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Overclocking the i5 2500K
Hey guys,
Not too long ago, I built my first system with the fantastic help of some of the poster here. Now i'm trying to overclock it, and I have a few questions regarding overclocking.
I have OCed my i5 to 4GHz on air cooling.
What kind of temps should I be looking for? I'm idling around 40*C and under full load with prime95, it goes up to 68*C. Is this normal for the i5? My friend who helped me oc said that it's a little too high for his preference. I also think it's a bit high, so maybe I'll need a better cpu heat sink.
One weird thing is that the Win7 system info. is still showing stock clocks (3.30 GHz), but when I run CPUz, it shows 4.0GHz. What's up with that?
To help lower the temps, I'm going to add another intake fan in the front of my case (only 1 currently), and maybe install a different cpu fan (Thermalright TRUE Black 120 from my buddy).
What do you guys think? Suggestions welcome!
EDIT: Another thing is that when my i5 was at stock speed, the core speed idle at 1.5GHz and only goes up to 3.3GHz when I run a program. However, after the OC, it's always at 4.0 GHz (idle and full load). It's that okay?
Comments
would help alot if you remind us what kind of machine you built. more specificlly, CPU cooler, case, motherboard, memory and powersupply.
If you do overclock your CPU then you kill the throttle-function of the CPU, i.e. it will allways stay at 4GHz.
The temperatures are no problem there, especially when we talk about aircooling with a moderate case-ventilation. Anything below 80° under heavy load is perfectly fine and the usual software and even games won't stress your CPU anywhere as much as prime95 does. Maybe when we're talking about rendering with high priority, then you'll really stress your CPU.
On another note.... overclocking the CPU nowadays isn't exactly adding more performance, if you don't do CPU-heavy-tasks like rendering etc. For games the GPU is much more important and using a SSD instead of a HDD improves performance more then overclocking of the CPU.
Because of all this I wouldn't go for higher clocks, but for a more silent system actually.
Here's the thread for my build: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/322530/page/1
How do you turn off the full throttle?
Intel 2500k Systems will indeed clock down when idle from the overclcoked settings. Mine is currently at 1.6GHz up to 4.6 under load. This is on an Asus P67 Pro Motherboard.
Good advice.
I remember memory being a big bottleneck a few years back too, but with 64-bit OSs and more/better memory on newer video cards, that seems to be less of a problem.
If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.
I figured it out after doing a google search. I enabled C1E support in bios. Now it's running at 1.6GHz in idle and 4.0GHz under load.
http://ark.intel.com/products/52210
the listed max Tcase temp for the 2500k is 72.6°C. thats the "safe" temp to keep under when overclocking. that is the max recommended temp while on 100% load. personally i'd keep it under 70°C tho. do keep in mind, IF you go down the overclock road, you WILL decrease the life of the chip due to extreme thermal cycling.
the case you ended up ordering isnt the most ideal in terms of airflow balancing so your case will collect dust at a much faster rate then a balanced airflow case. compound that with overclocking, it does mean you WILL need to clean the dust from your case much more often then a balanced airflow case. with a balanced airflow case, you may be able to do better, but not by much. as it stands, you may not want to push your chip much further then the 4ghz you've already achieved. it's always better to error on the safe side.
edit:
just occured to me you may not know what Tcase temp means. it means the temp of the heat spreader that comes with the chip. basiclly the avg temp of all of the cores. it's the temp that shows up in your bios for cpu temp.
Yeah, I am good with 4GHz. If I do go higher, I'll try 4.5GHz; but I'm gonna need better cooling and more fans. For the mean time, I'm happy with 4GHz.
Again... for what do you need to overclock your CPU? What CPU-heavy tasks do you do with your rig?
If you only use your rig for gaming, then overclocking the CPU won't give you any performance-boost. Games don't stress the CPU that much anyways but rely more on the GPU.
The only hardware besides the GPU really speeding up your system is to have a SSD and enough RAM (8-12GB is recommended).
well, maybe he likes civ5 and starcraft2
those are cpu intensive games:D but yah, i'm not a fan of overclocking either:)
68 C in Prime95 is not a problem. If it were 68 C under moderate loads that could mean 90 C under an artificially heavy load, that would be a problem. Under relatively heavy gaming loads, you're likely looking at 50-60 C, which is perfectly safe.
People looking for an extreme overclock may disable things like the C-states that let the processor clock down when idle, in order to be able to overclock it a bit further. But there's no sense in doing that if you're only going to 4 GHz, especially if it's at the stock voltage.
Yeah and Battlefield Bad Co2 is quad pumped so thats another which will yeild noticeably from an OC. Tho I imagine not as noticeably on the 2500, as perhaps my Core Duo, dunno that would be interesting to just run fraps, with sync turned off and see what a 2500 does in that game, at different OC.s ( how soon do you catch up with the card) or maybe already past it, hmmm )
But thats the whole alure of OCing. So much so that some over do it, or push the ram too far, or the PSU, etc etc. Boards that dont give many RAM multi choices, and someone gets a great number, decent temps, but have that RAM running way way past specs, and dont think to just get a higher speed of RAM and underclock it. Different topic I suppose, unless of course the OP, hasn't comsidered this, given the nature of the question.
Check Overclock.net for good info about OCing. the things to do and dont do. Learn your board BIOS features etc. Learn your RAM. Whats is JDEC? and; What does it mean to you? And Paramount, Thermal Parameters.
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