Going to attempt first ever OC. Would any veterans care to help out?

[Peedge]

Hello Overclockers.

I've been reading many threads from this forum as I researched for my overclock attempt.
I noticed the amount of help that the members provide so I thought I'd join up and ask for some help directly!

I have an i7-4930k on a Rampage IV Extreme.
I only have air cooling (had a bad experience with liquid) and would like to put a decent OC on as I am a gamer about to upgrade to a 3440x1440 monitor.

Would any veterans like to help out a first-timer?

Thank you!

 

[Tír na nÓg]

Not much of a trouble.IIRC, those CPU's take 1.35v safely (conservative.1.4v is still safe IMO).

And up to 4.5GHz, you need only to touch the vcore and the multi.

Make sure your temps are in check (up to 90c).

Set the vcore to 1.35v, the multi to 45x and work it from there. If so so stable (aida64 stresst test for 20minutes), either lower the multi or lower the vcore.

Rinse and repeat until one of the following:
- reach instablity
- temps are above 95c

 

[Peedge]

There's no other BIOS settings that need to be changed? Just vcore and multi?

I see lots of people talking about RAM timings and such too.

 

[Johan45]

It's best to do one thing at a time. Just set the XMP for your ram. That's the best way to do it. Tweaking ram speed and timings takes a lot of testing and patience to gain stability. After you have the CPU stable you can go back and visit ram overclocking if you want but the gains for most aren't worth the effort.

 

[batboy]

Some of those voltages I saw getting thrown around might be a bit high for air cooling. Start out low and take baby steps while you monitor temps. For long term, I try to stay under 90 degrees C for core temp. A quick way (less than 2 minutes) to test general stability is run Geekbench 3 benchmark. If it passes, that don't mean it's 100% stable, but you are probably close. If it fails or locks up, you know within a minute or two that you went too far.

 

[Peedge]

What vcore and multi would you suggest starting with?

 

[Nebulous]

What vcore and multi would you suggest starting with?

Not much of a trouble.IIRC, those CPU's take 1.35v safely (conservative.1.4v is still safe IMO).

And up to 4.5GHz, you need only to touch the vcore and the multi.

Make sure your temps are in check (up to 90c).

Set the vcore to 1.35v, the multi to 45x and work it from there. If so so stable (aida64 stresst test for 20minutes), either lower the multi or lower the vcore.

Rinse and repeat until one of the following:
- reach instablity
- temps are above 95c

 

[trents]

Peedge, please create a "Sig" listing your system components. You can look at one of ours for a template of what we need to see in the Sig. Click on Settings in the top right corner of the screen and look down the left side for "Edit Signature." It's hard to help you when we don't know much about your hardware, especially cooling. Bats has expressed concern about the 1.35 vcore recommendation being too high on air cooling and I share that concern. But we don't even know what air cooler you have.

 

[Peedge]

Peedge, please create a "Sig" listing your system components. You can look at one of ours for a template of what we need to see in the Sig. Click on Settings in the top right corner of the screen and look down the left side for "Edit Signature." It's hard to help you when we don't know much about your hardware, especially cooling. Bats has expressed concern about the 1.35 vcore recommendation being too high on air cooling and I share that concern. But we don't even know what air cooler you have.

Does this help?

 

[Tír na nÓg]

Does this help?

Yes.

Lots of lads around know about mobo, ram... Sig always helps Thanks.

 

[bob4933]

Im gonna get crapped on for suggesting this...

The rampage iv has "oc settings" built in. Go through your bios, and make a good mental note of stock settings, and then enable the "gamer oc setting". Go through again and note what changed, including VID/Vcore (my asrock is stupid and calls vcore "vid", and vid "input voltage", not sure what the rampage does for this); multipliers, etc. Please note, this is just a very quick way to get started, not your be all, end all solution.

2 things -> output wattage (heat) is directly proportional to frequency and exponentially proporition to voltage. So fight the gut reaction to "add voltage" wantonly. Doing the quick overclock is not a gaurantee of system stability, and in all likelyhood, probably over volted pretty badly.

So start off at the settings, run some benchmarks for 10-20 minutes; noting temperatures. Some cowboys run 85+, but I really strive to stay below 80c during stress testing. Die degredation is partially to blame by heat, so keep temps cool, and you're good to go. BE VERY MINDFUL of your temps on your first runs... it might spike pretty quickly. So, if your temps are great at that voltage and frequency; you have two options. Go UP in frequency, or go DOWN in vcore. If youre content with 4.5ghz, lower the voltage until you get instability, then slowly creep up until you hit your sweet spot. On the flip side, you can grind out a raise in frequency to where its stable.


OR -

On the flip side, set stock voltage, and add multi until it crashes; and thats typically considered your "oc margin". Add a bit of voltage; rinse and repeat. Pretty simple process

Lastly,
theres a wall with every chip. For example. mine is 4.8ghz on my 4790k. 4.0-4.7 all runs pretty smoothly under 1.28v. 4.8ghz requires 1.4+v (I honestly didnt even try to get it stable; took 1.4v to BOOT, and thats not really worth my time). Small gains for an massive jump in vcore required. I usually find the wall, then subtract one, find my voltage and add a sliver more. Has worked well for me. I.e. my 4790k @ 4.7ghz appears "stable" at 1.265v, but I bumped it up to 1.280v. The differences are negligible temp wise and haven't had any issues at all (that said, Im probably going to be delidding).

Sorry for the wall, hope this helps in some way.