Any suggestions for OC'ing for a Newb?!

Here's my rig--

CPU-Intel i7-3770k
MainBoard-Asus Sabertooth z77
Memory-32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
Video-EVGA Nvidia GT 660Ti 3GB DDR5 (hope 2x soonly!)
HD's-120GB Samsung 840 SSD, 1TB SATA3 WD Caviar Black, 2x1.5TB SATA2 Seagate Barracuda
CD-Pioneer 12x BDRW
Case-Corsair Graphite Series 600T Mesh
Cooler-Corsair H60
PSU-Thermaltake Smart M 850Watt

If you were me, how would you OC the above to achieve optimal performance WITHOUT cooking the components? Also, what sound card would you add? I tried the SB Recon3D Fatal1ty and although gaming was awesome the music and movie sound sucked. I'm currently set to use the onboard. It seems o.k. but would like to take the stress off the cpu.

Thanks guys! You rock--

What goal do you have for your overclock? You can pretty much follow any SB guide and just remember your volts will be about 0.1v lower than sandy. I would also reccomend running p95 and monitor temps at stock for a bit just to get an idea where your temps are now as ivy heats up fast.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=693613

There is a good link for the basics, but depending on how far you want to push you will most likely hit a temp wall.

As for sound card I will let somebody else chime in on that, i use onboard so im lost with them

Edit* As for cooking things and how far you can go, people have thrown crazy voltage through these 22nm chips and they have proven to be tough as nails. I would just do a simple 40x overclock which you should be able to do at stock vcore. 4ghz i7 will destroy about anything you throw at it, and in the future if you need more, overclock it higher!

Id follow that guide linked above, except put in 1.25v instead of 1.35v. Keep the temps under 90C while stress testing and all will be well.

Modern sound cards dont stress the CPU much... if that is your only worry, then I would stick to onboard.

While your waiting for some one to help you with your overclock you could download these programs. These are the programs we use to monitor or test our set ups and you could also read up as well. AJ.

1, http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
2, http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
3, http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

4, http://prime95.en.softonic.com/

The first 3 monitor your set up the last one stress test your PC!

Wanted to say thank you for the great insight and helpful pointers. Just got word my new replacement CPU will be here tomorrow and the 32GB mem kit will be here Thursday!! Come on UPS. I will post my progress. I read the MB (Asus ST z77) book a couple times and will now read the posted information. Thanks guys!

The best advice would be to take your time and use a scratch pad to write down the settings you have changed! That way if you get a BSOD you can always go back and reset that in the Bios again. Good Luck with your OC. AJ.

1, http://www.overclock.net/t/1291703/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboards#

Here is good basic guide to OCing a Ivy Bridge CPU, this will help you to understand more what your doing and why!

Finally got all the new parts in and setup. Right now I'm running at 4.2GHZ and 31 degrees Celsius on the CPU and about 37 Celsius on the motherboard. Even have Rapid Storage setup and running stable! I can't stress how comfortable and nice it is to be able to enjoy a stable rig! I bought the original parts on October 15th 2012. So it's about time! I'm still not sure what the issue was before but I can tell that whatever the problem was it's gone. So, a couple more days of burn in testing and then it's time to crank this puppy to the max! Go Go Catzilla! I only scored in the 8700 range! Time to upgrade!!! NOT!!!!

Enjoy your new set up and Merry Xmas from us all in the UK. AJ.

jkleininger66 said:

Finally got all the new parts in and setup. Right now I'm running at 4.2GHZ and 31 degrees Celsius on the CPU and about 37 Celsius on the motherboard. Even have Rapid Storage setup and running stable! I can't stress how comfortable and nice it is to be able to enjoy a stable rig! I bought the original parts on October 15th 2012. So it's about time! I'm still not sure what the issue was before but I can tell that whatever the problem was it's gone. So, a couple more days of burn in testing and then it's time to crank this puppy to the max! Go Go Catzilla! I only scored in the 8700 range! Time to upgrade!!! NOT!!!!

Click to expand...

Idle temps are not important.. what is load temperatures with Prime95?