[Bigbud]

Will an overclock of my i5 make that much difference to playing BF3 and capturing with dxtory ?

I'm really unsure about clocking my i5, having never done it and the bios scares me to death. Have tried to read a load of how too's and such but voltage stepping and tales of fried Cpu's doesn't install confidence !

Also I bought an artic Freezer Pro 7 which although better than stock cooler seems like it might struggle.

So its a two pronged question/advice thread really.

If I just went for an overclock of say 4.0 would a NH-D14 be total over kill and should I look at something cheaper ? Or should I just bite the bullet and get it anyway ? (thinking of saving money and not 100% sure the cooler will fit my tiny case)


Would anyone who knows what there doing mind having a look at my current bios settings if I take screen captures and giving me a bit of guidance ?

Feel like a bit of a pleb but don't have the money to be buying a new cpu or board should I destroy them

Thanks Jim

[TheNameIsJambo]

If you've got two monitors, load up Task Manager on one and have the CPU usage graph up. Then load BF3 and check it out when you're gaming. If it's being heavily taxed heavily (100%), for the amount of cores/threads the game supports - Crank it!

I have the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 (not Pro) and I have my i7 @ 4.6GHz. Idle temp is around 30-35C. Moderate load is about 50-60C.

The temps hit 71C (max) under maximum-FPU testing on Prime95, otherwise, gaming and all that is way, way less than 70C.

I believe the CPU begins throttling at 90C... So, anything less than 80C = Good.

EDIT:
If I had the NH-D14, it wold probably bring that FPU test temp down by about 7-10C, but if the chip enjoys being at a steady 70C with no harm done, then I'm happy.

EDIT2:
Overclocking these days is pretty much fool-proof. It was only in times of old where you had tweak with voltages and have the (very real) possibility of frying your chip... But these days, it's usually only a button press or two away, and it can even be done in the OS and 9/10, it's completely stable.

Yup, with my ASUS Z68 Pro-V board, I can actively change the maximum CPU speed, per core, in real-time in the OS.. Utterly ridiculous :D

You'd only find people tweaking serious (voltage) settings in the BIOS if they were a hardcore-OC-enthusiast, and we're going for a suicide run.

[Canti1982]

I dont think you need to worry too much about killing the thing as if the cpu hits a very high temp it will simply shutdown. Most modern motherboards come with some basic windows based overclocking tools, some good some not so good. My asus came with a simple one button solution that actually works pretty well. In fact I dont even bother is the bios as it just works and Im not looking to push it to the edge.

If your board lacks these options then changing it in the bios is normally not too bad, I am certainly no pro but have managed decent overclocks simply by changing the fsb.

The i5 should not give you too many problems mine is clocked to 4.5 Ghz

[TheNameIsJambo]

Originally Posted by Canti1982

The i5 should not give you too many problems mine is clocked to 4.5 Ghz

4.5GHz is the golden standard for the i5 btw

[AVF Jay]

Simple thing to do firstly, is keep all voltages at stock, and simply increase the mulitplier.

Make sure you set ram timings manually, the timings will be on the ram itself or on the packaging, and set the ram voltage to 1.5 or 1.65 whichever your ram is, I'd say it's 1.5.

The first thing you want to do is see how far you can go on stock volts.

Do that then post back on the thread.

Use intel burn test Download IntelBurnTest 2.53 Free - Stress your computer to find out how stable it is - Softpedia to test for stability initially.

Once you're happy we can run prime.

[Naaktgeboren]

Originally Posted by TheNameIsJambo

4.5GHz is the golden standard for the i5 btw

I disagree, you will see no difference between performance at 4.0 and 4.5.

[TheNameIsJambo]

Originally Posted by Naaktgeboren

I disagree, you will see no difference between performance at 4.0 and 4.5.

Tell that to benchmarking tools

Just to let you know bigbud, I was playing some Skyrim earlier, and my CPU temp never went above 35C and I'm currently idling at 25C

[AVF Jay]

Originally Posted by TheNameIsJambo

Tell that to benchmarking tools

Just to let you know bigbud, I was playing some Skyrim earlier, and my CPU temp never went above 35C and I'm currently idling at 25C

Whats your ambient?

[Miss Chief]

Originally Posted by TheNameIsJambo

Tell that to benchmarking tools

benchmark performance and making a difference in games are very different things. Most, if not all games these days are still GPU limited rather than CPU limited.

[AML]

As everyone else has said, its pretty easy these days and fool-proof. I got my Core i7 (2600k) running stable at 4.6ghz just from using the software Asus includes with the mother board.

Also, using my water cooling block i got temps of no more than 40c even when playing BF3!

[Canti1982]

Yes games such as BF3 are much more GPU heavey and do not require crazy cpu power, probably any quad above 3Ghz will work very well. Given how easy it is to clock these day it's certainly worth trying as some programs will perform much faster.


If your after quicker load times then an ssd will certainly speed things up and make the whole system that bit more snappy.

[Naaktgeboren]

Originally Posted by TheNameIsJambo

Tell that to benchmarking tools

Just to let you know bigbud, I was playing some Skyrim earlier, and my CPU temp never went above 35C and I'm currently idling at 25C

Of course Benchmarking tools will measure as much speed as you can give them but they are not games are they. My point was, you will not see an improvement in performance over 4.0.

[Bigbud]

My bios, no idea why my memory is at 1333 its supposed to be 1600 ??

Anyone see anything I dont have right before I start thinking over clocking

Thanks Jim

[Bigbud]

[AVF Jay]

Originally Posted by Bigbud

My bios, no idea why my memory is at 1333 its supposed to be 1600 ??

You need to set the frequency manually, it's nothing to worry about.

Set the voltage, timings and frequency manually.

[bladedripper]

Originally Posted by brembo

You need to set the frequency manually, it's nothing to worry about.

Set the voltage, timings and frequency manually.

You can just enable the xmp profile.

[AVF Jay]

Originally Posted by bladedripper

You can just enable the xmp profile.

Yeah that's true and it reads straight from the spd.

I prefer to set it to manual though when overclocking the cpu and then I can do with the ram as I wish.

And I always end up overclocking ram etc and changing timings anyway so I've no need to use the xmp profile.

When overclocking the cpu I normally underclock the ram anyway, until I find my stable overclock.

Then I work on the ram.

[AJBek]

agree with above, keep the memory at 1333 or lower till you have a stable CPU overclock, especially if you are running all memory slots. I found it impossible to run at decent CPU OC with my ram at 1600 even though it is 1600 ram I have. However at 1333 the CPU overclocks great. I just kept the ram at 1333 and ran tighter timings as the difference in performance between 1333 with good timings and 1600 is minimal and can only really be seen in synthetic benchmarks, while the CPU OC has a much greater effect.

[bladedripper]

Originally Posted by brembo

Yeah that's true and it reads straight from the spd.

I prefer to set it to manual though when overclocking the cpu and then I can do with the ram as I wish.

And I always end up overclocking ram etc and changing timings anyway so I've no need to use the xmp profile.

When overclocking the cpu I normally underclock the ram anyway, until I find my stable overclock.

Then I work on the ram.

Totally agree with you,its just when the op asked about why the ram was 1333 instead of 1600,some ram defaults to 1600 when pluged in,i don't know weither its just corsair that does'ent.
Anyway nice rig your putting together brembo...

[AJBek]

my 1600 ram defaulted to 1333 as well when installed. I think it might depend on the CPU as some CPUs are only supposed to support ram up to 1333 and any more is classed as an overclock and thus not guaranteed by the chip manufacturer. Mine ran fine at 1600 with 2 sticks and a 3.8GHz OC, but failed when I upgraded to 4 sticks and upped the OC to 4.0 so I had to go back to 1333.

[bladedripper]

Originally Posted by AJBek

my 1600 ram defaulted to 1333 as well when installed. I think it might depend on the CPU as some CPUs are only supposed to support ram up to 1333 and any more is classed as an overclock and thus not guaranteed by the chip manufacturer. Mine ran fine at 1600 with 2 sticks and a 3.8GHz OC, but failed when I upgraded to 4 sticks and upped the OC to 4.0 so I had to go back to 1333.

Im sure i saw a video on here that said 1600 is more stable with two sticks than four with some boards,im no expert though...

[AVF Jay]

Running sticks in all the slots can definitely affect overclocking in terms of how high you can push it..

My board takes it like a champ though

Either way for big boy overclocks you'll get further with less sticks of ram, that's why in benchmarking and extreme overclocking they only use 2 sometimes even 1 stick of ram.

For normal everyday overclocks though e.g a 2500k at 4.5ghz 4 sticks of ram won't affect it.

[AJBek]

Originally Posted by bladedripper

Im sure i saw a video on here that said 1600 is more stable with two sticks than four with some boards,im no expert though...

I am pretty sure you are right mate, something about the memory controller having more work with 4 sticks which limits the speed. I can certainly say that I found that to be the case in practice. Still I am very happy with 8GB at 1333 and the pc feels just the same as at 1600, but I can run a 2GB ram drive now that I use as a temp drive for mp3 encoding. That makes the encoding speed just silly

Edit - I see Brembo has answred the question.

[Devil On Your S]

Originally Posted by TheNameIsJambo

4.5GHz is the golden standard for the i5 btw

I found 4.2 was the golden standard as that was the level I could leave the vcore at auto

[Sniper Ash6]

Originally Posted by bladedripper

Im sure i saw a video on here that said 1600 is more stable with two sticks than four with some boards,im no expert though...

Originally Posted by brembo

Running sticks in all the slots can definitely affect overclocking in terms of how high you can push it..

My board takes it like a champ though

Either way for big boy overclocks you'll get further with less sticks of ram, that's why in benchmarking and extreme overclocking they only use 2 sometimes even 1 stick of ram.

For normal everyday overclocks though e.g a 2500k at 4.5ghz 4 sticks of ram won't affect it.

Originally Posted by AJBek

I am pretty sure you are right mate, something about the memory controller having more work with 4 sticks which limits the speed. I can certainly say that I found that to be the case in practice. Still I am very happy with 8GB at 1333 and the pc feels just the same as at 1600, but I can run a 2GB ram drive now that I use as a temp drive for mp3 encoding. That makes the encoding speed just silly

Edit - I see Brembo has answred the question.

All correct, there's a greater strain on the Northbridge so it can knock some overclocks just over the tipping point to unstable.

[Bigbud]

So do I go for the NH-D14, found a couple of pics of one in my case. Looks a tad tight, thinking the smaller one might be better

Also

S bygger du en budgetspeldator maj 2011 - Fractal Design Core 3000 - PC fr Alla Extreme

[Bigbud]

Noctua NH-U12P looks a little more sensible

I really can't make the decision and wonder if there both overkill, only want 4.0 and I'd be happy

[AVF Jay]

Originally Posted by Bigbud

Noctua NH-U12P looks a little more sensible

I really can't make the decision and wonder if there both overkill, only want 4.0 and I'd be happy

Trust me firstly you'll be able to get to 4ghz on stock voltage or there abouts.

Secondly a stock cooler would do the job if you were only going to 4ghz.

So pretty much any cooler will get a 2500k to 4ghz.

Coolers like the d14 are for overclocks over 4.5ghz, that's not to say other coolers won't do the trick.

The d14 is one of the best air coolers out there, there are only about 3 others worth mentioning, the silver arrow, phanteks and nzxts new cooler the havik.

They are the big boys of air cooling today, obviously you have others by thermalright, bequiet, prolimatech etc but I'm talking best of the best.

I'd personally get one of the above just so you have the option of overclocking much higher should you want to.

With regards to your overclocking, all you need to do is simpy increase your mulitplier to 40.

Simple as that.

4ghz is nothing on these chips, as I said the majority will do it on stock volts.

Good chips will get you 4.2ghz on stock volts.

Once you increase your multi to 40, run ibt for ten passes to test for initial stability, if it passes then run prime custom blend and use at least 80% of your available ram, let that run for at least 12 hours.

edit: I'll be selling my noctua d14 you'd be better off with that. Will be cheaper than new and it's as good as new.

[Bigbud]

Well I've ordered the D14 and two noc case fans, will get it setup then head for 4.0ghz to start then aim for 4.3 I think there i'll be more than happy

[Bigbud]

D14 fitted, running at 45 ish on BF3 at stock, suppose I best clock it :-)