Just in case anyone is interested in an OC for beginners using only Air Cooling.. - I use a Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO to cool the CPU. I have a GIGABYTE x99 SOC Force Motherboard and G Skill Ripjaw 4 DDR4 RAM modules - and of course, an Intel 5960x CPU.
Firstly I always make a start in the motherboard's BIOS, by loading the 'optimised default settings' first by hitting F7, then once that is done, you can then start reliably overclocking..
I found the newest Gigabyte x99 SOC Force F7c BETA Motherboard BIOS to be a bit tempermental with regards to actually executing even the correct OC settings - if you even enter into any other of the available settings like selecting Gigabytes own pre-made CPU overclock profiles, the OC seemed to fail - but then the BIOS is only in BETA stage of development so I wonder if they will eventually sort this out?
I have also experienced, and read on other forums, that selecting the X.M.P. profile on the DDR4 RAM, seems to make any attempt at an OC fail.. So I just entered 24 for the RAM multiplier giving 2400MHz..
Here are the 5960x OC settings I used..
I managed a stable overclock of 4.2GHz using 1.120v on the CPU V-Core just and ONLY by entering 1.120v on the CPU V-Core tab, then ONLY on the CPU Frequencies tab, enter 40 on the CPU Clock Cycles, to get 4GHZ at idle, then under the Advanced Frequencies tab, I changed the CPU Turbo settings to 42 to get 4.2GHz under max CPU load. Temps maxed out at between 76-86c on different days with different ambient temps. After a couple of hours of maximum CPU load in the VidCoder x.264 program - No CPU throttling occurred at all with these OC settings! CPU Throttling seemed to happen on my 5960x CPU at 89c using different settings - this can easily be tested or seen happening yourself, using the freeware CPUID CPU-Z or CPUID HWMonitor monitoring programs.. If you experience CPU frequency throttling you should back off the voltage on the CPU V-Core as this is what causes heat and then CPU throttling to occur - otherwise you may eventually permanently damage the 5960x CPU..
Hope that helps anyone that is in the same boat I was in - and who's currently tearing their hair out after trying/using Gigabyte's x99 F7c BETA motherboard BIOS.. I did use their stable F6 BIOS but it didn't seem to make any difference in terms of reliable OC execution.
Good luck!
Nice1
UPDATE: I realised after some considerable testing, that ambient temps vary so much on different days, that a stable/safe OC was actually very hard to achieve using air cooling. Considering the weather affects temps by as much as 25 degrees C where I live, I have changed to water cooling my CPU with a Corsair H110i GT - which cost on a 'Black Friday' Deal £70 @ Scan.co.uk. With this water cooler I achieved much more stable OC temp on average, and ones that don't rely on winter weather - I reckon that should a summer heat wave occur, trying to achieve an OC with only air cooling would in all likelyhood become a serious hazard in hardly any time at all with the 5960x - OC Temps seem to really rocket upwards in hotter ambient conditions - and in under 10Mins!! I did eventually get a stable (no throttling) 4.4Ghz under Max load using 1.25v on the CPU V-Core with the Corsair 110i GT cooling things nicely..