Asrock P67 Pro3 / i5 2500k overclocking

Hello all, just ordered my new computer with an i5 2500k processor and an Asrock P67 Pro3 motherboard.

I am interested in overclocking but have never done it before, am I seriously limiting the life of my system by overclocking and what are the risks involved if you are being careful?

The mobo has a new style BIOS interface and in a review I read it has an automatic overclocker where you use a slider to select the GHz you want and then it creates a stable overclock at that level which is ready for your next boot, is this safe? does it automatically up the voltage running through your cpu / board and is this a bad thing if so?

The case for this build is a NZXT lexa S with its 4 stock fans (front, read, side and top) and the cooler is a coolermaster TX3.

With my cooling in mind what is a good overclock to aim for, I do not want anything ungodly, just something to give me a bit more performance (no idea if I will even want / need more performance yet as at the moment running on an intel dual core e2220)

Thanks for any tips and advice.

Einholt

There is 1 option that let you set your cpu to 4, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6 or 4.8GHz and at least all till 4.4GHz was working good for me Some voltages can be corrected manually but it's ok. If you want to set higher memory or other things then have to set some options manually or it won't work. Auto for memory is 1333 and I don't know if it was corrected in 1.70 bios version ( can download from asrock site ). XMP settings are always like 1 step lower so if you have 2000 memory it will work as 1866.
UEFI on Pro3 board is like standard BIOS just looks different and can use mouse. There is nothing special that you can be worry about.
Safe voltages are up to 1.38V cpu ( haven't seen anyone who had problems up to 1.5V ), up to 1.9V pll ( but don't have to change it, standard is 1.836V on this board ), 1.6V memory but noone had any issues up to 1.65V, VTT up to 1.2V if you want to run memory@ 2133+ and all other leave on auto.
4.6GHz should be ok for standard air and auto oc.
AsRock said that 1.70 bios is working good but don't even try 1.60 if you find somewhere.

I'm running same board / cpu too.

Like Woomack said if you just use the automatic preset for 4.4 that should be fine. It will up the turbo voltage automatically to a level that is considered safe (1.32v or so).

If you want to manually set a turbo multiplier and keep speed step on be sure to up the maximum short term and long term watts or else it will throttle down under load.

So far 4.5 is all I can get this board to boot into windows. I think there's still some quirks with the EFI that ASRock needs to hammer out...for one load line calibration has disappeared with bios 1.5 and 1.7.

The previous two posts gave a good idea of how to approach overclocking with your board. If you want a more general and systematic approach to do it yourself check out MIA's guide: http://www.techreaction.net/2011/01/04/3-step-overclocking-guide-–-sandy-bridge-v0-1beta/

To answer your "is it safe" question: anytime you run hardware outside of specification there is some risk involved. Usually after parts have been out for a while people will have found the ranges that are generally considered to be safe, but Sandybridge is still quite new. So while we know some about what volts are safe to not insta kill your processor, nothing is really known about the long term health yet. It would seem that the common recommendation so far is keep at/under 1.3v if you want to be on the conservative side. Personally thats what I'm doing until more is known; although I did briefly go up to 4.8GHz with close to 1.4v just to see if it could.