Noobie seeking Guidance

Hi, been using my pc for over a year now and finally want to overclock it but don't know how. I've read guides and such but I'm not good at computer lingo so I lack confidence and don't want to ruin my pc.. would appreciate it greatly if anyone can guide me through overclocking my cpu via skype(preferred) or here on this thread, I've heard its safe to go 4.5ghz but I think my pc can handle more, heres the specs...

CPU: i5-3570k
CPU Cooling: Corsair h100i Liquid Cooling
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Mobo
RAM: 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum
Video Card: EVGA GTX 680 2GB
PSU: NZXT Hale 850w
HDD1: 256GB Crucial M4 SSD
HDD2: 1TB WD Black HDD

Thank you!

Did you read the sticky thread in the Intel CPU section?

Read through the sticky ATM is talking about and make sure you have

CPU-Z
HWmonitor(free version)
ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v266.zip-use that link for Prime 95 to stress test
Or XTU/OCCT for stress testing.

You have all the right parts, 4.4-4.5 shouldn't be a problem on that setup. Your best bet, as suggested above, is reading this guide it's very simple to follow. Take your time and check the settings you change and you'll be fine.

thanks all, i will read into it more.. what would be the highest overclock that i can reach while being safe?

Fuujin said:

thanks all, i will read into it more.. what would be the highest overclock that i can reach while being safe?

Click to expand...

I'll help you over skype. Sent you a private message with my skype contact info. Scroll to the top of the page and click on Notifications>>Inbox to read it.

Most people new to overclocking misunderstand frequency as a limiting factor when overclocking. It's not. Your limits are heat and voltage. At certain temperatures, certain voltages become unsafe. As a general rule, for air cooling/ALC liquid cooling, you want to stay below 1.4V, and ideally, below 1.35V on these 22nm chips. Temperature wise you want to keep it below 80-85, ideally in the 70s. Whatever frequency you reach while respecting those parameters, all power to you.

Before you begin overclocking, please download and flash the latest BIOS for your motherboard from the ASRock website. Flash through the actual bios, not a Windows utility. You'll need a USB flash drive.