Need tips to overclock Xeon x5650

Hello guys,let me begin with my story.I recently built myself a new budget PC(but it was not really a budget PC for me).I didn't have alot of money to spend,but wanted to have Sata 3 and a good performing CPU,so i got my eye on a p6x58d-e + x5650 + 2x8gb ram combo.It was cheaper compared to the i7 3770s for example,but still the guy asked for 285$.So i watched some videos and browsed the web to see if this CPU is capable,and it turned out it performs well.Some people even said that its performance is close to an i7 5820k when overclocked .Ofc i was amazed and did my best to buy it and now my PC is almost fully built(still sparing money for an SSD to boost the OS speed) and i am amazed by the performance,even that my CPU isn't even overclocked yet!I ordered an Corsair H80i v2 extreme performance AIO cooler,and i will receive it tommorow.So the thing is i don't really have alot of overclocking knowledge,i know only the basics.I have overclocked some core 2 quad's and again it was with your help here in the forum,but they have almost nothing similar when overclocking.If someone can help me and give me some tips,what to do to get atleast 4ghz 24/7 stable oc i will really really appreciate it.And i have watched alot of tutorials around the web,and most of the overclocks are always done with gigabyte motherboards and i can't understand nothing,because the bios looks totally different .Thank you in advance and my full PC specs:

Intel Xeon x5650 with Corsair H80i v2
Asus p6x58d-e
Powercolor Radeon R9 380x 4gb pcs+
2x8gb corsair vengeance ddr3 1600mhz
Seasonic m12II 750w 80+ Bronze PSU
Silverstone Raven RV01 case


Also a side question,which has nothing to do with the topic at all.I found somewhere that my Sata 3 controller is Marvell controller and not an Intel controller.What is the difference and can i use an ssd with it?( I have no problems with my WD Blue)

Maybe this video can help you with your OC.

Helgaiden said:

Maybe this video can help you with your OC.

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Actually i have watched this video.The problem is the multiplier of the cpu on the video is bigger.Maybe i will try to do simillar settings,but the thing is i want to have my memory running atleast at its rated 1600Mhz too.

pavel_kolarov said:

Actually i have watched this video.The problem is the multiplier of the cpu on the video is bigger.Maybe i will try to do simillar settings,but the thing is i want to have my memory running atleast at its rated 1600Mhz too.

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Well the multiplier on that CPU is locked, so set it to the highest multiplier it'll let you, then you have up the BCLK to increase the CPU overclock. You take the multi and multiply it by the BCLK to get your effective frequency. Does the multiplier say "20" and not let you make any adjustments in BIOS? Lets say your goal is 4.2ghz. You could maybe hit that if you can up the multiplier to 22 and a BCLK to about 190 or 191. Maybe that video goes over voltage adjustments to make to make sure it'll boot at that voltage because im not familiar with whats good for that CPU. But hopefully this helps. For your memory, if its spec'd for DDR3 1600 then just manually set the speeds in BIOS according to the specs of the RAM, not a big deal.

My multiplier can go up to 22 and the stock is 20 i think. I will try your tips when i get home today.

Helgaiden said:

Well the multiplier on that CPU is locked, so set it to the highest multiplier it'll let you, then you have up the BCLK to increase the CPU overclock. You take the multi and multiply it by the BCLK to get your effective frequency. Does the multiplier say "20" and not let you make any adjustments in BIOS? Lets say your goal is 4.2ghz. You could maybe hit that if you can up the multiplier to 22 and a BCLK to about 190 or 191. Maybe that video goes over voltage adjustments to make to make sure it'll boot at that voltage because im not familiar with whats good for that CPU. But hopefully this helps. For your memory, if its spec'd for DDR3 1600 then just manually set the speeds in BIOS according to the specs of the RAM, not a big deal.

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Ok,I have messed alot with the BIOS and my final settings are 200x20 = 4Ghz ,1.30 CPU voltage(Intel's max recommended is 1.35v),1600mhz ram. Seems stable so far 15 IBT runs on high and almost 1 hour prime95 blend with max 70 grad celsius(mostly 60 but jumping up to 70).still testing tho.And i tried 190 BCKL with 22x multi to reach 4.2ghz,but the system wasn't stable at all + the ram options are 1520mhz and 1920mhz.I hope everything being stable,as it is for now,and thank you for the help,even though it was alot of easier than i though,you still helped me alot.I will even put some multi and single threaded benchmarks.

awesome results! Glad you got it all stable, 4ghz from 2.66 is a fantastic result.

just got a red screen of death bumped up the cpu voltage just a notch,to see if it will make a difference but it was very strange because it was full red screen crash and people say red screens are typically gpu related

pavel_kolarov said:

just got a red screen of death bumped up the cpu voltage just a notch,to see if it will make a difference but it was very strange because it was full red screen crash and people say red screens are typically gpu related

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Never heard of that one before. Did a little searching and people do keep pointing to GPU, so i'd make sure you didn't change any other baseclocks other than the CPU one in BIOS and then run DDU to clean out the old GPU drivers, then clean re-install them.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1705588/crashes-gaming-red-screen.html

Now i am worried about my gpu, because today when i got home and started my pc up the screen was flickering crazy(black and white) , than after a few seconds it was normal again. And now when i tried gta v with my freshly overclocked cpu the gpu usage was jumping up and down from 100% to 0% usage like crazy and then it went normal again. Very strange.

Edit:

I checked in the bios and the nothing else except cpu settings is changed.I will give it one more chance and if the problem occurs again i will try reinstalling and installing the drivers and if the problem still persists i will try sticking in my old radeon hd 6750 to see if it is actually a gpu-related problem.

good luck!

Helgaiden said:

good luck!

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found out what the problem was.My gpu power limit was -2% for some reason.I made it to the default 0% and now everything is perfectly stable and i am so happy . again thank you for the help and the time spent.