Foxy

Disclaimer: Overclocking is inherently dangerous. I take no responsibility for damage to your machines or their components which may be caused by following this guide. The chances of causing damage performing these steps is remote, but exists.

This applies to Intel's series of 'unlocked' processors which are denoted by a K. In the Sandy Bridge range, there are currently only 2 chips with this nomenclature, the i5 2500k and the i7 2600k. The 2600k is a significantly faster chip out of the box, so f you can justify the cost, it is worth it. The i5 is MORE than adequate for all but the most heavy use and will still OC to 4.5Ghz very comfortably. DO NOT TRY THIS WITH THE SAME PROCESSORS THAT ARE NOT K-Series (they are locked for OCing anyway).

0) Step 0 - if you don't already have a decent case (with at least an intake and an exhaust fan and decent airflow), then get one. The Cooler Master HAF 912 is a great case which is very reasonable (about 50 bucks iirc).
1) Get a big fat cooler (spend at least 50 bucks on a good one). I strongly recommend one of the Corsair Hydro series.
2) Get a robust Z68 or P67 motherboard (spend at least $150)
3) Install the chip and cooler
3a) Thermal paste...use whatever came with your cooler, or if you didn't get any with it, buy some Arctic Silver, DO NOT SPREAD IT. Just put a glob the size of a large pea in the middle of the chip, then seat the heatsink on top of it. DO NOT LIFT UP THE HEATSINK AGAIN! If you do accidentally lose the contact of the cooler on the paste while tightening or fitting it, don't just reseat it again, the paste will now have air bubbles in it which will dramatically shorten the life of an overclocked CPU and lead to inconsistent cooling. If this happens remove CPU and cooler, clean off all paste, start again.
4) Update Bios and motherboard drivers in Windows at default clock speed.
5) Enter the bios and go to the CPU frequency and voltage settings.
6) Set Vcore to 1.27v
7) Set bclock multiplier to 45 (4.5Ghz is easily acheivable on a good air cooler with the K series chips)
8) Enjoy! If it doesn't boot, or blue screens in windows, increase the vcore to 1.28. You should not have to go higher than that for a 4.5Ghz OC, but it may be necessary. Keep upping the voltage if you are having stability issues. If you get to 1.35 and it still isn't stable, forget it, it's just a weak chip, clock it down until it's stable again and be happy.

Notes: If the PC is stable at this speed, you can try to reduce the voltage a little to see if it remains stable. Think of this like tuning an engine, small incremental changes with thorough testing in between. The lower voltage you can get away with, the less heat you will create, and the longer your cpu will live.

It really is that simple. It is also helpful (especially if you do not have the best ever memory) to manually set your RAM timings and voltage (particularly voltage). If anyone wants more instructions on that, just say.

As a final step for your own peace of mind, you should download and run the freeware program called Prime95. Open it and run the Blend test from the 'Torture test' sets, run it for 1 hour. If your CPU goes over 80*C during the test (use Real Temp, also a free application), you need to lower the multiplier or voltage, or get a better cooler or case. Don't let the chip go over 80* and never feed it more than 1.45v.

DarkFire989

WOOOOO. Thanks buddy! I've been meaning to look up a few OC guides for my 2500K but you did it for me!

Foxy

No worries I'm going to start edging up to 5Ghz at the weekend, will post results.

DarkFire989

I was thinking about going 5GHZ and getting the H100. But mounting it in my case has conflicting issues with RAM clearance and the fans so I'm just going to go with the H60 or H80.

Foxy

The scary part is the amount of voltage required to stabilise these chips at those speeds, I think at 5Ghz I'll be looking at 1.4X volts, which is why I won't do more than get some bragging screens from some benchmarks then go back to 4.5Ghz. The extra 13ish% speed from those last 500Mhz is stressing the processor an additional 100%. One might be lucky and have a strong chip that can run those speeds indefinitely, but it's not a risk I'm going to take over the long term, since 4.5Ghz doesn't even make it blink.

Link119

My Feedback: (1)

You dont need a big, fat, expensive cooler. The hyper 212+ and evo are very nice coolers that could handle 4.5+ghz.

DarkFire989

I bet. But I also dont like big ugly heat sinks, which the 212 is IMO.

Foxy

I would say that depends on a lot of things. No way in the world could I use the Hyper 212 coolers and run 4.5Ghz. Not in summer anyway.

HJJFFFAA

For the price of a Corsair baby's first watercooling you can get a much better air cooling setup. Arctic Silver was good back in the day but there are better pastes out there now, look around, IC7 is very good. Also, don't arbitrarily set voltages. Bump clocks and THEN, when you find the unstable point, raise the voltage up in small increments.

Foxy

There is no air cooler that consistently out-performs the H80. There are a few that are about equal, but it's much more difficult to get an air cooler to work properly, due to their size, airflow requirements and case restrictions (the good ones anyway).

As for being careful with the voltage, in times gone by I would agree with you, but not for these chips. Everyone's getting 4.5Ghz at 1.25-1.30v, so you might as well make it easy for people and tell them what voltage to start at. 1.25 is the nominal voltage, so it's not like I'm arbitrarily telling people to go up half a volt. There are 2 schools of thought on this. Many say it's fine these days to go straight to 1.4v and your target overclock, then if it's stable, reduce the volts. This is slightly more risky, but a lot less time-consuming. It's what I'm going to do when I go for 5Ghz the first time, I'm just gonna go to 1.4v and 50 multiplier. Depending on what I get from that will determine which strategy I use. If it totally bombs out, I'll go back to the old strategy that yo udescribe. If it runs, I'll use the strategy I describe of lowering volts after.

Honestly, these chips are nowhere near as sensitive as the old i7 9xx series, there's no need to *****foot around with them, they are well tested, and to a point, almost everyone's OC results are the same.

HJJFFFAA

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Plenty of air coolers outperform the H80. The NH-D14 comes to mind. There are a few others as well. Not to say the Corsairs are never the best choice but that in most cases they are not. As for the voltage, you should NEVER set your voltage to some random voltage in a range given by people on the internet. What you want to do is bump clocks and then voltage that way you get the optimal overclock with the least risk of damaging your CPU. The range can be useful to gauge if you're in the right place but never as a bible for what you should be doing. No offense, Foxy, but your way is backwards and not what you want to be doing for the best overclock you can get.

Foxy

It's the lazy man's way, I'll give you that.

splcrazy

so does this play crisis 2 , you should get that pinball game that nvidia made now that youve got a powerfull pc

Foxy

It was powerful enough to play Crysis2 on full settings before, now it's just insane. There's nothing available that taxes this machine, however, I could get even more (graphics) performance by adding ANOTHER GTX 580. Something I might do later this year.

PS. The Nvidia Pinball game (Soldier of the Universe) is a very very old game. Have they made a new one?

DarkFire989

I plan on getting another 6970 later this year as well. Maybe pick up 2 more monitors and run Eyefinity. Foxy will your 700watt PSU be able to handle 2 GTX580s?

splcrazy

its old but good , i never played it because i dont have a gtx , im going to buy a laptop with a gtx just so i can play it , i love my pinball games .
i dont know if they made any new ones . with your setup you could make an insane hyper pin setup.

HJJFFFAA

No, he's going to need a good 850W at least.

Foxy

Yep. If I went dual 580, I'd probably splash for a kilowatt.

Casper06

Whast do you know about overclocking a 580GTX? I have the Asus GTX580 DirectCU II.

VKGT

Subscribing... I'm looking to overclock my Core i7-950 but have never grasped how to identify the correct method/settings. HAF 932 case, Core i7-950, Coolermaster V8, Asus Sabertooth X58, 12GB Corsair Vengeance @ 1600mhz, Sparkle 1000w PS, NVidia GTX 470 SC FTW, OCZ Agility II 120GB SSD


Anybody that has a minute and wouldn't mind helping, I'd greatly appreciate it :P

HJJFFFAA

Overclocking is the same for all components. Go until you reach your goal or until you reach the limits of clock, voltage, or heat.

Foxy

Not much to be honest. My card already runs 75-78* under heavy load on the stock cooling system, so there is no room for overclocking for me, therefore I haven't attempted any. There are a few guides around though, but yeh, as stated, overclocking is a simple equation of balancing increases in speed with increases in cooling and voltage.

dante_0816

wow...5Ghz It's so cooool!