Overclocking the i7-860 featuring the Corsair H80!

[Jandre]

Hey all!

I recently purchased the H80 from a local vendor here in The Netherlands and have installed it in my system. You can see more specs of my system in the sig. So what I'll be doing in this thread is going over temps and what I'm able to achieve in terms of overclocking with this I'm very excited to get started on this as it is the first time I've gotten into watercooling. It's definately not going to be able to compete with those custom water cooled loops however this is maintenance free. I'm not saying custom water cooling requires constant maintenance and fiddling but with the H80 you can literally slap it in your grannies system and not worry about it.

I'll show some pictures of the system aswell as what type of airflow my case has to offer shortly in a later post. There are lots of variables that can change results slightly from a system to system. So please take my results with a grain of salt.... or mix it with some sugar..

So for those wondering what the Corsair H80 is you can probably google it to get a good idea of what it is. But for those too lazy, it features a rather thick 120mm rad with two fans for a push pull. It is pre-filled/pre-sealed and the pump and other electronics are inside the waterblock. The H80 is a more refined version of the H70 where the waterblock is updated, not sure on the radiator (google should solve this). On the waterblock there is a button to control the fan speed to meet your cooling requirements, it does start getting loud though.

I will now and then compare my overclocking results to my old cooler, namely the Scythe Mugen 2-B. I was able to achieve a 4ghz overclock with this before hitting a wall where temperatures just didn't allow me to keep going. I was at a 43-45c idle and getting close to 90c load. Hopefully the H80 can releive this and allow me to push a good bit further while keeping everything under control. I am using the pre-applied thermal paste on the H80. On the Scythe Mugen I used the thermal paste that came within the packaging.

In the next posts I will talk more about my overclocking results and temperatures.

P.S. Is this what would be called a "Project Log"?

 

[Jandre]

I'm going to basically be starting from scratch with my overclocking.

I hopped on in to my BIOS and set everything to default just to have a fresh start. I lowered the multi and raised my bclk up to 200. I booted at 13x200=2600mhz so I'm keeping it under stock settings to make sure I am 'isolating' the bclk from everything else to find what I'm capable of. I didn't bother raising the bclk by 5 or 10 at a time and do a small stress test so I just started at 200 right away and encountered no issues. So now I can say my highest bclk is 200.

I'm going to start off by doing a 3,4ghz overclock and see how the cooler fairs. All settings like C1E and other safety settings are disabled and I lowered the ram to 974 mhz (2:6 divider). Depending on overclock and voltages you can enable Speedstep to achieve lower idle temperatures. Speedstep may not be stable at reasonably high overclocks.
At the moment I have only booted into my OS and confirmed my results. I'll follow up with results for 3,4, 3,6ghz , 3,8 ghz, and then 4ghz. Most importantly I will provide temps for each. At the end I'll also write up about how temps are at my highest achievable overclock.

 

[Jandre]

Update:

Done a 20 minute small FFT torture test on Prime95 at 3.4ghz.

Voltage settings:
1.2750v in BIOS
CPU-Z reads 1.24v at 0-5% (idle)
CPU-Z reads 1.160v at 100% load
IMC set at 1.16 (don't even think it was necessary but oh well)
DRAM set at Auto
all other voltages left at stock

Temperatures at idle and load (celcius)

Idle: 38, 34, 38, 34 across all four cores

Load: 60, 59, 57, 58

The fans on the H80 are set at the medium preset via the waterblock.

Scythe Mugen 2-B temps @ 2.8ghz (celcius) under same test conditions

Idle: 36, 32, 35, 33

Load: 61, 62, 60, 61


I ran the same tests as I am on the H80 with my scythe mugen before installing the new cooler. I let the cpu sit at idle for 5 mins and then stress it under load for 20 minutes. As seen from these results the H80 achieves better load temperatures in a mildly overclocked conditions whereas the scythe achieves slightly worse results at stock settings. This may not be a fair comparison but it does show the potential the H80 has compared to an aftermarket heatsink.

 

[Jandre]

Here are some of the pictures of my system aswell as the H80 along with my old Scythe Mugen. I think some more blue led fans will achieve better lighting I have the H80 setup to exhaust from the case as opposed to being an intake. This is mainly due to issues with dust. I don't think flipping it around will provide significantly better temperatures but it might be interesting to see how it does.

In terms of airflow I have an intake infront of the hdd cage along with another intake at the bottom of the case. For exhaust I got two more at the top along with the two provided by corsair for the radiator which also are exhausting. All these fans are 120mm. Two are from Coolermaster, one from BeQuiet! and one from Scythe and then the two from Corsair... I need to follow a theme lol

 

[Jandre]

More results can be expected in the morning (for Amsterdam).

I ran into some issues with BSODS and instabilities around 3,6 and 3,7ghz due to what I think is a bclk hole or just a yucky multi and bclk mix or something of that nature. I decided to just skip 3,6 and start with 3,8ghz. Results for the rest of my overclocking and most importantly findings with temperatures can be expected tommorow early afternoon.

 

[Jandre]

Update:

Here are the results/findings for 3,8ghz

20x190=3.8GHZ

Vcore in BIOS = 1.34375v
BIOS hardware monitor = 1.304v
CPU-Z 1.304v
IMC is still set at 1.18v
PLL is at 1.86v

I know CPU-Z provides accurate results of my vcore because the BIOS hardware monitor displays the same voltages as CPU-Z.

Idle and Load temps of H80 (celcius)

Idle: 39, 35, 39, 35

Load: 66, 67, 65, 67


Temps on the Scythe Mugen at same settings

Idle: 41, 38, 40, 37

Load: 71, 73, 72, 73

 

[mimart7]

As a test, you may want to reapply the tim. Clean of the the heatsink and cpu. Apply your favorite tim, I'm using IC7, now. But, any good tim will do. See if you get better temps. The stuff that is on the hsf, is a little overdone, imo.

 

[Jandre]

I agree with you mimart7, when I applied the paste with my hsf I used a spread method from the provided paste. I did manage to achieve a very thin and even spread similair to what the corsair H80 has pre-applied but I'm sure I could achieve some better temps and some more Mhz if I reapplied on the heatsink. For now these are the only results I have with the Mugen. I'll be glad to have people share what their coolers are capable of handling with similair cpus so if you've got some results go ahead and share.

Main reason I'm posting this is because I havn't really seen much about the H80 so thought it would be interesting to share what I'm achieving.

I managed to get up to 4,3ghz stable with the h80 and I'm working on 4,4ghz. Havn't managed to stabilize it for a good 20 mins yet. Results on 4ghz and 4,2 will be up later. When I manage to stabilize 4,4 or anything higher for that matter I'll post results.

Perhaps within the upcoming week I'll do some testing on the mugen to have more fair results. I'm building a testing bench at the moment so it's the perfect opportunity I also have some of Zalman's ZM STG2 paste lying around to make the test fair.

 

[Jandre]

4ghz results and settings

22x183=4ghz

1.375000v in BIOS with LLC enabled

CPU-Z reading 1.3600v
CPU-Z load 1.3280v
IMC at 1.20v
all other settings remain the same

Temperatures:

Idle: 40, 36, 39, 36

Load: 70, 72, 70, 71

On the scythe mugen 2-b I did reach 4ghz with HT off and slightly different voltage settings. I don't have results written down like I do with previous results here but I do remember being around 75c load with prime 95 small ffts.

 

[Jandre]

4,2ghz

22x191=4,2ghz

Same voltage settings with IMC at 1.22v. This is awsome! Usually just increasing the mhz by a couple hundred mhz on i7 requires so much voltage increase.

Temperatures:

Idle: 41, 37, 40, 36

Load: 72, 74, 73, 73

Thermal throttling doesn't occur untill into the 90s so my personal limit for an OC under load is 80-85c. Considering these temperatures I know I can get at least a 4,5ghz OC if voltages don't start becoming fussy.

At the moment I'll leave the results at this, once my room is reorganized and everything I'll try some new thermal paste. Maybe that'll give some more mhz than the pre-applied paste on the H80. If you want to share results with similair CPUs on your cooler please do so

Cheers,
Jandre