First Time overclocker

I've had my computer for about 2 years now and for some reason have felt the need to overclock it now. My computer is an i7 930 quad core bloomfield with 2.8ghz, I have 9gb of DDR3 1333mhz ram, and I bought and installed a H80 corsair liquid cooler. I've read a few articles and watched a few video's on how to overclock the cpu and thought I could figure it out, but then when I start up BIOS, my version looks completely different then the one's I'm using to help me out and I'm having a hard time customizing things properly.

This is what my BIOS looks like:


And the video's I watched for comparison are:

So my BIOS seems much more simplified and without as many options to tweek as what every article or video I see on overclocking the i7 930 refers to and I can't seem to wrap my head around what numbers to pick to play around with. Any help you guys can give me in regards of what numbers to start with is much appreciated.

Thanks!

Oy not sure where to start. You have a Bloomfield 930 that's about all I know.

What is your motherboard?
What is your ram?

What are you trying to OC? Everything?

start by reading this:

http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/

I don't trust any useless videos. It's good that you understand what you're doing. It's alot to sort through but it's better then wasting your time or worse - doing harm to your machine.

Here's the local guide for Bloomfield: http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/

Knufire beats me to it.

that guide will basically bring you to a level whereby most of your questions should be answered. If you got questions from reading the guide, just let us know here.

djscrew said:

Oy not sure where to start. You have a Bloomfield 930 that's about all I know.

What is your motherboard?
What is your ram?

What are you trying to OC? Everything?

start by reading this:

http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/

I don't trust any useless videos. It's good that you understand what you're doing. It's alot to sort through but it's better then wasting your time or worse - doing harm to your machine.

Click to expand...

I have 3 sticks of 2gb and 3 sticks of 1 gb Samsung DDR3 Desktop SDRAM (1333MHz PC3-10600) and I have no idea if this is the proper name for the motherboard but I have CZUUS E203413 DE0907 written on it. It's an alienware aurora if that helps.

I'm only really looking to overclock the CPU right now, not looking to overclock anything else. I'll read through the guide after work and let you guys know if I run into any problems.

Alright, I ran into my first problem. Here's what I've done so far: I've set my bclock to 180mhz (I'm looking to see if I can get an overclock to 3.78ghz), set my multiplier to 13, set my memory multiplier to 6, set my IOH voltage to 1.3V and my QPI VTT (which I'm assuming on my BIOS is the QPI and uncore voltage) to +0.2V. I saved the changes, and the computer restarted and I hit F2 to go back into BIOS after the restart. My problem is now my keyboard doesn't seem to work in BIOS. I hit the arrow keys and nothing moves around. I restarted my computer again, made sure the keyboard still worked when I go to my desktop, and it does, then I checked my temps, ran prime95, just to make sure everything else is stable, and it is. I'm using a windows 800 desktop wireless keyboard, and I also plugged in another usb keyboard to no avail. Do I need a PS/2 connected keyboard for some reason?

That's weird. Try resetting the CMOS and try again? Look in your motherboard manual, there might be a jumper or button on the motherboard. If not, unplug the computer and take the battery out for a few minutes.

Knufire said:

That's weird. Try resetting the CMOS and try again? Look in your motherboard manual, there might be a jumper or button on the motherboard. If not, unplug the computer and take the battery out for a few minutes.

Click to expand...

I reset the jumper, booted back into BIOS and the keyboard works again. When I changed the settings back to what I tried earlier and rebooted, the same thing happened, my keyboard won't work. I'm thinking I can work around this by just resetting the cmos everytime after I raise the settings a little bit more and test to make sure the new settings are stable. It will take more time and I have to unplug my graphics card everytime I want to reset the cmos, since that's where my jumper is located, so is it a good idea to be continuously unplug/plugging in my graphics card and reset the cmos?

It should be fine, just consider you're risking making a mistake every time you fiddle around with that stuff. It's quite the hassle and I've never heard of that issue before. I would suspect it's the keyboard first and then the motherboard second. It might be worth trying to fix with a bios flash.

Try connecting do different USB ports. You're not using a front port are you? Wired keyboard too right?

djscrew said:

It should be fine, just consider you're risking making a mistake every time you fiddle around with that stuff. It's quite the hassle and I've never heard of that issue before. I would suspect it's the keyboard first and then the motherboard second. It might be worth trying to fix with a bios flash.

Try connecting do different USB ports. You're not using a front port are you? Wired keyboard too right?

Click to expand...

Well, I tried a couple of keyboards, and none of them worked, but they were all USB keyboards. I don't have a ps/2 keyboard to try out, so I can't test that. I was switching between two front ports. I guess I'm too lazy to want to plug them into a back port to see if those works.

Anyways, after tinkering around for an hour or so, and having to reset the cmos quite a few times to work around my issue, I've managed to OC my cpu to 3.7ghz. I ran prime95 for an hour and temps never got above mid 70's, and from everything I've read that should be cool enough. I'm sure I could tinker around with it some more and get a better OC out of it, but i don't think I'll get around to it unless I figure out how to change settings in my bios without having to reset it everytime.

Thanks for all the advice guys!

try the back ports instead