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Advice on overclocking my Core i5 2500K and Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3

L

lsquare

Senior member
So I have an Intel Core i5 2500K, Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, and 4x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1600. The HSF is a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus. I'm not looking for a maximum overclock as you can tell my cooling setup is relatively modest. The case is a Fractal Design R3. I'm just looking for a mild overclock that will give me a decent boost in performance.

Does anyone here have any settings to recommend me? I think base CPU speed is 3.3ghz. I'm not very familiar with overclocking Sandy Bridge chips. Some detail information on what is an achievable overclock would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
 
4.4 will need voltage adjustments, you can't just put the multi to 44 and expect it to be stable.

lsquare, you can find tons of info about overclocking 2500K on google
 
lehtv said:
4.4 will need voltage adjustments, you can't just put the multi to 44 and expect it to be stable.

lsquare, you can find tons of info about overclocking 2500K on google
Click to expand...

The motherboards are different though. I'm more concerned about the settings for the RAM to get it to be stable at a certain clock speed. Let's put it like this, what should the multiplier be to get to 4.0ghz stable without bumping up the voltage? I want to stay at stock voltage. Also, what are the optimal RAM/memory settings?
 
also, 4.7- 4.8ghz is pretty much the maximum you can go with "reasonable" voltage

4.8 will require up to 1.4125 volts, (measured in CPUZ, not bios)
4.7 will require up to 1.35-1.37 volts,

The reason I point this out is because, between 1.35 and 1.41 the heat output of the chip rises DRAMATICALLY.

So if you can do live with 4.7, it will run much cooler than the next voltage tier.
 
borisvodofsky said:
also, 4.7- 4.8ghz is pretty much the maximum you can go with "reasonable" voltage

4.8 will require up to 1.4125 volts, (measured in CPUZ, not bios)
4.7 will require up to 1.35-1.37 volts,

The reason I point this out is because, between 1.35 and 1.41 the heat output of the chip rises DRAMATICALLY.

So if you can do live with 4.7, it will run much cooler than the next voltage tier.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. How about RAM settings? How do I make it as aggressive as possible?
 
lsquare said:
Thanks for the info. How about RAM settings? How do I make it as aggressive as possible?
Click to expand...

unless you actually paid for the double price 2133 ram, don't bother overclocking the ram.

And if you do decide to buy some, I recommend the samsung ultra low voltage ram, they are stock at 1.35 volts, so if you crank them to 1.5 volts, imagine the overclocking potential. ^_^
 
FalseChristian said:
I've got my i5 2500K to 4.5GHz using the 'AUTO' in my Asus P8Z68-V/GEN3. It's Prime stable and is at 1.275v.
Click to expand...

I just noticed in your sig, that you're using ddr 1333, you are taking a serious 10-15% performance hit by not using DDR 1600. This is relevant in games and apps.

Since memory is so inexpensive, I'd recommend you check out those samsung 1.35v sticks. 😉

$50 for 10-15% boost in FPS is pretty damn worth it.
 
borisvodofsky said:
unless you actually paid for the double price 2133 ram, don't bother overclocking the ram.

And if you do decide to buy some, I recommend the samsung ultra low voltage ram, they are stock at 1.35 volts, so if you crank them to 1.5 volts, imagine the overclocking potential. ^_^
Click to expand...

I already have 4x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1600 so there's no point to buying more RAM. Furthermore, I don't think I'll get much value from buying faster RAM.

I've already enabled XMP in the BIOS. Is there nothing more that I can do to tighten the timings and or settings? I want to extract as much performance out of my current settings as possible.

Furthermore, I've already tested my setup with Prime 95 over 10 hours and 14 min. It's stable at default voltage with a 40x multiplier or 4ghz. Now my priority is to get the RAM timings to be as tight as possible.
 
Guys,

I also notice that my PC is booting up faster. It's actually noticeable. I just want to make sure that I'm not seeing things here? I forgot what the default clockspeed of the 2500K is, but at 4ghz, it boots up to the desktop in under 15 seconds!
 
lsquare said:
Guys,

I also notice that my PC is booting up faster. It's actually noticeable. I just want to make sure that I'm not seeing things here? I forgot what the default clockspeed of the 2500K is, but at 4ghz, it boots up to the desktop in under 15 seconds!
Click to expand...

No, that's just placebo effect. Your system is NOT booting any faster.

but yea, if you're gonna stick with a low overclock then you're set and done.

though, I still recommend working a bit deeper and extracting an extra 800mhz because it's easily possible, and guaranteed on newer batches of 2500ks

Ram timings will make zero difference in performance. Anything beyond 1600 shows no improvement in benchmarks except latency, but that's in the Nano-seconds, which is not something a "person" will notice.
 
borisvodofsky said:
No, that's just placebo effect. Your system is NOT booting any faster.

but yea, if you're gonna stick with a low overclock then you're set and done.

though, I still recommend working a bit deeper and extracting an extra 800mhz because it's easily possible, and guaranteed on newer batches of 2500ks

Ram timings will make zero difference in performance. Anything beyond 1600 shows no improvement in benchmarks except latency, but that's in the Nano-seconds, which is not something a "person" will notice.
Click to expand...

So there's no point in adjusting any of the RAM settings then? I do notice that the RAM speed is now at 1600mhz once I turn on XMP.

Placebo effect? Really? It actually does seem to boot much faster. I can get to the desktop in pretty much the blink of an eye.
 
an SSD will make a much bigger difference than an OC, if you don't already have one. With that said, my friend has a good 2600K at 4.6 GHz with HT on I believe, at around 1.35 V. He is on water though, and this is the 2600K. Of course every chip is different.
 
Shmee said:
an SSD will make a much bigger difference than an OC, if you don't already have one. With that said, my friend has a good 2600K at 4.6 GHz with HT on I believe, at around 1.35 V. He is on water though, and this is the 2600K. Of course every chip is different.
Click to expand...


Nope, every chip is actually very SIMILAR, if they were all very different, then INTEL scientists aught to be fired. 😉
 
Shmee said:
an SSD will make a much bigger difference than an OC, if you don't already have one. With that said, my friend has a good 2600K at 4.6 GHz with HT on I believe, at around 1.35 V. He is on water though, and this is the 2600K. Of course every chip is different.
Click to expand...

Yea, I forgot to mention that I have a Crucial M4 128GB SSD. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a placebo effect when I notice that the desktop booted up to the desktop faster after overclocking the CPU to 4.0ghz.
 
lsquare said:
Yea, I forgot to mention that I have a Crucial M4 128GB SSD. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a placebo effect when I notice that the desktop booted up to the desktop faster after overclocking the CPU to 4.0ghz.
Click to expand...

It's not a placebo effect. Your chip will boot the OS faster at 4ghz than it did at 3.3ghz. I'm sure there is a certain point of diminishing returns tho. The SSD plays a big part but its' a supply and demand type of thing. The CPU will ask the SSD will give. The slower of the two makes the other wait for the most part.
 
I just timed my boot up. 6 times, 3 stock, 3 overclocked

overclocked averaged 1.8 seconds faster... I'm sure this will diminish If I did more trials.

I hardly call that an advantage considering we're comparing a 45% overclock.
 
Kenmitch said:
It's not a placebo effect. Your chip will boot the OS faster at 4ghz than it did at 3.3ghz. I'm sure there is a certain point of diminishing returns tho. The SSD plays a big part but its' a supply and demand type of thing. The CPU will ask the SSD will give. The slower of the two makes the other wait for the most part.
Click to expand...

Like I said, I have no idea what Boris was talking about. It's a fresh install of Windows 7 with minimal services starting at boot. It really is noticeable and I'm not talking about a 1 second advantage.
 
G.Skill Ripjaws X can not overclock well just Google G.Skill Ripjaws X review go to overclocking and most of them can not overclock anything stable, i have the same ram and if i change any timings or the speed it will not boot the only way i could get any ocs on the ram was change the BCLK but i do not recommend doing that. a faster/overclocked cpu will change boot times but not by much 1-2 seconds max unless you upgrade from a Pentium 3 to a 3960x
 
BURNINGchicken3 said:
G.Skill Ripjaws X can not overclock well just Google G.Skill Ripjaws X review go to overclocking and most of them can not overclock anything stable, i have the same ram and if i change any timings or the speed it will not boot the only way i could get any ocs on the ram was change the BCLK but i do not recommend doing that. a faster/overclocked cpu will change boot times but not by much 1-2 seconds max unless you upgrade from a Pentium 3 to a 3960x
Click to expand...

you sure? what bout mad voltz 😎
 
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