful suggestions. I'm very nervous doing this...never done it before and afraid of porking expensive system. I will be taking it really slowly.

 

Anyway, thanks again.

 

apoll out

[EtherealN]

Not strictly for your architecture, but the main theory is the same: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13815