Hardware monitors

I am about to slowly wade into the shallow end of overclocking. From 3.3 to 4.2 GHz on a 2500K . Very mild but still effective. The issue I am having is the software that will reflect my temperatures and voltages should I want / need to fine tune my BIOS or in OS settings. I have already ran Prime95 for 3 1/2 hours, while my baby was at 4.2GHZ and my CPU temps spiked occasionally to 55c( leveled out to ~50c ) & my Vcore was around 1.28. I was running Prime95, playing Bioshock 2, letting a streaming movie(muted) run on justin.tv and occasionally getting out of the game running one or more of my monitors to see the temps, cores & surf a bit to see what other people's temps and voltages were while I let the game run in the background & then I would get back to gaming. After 3 1/2 hours of doing this and trying to push my CPU as hard and safely as possible, I was not looking for insane torture just yet,( yep 100% CPU in task manager the whole time ) I chose to end my prime95 blend test. For one I have heard over an hour is good and 24 would be preferable. I have heard at least 6 or 8. After my CPU was working its' butt off for over 3 hours straight I am fairly confident it has withstood that test just fine and I didn't need to subject it to anymore until my system is complete. I still need Win7 64 bit so it will have access to all 8GB of ram and i need to buy a gtx 570 superclocked. Each program suggests something different. Whether I use coretemp, HW Monitor, CPU ID, SPeccy, SPeedfan etc Temps/voltages vary. What software or software combo do you suggest I use. I need accurate.

Operating System
MS Windows XP Media Center Edition Professional 32-bit SP3
CPU
Intel Core i5 2500K @ 3.30GHz 28 °C
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM
8.0GB DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-25)
Motherboard
MSI P67A-G43 (MS-7673) (SOCKET 0) 33 °C
Graphics
DELL 1704FPV (1024x768@60Hz)
512MB ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series (Diamond) 42 °C
Hard Drives
977GB Seagate ST31000528AS (SATA) 31 °C
Optical Drives
ASUS DRW-22B2S b
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

I like CoreTemp or RealTemp for monitoring my temperatures. I tend to watch CPU-Z for my CPU Speed and vcore usage.

For a faster stability test I like to use IntelBurn Test, I set it to use maximum memory and set it to go for 5 passes, if it succeeds there I press on to go farther, if it crashes then I know to either add more voltage or to lower my clocks again and test for stability (if either I am hitting too high of temps [I wouldn't want over 75-80C at 100% load] or I am happy where it is clocked).

And I would use LinX to test your cores.

Janus67 said:

I like CoreTemp or RealTemp for monitoring my temperatures. I tend to watch CPU-Z for my CPU Speed and vcore usage.

For a faster stability test I like to use IntelBurn Test, I set it to use maximum memory and set it to go for 5 passes, if it succeeds there I press on to go farther, if it crashes then I know to either add more voltage or to lower my clocks again and test for stability (if either I am hitting too high of temps [I wouldn't want over 75-80C at 100% load] or I am happy where it is clocked).

Click to expand...

I do exactly the same. Apart from I don't use the Intel burn test. Just Prime95, I usually only run In-Place large FFT's unless I am pushing my RAM.