PC Overclocking

[Seajay]

Anyone like trying to fry their PC components? I used to be on more specific forums for this kind of thing but lost interest a long time ago, but I feel like sharing some stuff I did recently.

I've got an Intel 3770k, pretty old chip at this point but it was the top cpu for the Z77 platform outside of the Extreme stuff on the larger socket boards. Originally I got it up to 4.7 Ghz I think about 1.3 volts. It was hard to get it stable but fun tinkering. The temps were about 88'C at the hottest core, the chip itself will throttle at 103/104'C. Long term use at 105'C is death so it was toasty, but not worryingly so for stress testing. Real world temps wouldn't get that hot.

Well now it's 2021 and this chip from 2012 that I picked up near enough on release day has been running at 4.4 Ghz. Still works great but I noticed those temps were creeping up. I went from 60/70's at a full load to seeing high 80's.

Interesting thing about these chips is they are not soldered to the heatsink (IHS) on the CPU. There arguably a poorly executed smear of Thermal Interface Material (TIM) sealed between the bare die and that copper top. It was finally time to de-lid this sucker... I had thought about it 8 years ago when I was still into overclocking but the thought of destroying my $350 CPU didn't sit well with me. But here we are today with temps beginning to get out of control no matter my cooler setup.

Sure enough after popping the top on the CPU the TIM was like caked rubber. Clearly it was at a point of failure. The coolest core could be 60's and the hottest 80'C+, which is quite a swing. I cleaned all the crap off of it and put on some nice clean TIM, and re-mounted it with the IHS (copper heatsink top). I didn't use liquid metal as I don't have any but I also don't think it is worth it over just a good thermal TIM today.

Not my picture but here is what I was dealing with. Mediocre TIM and Adhesive that made for less than ideal contact.



Now at 4.6 Giggle hertz on a super hot Prime95 stress test my hottest core didn't break 72'C and stuck around 69'C. The coolest core was 67'C. So without really tuning the voltage and a straight clock from 4.4 to 4.6 I went from 101'C at 1 core before de-lid, to ~69'C on the hottest core

Games and movies don't really break 60'C. I think I'll try to hit 5.0 Ghz... which is pretty hard to do on old Ivy Bridge.

For specs the 3770k is an Ivy Bridge 4 core 8 thread cpu on 22 Nanometer. It was the last 1155 consumer CPU before Haswell moved to 1151. Also the last CPU to use DDR3 Memory.

[punkncat]

I have messed with some very minor overclocking, mostly with first gen Ryzen. The subsequent CPU generations do a fine job with the "built in" methodology that they have which really make it someone obsolete given the meager gains. My 11th gen Intel is also pointless to do so on. I can get an all core overclock that seems impressive, but the reality is it does nothing better aside from synthetic benchmarks, where you get this higher number that is good for boasting and otherwise worthless at the cost of stability, power draw, and heat.
I used to REALLY enjoy doing so with some of the old AMD chips as those things had a ton of headroom and it was really a real world difference in performance. Also loads of heat, etc. My biggest concern with trying to OC any of the old equipment that passes through my hands has more to do with the age of the power delivery on those old motherboards. Great way to pop something and let the magic smoke out.

[RAZRBAKK]

I had my cooling fan screaming on my FX8350 which I OC'd before I could afford to upgrade the rig. Haven't felt the need with my Ryzen 5, but it's on my mind. I also keep hearing about OCing RAM, so that's on my list.

[Seajay]

Ya all the boost clocking really killed overclocking to some extent, except for benchmarking. I have yet to play with current gen anything, but it sounds like memory overclocking is where all the performance gains are now.

Well, as far as longevity goes I'm hoping since I've been using my motherboard for a long time that the aging process shouldn't be much of an issue. I have heard of joints failing because they don't get used after 10 years, but I've had power running almost every day. With windows 11 now requiring 8th gen + cpu's to even run I suppose I'll be forced to finally upgrade at some point.

Although next gen is about to launch, new Intel CPU's and DDR5 memory.

[punkncat]

To be fair, wouldn't worry at all about W11 upgrade. The support for 10 is currently slated to go until '25. I would imagine that given the viability of so many of the older systems that if they keep the equipment requirement that backlash may have them extend support on 10. Even in spite of that, I won't be using 11 on any machine I have to do work with for some time yet. My intention is to try it on a testbed and hardware approved machine for a while. I want to get used to it before people start asking me how to fix things.

[Falcon16]

I saw 4.5Ghz on my FX6300 on air being cooled by a Hyper 212 Evo. Didn't break a sweat and temps were good but even if I bumped the voltage up and such I could get 4.6 to stay stable. That said 1Ghz over stock is pretty nuts.

[gabe]

What's the voltage at to squeeze 4.6 out of that chip?

I have an I5-8600K and think it's about the cat's meow as far as overclocking. I have mine at 4.6ghz with no additional voltage running at 65C max. Stable under a few different stress tests. I was able to get it up to 4.9ghz with a moderate voltage increase but I prefer not touching voltage too much so that windows will allow me to run "economy" power mode and let the chip throttle it's clock speed so it's not constantly at max clock.

And yeah, delidding is the way to go on Intel chips. Their thermal paste application is notoriously bad. My temps went from 85C to 65C max after delidding and using thermal grizzly liquid metal.

[Seajay]

What's the voltage at to squeeze 4.6 out of that chip?

I have an I5-8600K and think it's about the cat's meow as far as overclocking. I have mine at 4.6ghz with no additional voltage running at 65C max. Stable under a few different stress tests. I was able to get it up to 4.9ghz with a moderate voltage increase but I prefer not touching voltage too much so that windows will allow me to run "economy" power mode and let the chip throttle it's clock speed so it's not constantly at max clock.

And yeah, delidding is the way to go on Intel chips. Their thermal paste application is notoriously bad. My temps went from 85C to 65C max after delidding and using thermal grizzly liquid metal.

I haven't really stressed it yet to see what the new window is. I've got it setup with offset voltage with high load line (asus p8z77-v). I like the voltage stepping and not just running all out for everyday use

I might need to re-check the mount, Core 2 is a bit higher than others, or maybe my system just prefers core 2.

Under a Useable Load, 2 games playing, browser open, stuff.

Voltage: 1.216 for 4.6... I say that but I just noticed some stability flags (WHEA errors/warnings) that weren't there first testing. I think I can take voltage to 1.28 on my setup so I might have a lot of head room.

[punkncat]

I was once gifted an i5 8600K on a Gigabyte Z370 board. The fellow had attempted to get 5Ghz with no concern about the CPU or motherboard power delivery. He ended up presumably cooking some of the VRM on the motherboard and gave the motherboard, CPU, and some Corsair RAM to me simply for coming to pick it up. It smelled like straight burnt popcorn for several weeks and wouldn't take any manner of OC or XMP setting over stock settings. With some BIOS updates and a bit of tweaking I got it to lock 4.5 all core, auto voltage (any change off auto was an instant BSOD) and XMP 3000. It ran like a top, even on a small Enermax Cooler that was included as well. The real plus plus was the free OS license that came with it by entitlement since the core components hadn't been changed.

A friend of mine wanted a build for his kid. We paired it with an RX570 and he runs esports and schoolwork on it without issue.

[Seajay]

That's awesome! Components can get pretty toasty on a good quality board without failing. Their lifespan may be a lot shorter... but realistically speaking you wont ever reach it. I think the thermal controls on 8600k are pretty robust, much better than on my Ivy Bridge. So it might have throttled a ton but stayed alive I can definitely throttle but my chip will let you run 1.4 volts through it and make liquid CPU.

Quick update on my overclocking shenanigans... I reseated the cooler, but 4.8 won't load windows. I get to post and bios setup but windows keeps crashing. 4.7 I am in windows and working on stability...

voltage at 1.22 at load on prime95. Which is very interesting to me. If I can get it stable under 1.26 I might have a chance at 4.8. My board and cooling probably isn't able to get 5.0 which again is very hard on Ivy Bridge.

[gabe]

To be honest I gave up after getting 4.6 on no voltage boost. It's an interesting game trying to overclock but the CPU at that clock level isn't holding you back from doing anything that you might want to do with the computer. Sure you can probably push 4.8 and maybe even 5.0 if you really crank the settings and spend a bunch of time on it but for what? I can't notice any performance benefit between 4.4 or 4.6 or 4.8ghz. Even the difference between the stock clock speed of 3.2 and 4.6 is a pretty minimal difference in game. Your GPU becomes the bottleneck pretty fast due to how good CPU's are out of the box now.

My cousin played the overclocking game a bunch on every computer he had. Lots of power, lots of cooling just everything right on the bleeding edge. I bought a GPU from him and that thing would absolutely crash if you looked at it wrong. Turned out it was run so hard that the only way to keep it stable was to declock it. None of those overclocked components lasted very long being pushed that hard.

I guess long of the short of it is are you really getting a benefit by pushing your CPU higher or are you just having fun at this point?

[Seajay]

On an Ivy Bridge yes, I am getting a benefit from overclocking. The difference between stock and 4.4 - 4.5 ghz is very noticeable. That said the difference between 4.5 Ghz+ isn't, and the rule of diminishing returns quickly develops. 4.7 + is really only for benchmarking for fun. 4.6 I think is the best overclock for a 3770k overall with voltage under 1.29,

Ya GPU is the primary performance factor on anything Intel 8 series and up. Overclocking the CPU can help raise minimum frames, but I think faster memory has more performance impact today, especially on current generations of chips. I've only got a GTX980 so I'm definitely feeding the card better.

Lol, well some people do just punch in some numbers and if it boots go from there, hardware be damned. There is a safe way to overclock, finding the stable point with adequate cooling will solve all stability issues. Bleeding Edge is how you squeeze that last .01 point in a benchmark (while crossing your fingers it completes), but not good for every day use.

On that note... I goofed on my earlier numbers. So on Ivy Bridge there is a VID voltage and a Core voltage. the 1.22 was the VID which is attributed to the Offset voltage. My actual Core voltage for 4.6Ghz is 1.28. This is the 1000% stable voltage. Not a great overclocker, I think average for the chip.

I can boot and load windows at 4.7Ghz but couldn't quite find the stable point. I pushed voltage up to 1.33v with offset voltage but I was still tripping WHEA errors, although no crashing. It might be stable at 1.35v but I'm not going to run that. Sadly 4.8Ghz at constant 1.35v (no offset voltage just straight juice) still crashed windows so either I need to get closer to 1.4v, my motherboard can't do it, or the CPU won't do it. No 5Ghz for me. Still fun, anything above 4.6 is really more into extreme realm of overclocking, where you get down to individual configurations and physical hardware.

As a real world comparison this puts my CPU at performance levels similar to a stock 6700k or even within reach of a stock 8700k in some situations, which are both on completely different platforms. I'd have to spend easily $800 to change platforms. Honestly not bad for a CPU from 2012 when Far Cry 2 was the gaming benchmark lol.

WHEA errors are a tell tale flag that the CPU isn't stable. There are Warnings and Errors, warnings means the CPU failed to due something because of hardware instability but was able to correct itself. Errors actually mean the hardware failed, which might lead to a BSOD. Usually this is because of not enough voltage to the CPU. Warning WHEA flags can lead to file corruption and performance loss. WHEA Errors usually result in crashes and BSOD's.