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i7-3770k Overclocking. 5 GHz?

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krugern

New Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2012
Hello!

I see some of you stating 5 GHz on your 3770k, and I've also seen some YouTube videos with even higher clock.

Myself I can't seem to get it stable above 4.7 GHz. Priming at 4.7 gives me 66°C max, don't think temp is a problem at all!

What is your ultimate trick? What is a must to disable in BIOS? What is your vcore? I went a long shot above 4 GHz before I had to increase vcore.

Halp! :shrug:
 
well by looking at your 3dmark page, i could suggest that having 4 dimm slots populated could be holding you back. that is more strain on the memory controller than is needed. what voltage do you use for 4.7ghz. i run mine @ 4.8 with 1.32v and extreme llc settings, and its stable all day. well, thats what i used to run it at. now that i went hardcore on my IHS i dont actually know what is the minimum that i need for 4.8 now.

excuse the bad punctuation and grammar. ive been at work for 12 hours and this keyboard is terrible lol
 
Every chip is different. Frankly, anything above 4.5GHz on an IB CPU is just up to luck as to how good of an overclocker your chip is.

66C max though, you have plenty of headroom. Mid 80s is completely fine for this chip.
 
I tried removing 2 ram slots, but to no success. I am stable at 4.8 with 1.32v just like K3yra7. Let's say I'm happy with it? :p
 
It's really hard to make anything near 5GHz stable just because these cpus are overheating on higher voltage. The same clocks and voltage on sub zero cooling will probably give you stable settings.
So simply your cpu doesn't need much more voltage to make it stable. It just needs better cooling that is out of range for any air/water kit.

Popular mistake is that people are trying to make it stable pumping more volts but as an effect cpu is becoming more unstable because of higher temp.

4.8GHz is already good result and it's probably more than enough for everything that you will do on your pc.
 
I guess you are right. It really IS enough, but you always want more? :D

I always want more for benching, I don't care if daily rig has 4GHz or 5GHz because there is really no special difference.
Actually I have i7 950@4GHz in gaming pc and i7 3770K + lot of other stuff for benching and general tests.
 
Is PLL overvoltage enabled in the bios? My x55 2600k wouldn't do over 4.7Ghz without it being enabled.

Might be part of your issue. Also the IMC on these chips are crazy good so having 4 dimms populated won't be an issue.
 
Well I tried to run some Prime95 @ 5ghz last night. All the way up to 1.44v and it would still crash 1 or 2 threads after about 30 seconds. Temperature is not an issue, it was only hitting 64C on Core2, the other 3 were around 51-53C. Also completing a 3dmark11 run was not possible either, errors almost instantly in the physics test. I may try again with Internal Overvoltage enabled....
 
For anyone interested, with my new 2400 MHz kingston RAM I can now do physics test in the new 3DMark at 4.9 GHz, but I fail at full 3DMark benchmark. I can still play games at 4.9, believe it or not. 12500~ points or so.

Could be the new RAM, or it could be that I changed to using +offset on OC.
 
When IB was rather new I still went with a 2500K as I thought it would overclock more and just maybe I could reach 5Ghz.

Unfortunately 4.8Ghz is my max @ 1.5Vcore. Even @ 4.9 with a Vcore of 1.55V I still get the odd BSOD. My system is strange, I can prime at 4.9Ghz for 30mins and all be well. But when sitting idle I will get a random BSOD. Only bringing it down to 4.8 will make it totally stable.

I have tried using only two sticks of RAM, does not make a difference at all. Neither does CPU-NB voltage or anything else. Sometimes you hit a wall and there's nothing you can do about it. That's my opinion anyway.

And I've tried everything, Max safe voltage on NB, CPU-NB, PLL etc etc. Max safe volts on everything apart from the CPU (had that upto 1.65v)
 
For anyone interested, with my new 2400 MHz kingston RAM I can now do physics test in the new 3DMark at 4.9 GHz, but I fail at full 3DMark benchmark. I can still play games at 4.9, believe it or not. 12500~ points or so.

Could be the new RAM, or it could be that I changed to using +offset on OC.

RAM has nothing to do with cpu stability in this case. There are different ratios for both.
I would disable all power saving options ( C1/3/6, EIST ), set high LLC ( not max, more like 1 step lower ), set cpu voltage to ~1.45V , enable internal PLL, set cpu vrm frequency to 350, change phases control to extreme ( do not turn off OCP/OVP protection ), change cpu power limit to 150%, leave memory vrm frequency at auto, change memory power limit to 130% and temps for cpu and memory to the max ( options are 131 or 151 ).
Also check PLL voltage. For optimal overclocking results it can be lower or higher than stock, let's say something between 1.5-1.9V. If you won't find any difference then try as low as possible what will be stable and it's usually 1.55-1.65V. The only reason to do it is lower cpu temperature.
No more ideas for now.
If you get 124 error then try or lower cpu voltage or higher voltage or cpu thinks it's already too hot for him at this clock ( even though temp can be low ).
 
De-lidded my 3770K and installed proper water cooling from EK.

308637_10152827061610298_1300103217_n.jpg
 
How are your temps now that you're de-lidded? I have 5.1ghz stable now when I go benching. What I really need to do is work on my memory OC, my best scores have been achieved with 2400mhz but my RAM is rated for 2666mhz. Haven't really had time....
 
How are your temps now that you're de-lidded? I have 5.1ghz stable now when I go benching. What I really need to do is work on my memory OC, my best scores have been achieved with 2400mhz but my RAM is rated for 2666mhz. Haven't really had time....

Temps are significantly lower. But I'm in no luck on overclocking atm. struggling at 4700 even before delidding.
 
I benched a little this past weekend and ran Aquamark (yes, the Overclocktagon) at 4.874 which has been my best so far (forgot to Print Screen so my score only reflects the 4.8 I remembered to PS). I'm pretty sure that I can get to 5.0 Ghz but the right combo of FSB and multi has eluded me so far. The voltage gets a bit finicky above 1.4, cooling not so much the problem even with my H60. As said above, all chips are different even though they have the same product number.
 
Have you tried a 49 multi with a 103bus? I personally can't hit 5Ghz with my 2600k unless I'm at 49/103 Hyper threading also disabled. I've been rock solid @ 5047Mhz how for nearly a year and with a 50multi and 100bus, I wasn't even stable to an hour.

Hyper Threading also was giving my random crashes when overclocking to 5Ghz so I decided to Disable it as it doesn't show any performance increase for games anyways. I think my max overclock with H/T on was 4.8Ghz as well.

Please let me know how it go's!
 
I benched a little this past weekend and ran Aquamark (yes, the Overclocktagon) at 4.874 which has been my best so far (forgot to Print Screen so my score only reflects the 4.8 I remembered to PS). I'm pretty sure that I can get to 5.0 Ghz but the right combo of FSB and multi has eluded me so far. The voltage gets a bit finicky above 1.4, cooling not so much the problem even with my H60. As said above, all chips are different even though they have the same product number.

Actually temps at higher voltage can be issue as it spikes under full load for short period of time and causes errors. You see something like 50-60*C and after you run test then some cores jump to 90*C+ and test crashes. Sometimes monitoring soft won't show it.
Try to play some with lower PLL voltage, high LLC and try some other options in power management tab. MPower has some options set to power saving mode as default and for example power limits are usually limited.

@krugern , de-lidding is usually not helping with higher OC as thermal wall is holding you from higher CPU ratios. I mean something like 30*C difference , not 10-15.
Most users can set up to 100MHz higher CPU clock after de-lidding and it also depends from CPU itself.
On my CPU I've noticed about 50MHz higher clock while benching and temps ~12*C lower. Going from ambient cooling to single stage ( -50*C idle ) I could set about 400MHz higher clock on 3770K so in my case can say that each ~15*C gave me about +100MHz.
De-lidding is generally overrated as most users won't see any difference .. except that in monitoring soft they will see lower values.
 
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