Did I lose the silicon lotto with an I5 2500k?

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Chaotic0ne

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Jul 12, 2015
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I bought this CPU in 2011, and its got a Gigabyte Z68x UD4 B3 motherboard. I've spent many different sessions over the years to try and get a stable overclock higher than 4.0ghz. It'll run 4.0 at ghz and 1.26v. My CPU can't even run stable 4.1ghz @ 1.35v, and have even went as high as 1.38v. I'm either doing something horribly wrong here, or this CPU is a piece of crap. I tried to overclock it again recently, and I've looked at multiple guides on the internet and have tried different combinations of settings to get stability, and nothing seems to work. Should I just give up on this and wait till I get a new CPU and motherboard before I try overclocking again?
 
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Chaotic0ne

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Jul 12, 2015
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I'm gonna try to get at least another year out of this CPU & motherboard. I don't suspect any games coming out within that timeframe are going to have any problems running on an I5 2500k @ 4ghz.

I got my cousin's I5 3570k running at 4.5ghz stable @ 1.29v with an H80 cooler, and its been stable for 2 years, so I don't think there is anything I'm technically doing wrong in my approach. I used LinX to do 30 minute stress tests, and most unstable CPUs don't pass 30 minutes of LinX, although I've seen it happen on occasion. If it passed LinX, then onto 12 hrs of Prime 95. Anything that survives 30 minutes of LinX only requires a minor tweak to get stable usually. So that lets me know if I'm somewhere in the ballpark.
 
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manimal

manimal

Lifer
Mar 30, 2007
13,559
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Just checking. Did you reset bios to stock update bios to latest recently and clear Cmos then try your overclocking?

That board is cake to OC.




set volts to 1.375 and leave everything else on auto. Leave all the ci1e stuff on and set your ram to stock voltage only and leave timing on auto. Set the multi to 46 and reboot.

Can you boot at that multi?

One of my boards when it had a shitty bios had a big hole between 42-45 multi. Going above to 46 opened up and it benched at 4.8 and 5.0



If it doesnt boot try level 5 LLC and up volts by a titty whisker
 
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2is

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2012
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Gigabyte boards are notorious for excessive VDROOP in my experience. You need to enable some sort of load line calibration to reduce it. I say "some sort" because I believe gigabyte calls it something else in their BIOS.
 
Ketchup

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
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Save for a bad cooling install, a good 2500k will do 4.0~4.1 by touching nothing but the multiplier, and even better than that if you let the board set CPU voltage. If your temps are good, then yeah, just the lottery at work. I have a very similar board (went from the desktop to the server) and my 2500k was a good overclocker. I didn't overclock it more than a couple times though, and it isn't overclocked now. Performs just fine at stock speed.
 
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Flapdrol1337

Golden Member
May 21, 2014
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Did you just change the multi and vcore? Or did you also mess around with power limits, power states, loadline calibration etc?
 
BonzaiDuck

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,558
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Sometimes with the BIOS menus for these boards, it is possible to misconfigure RAM settings without realizing it. It is possible to set RAM speed choices in such a way that the RAM will scale (overclock itself) along with the CPU.

I'd inspect the RAM settings. I would pick the XMP profile if possible. But reboot into BIOS to assure that RAM is running to its spec speed and timings.
 
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soccerballtux

Lifer
Dec 30, 2004
12,553
2
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if it's not the cooler, LLC/voltage, or RAM speed/divider it's gotta be the motherboard. Intel manages their process to near perfection.
 
Ketchup

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
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soccerballtux said:
if it's not the cooler, LLC/voltage, or RAM speed/divider it's gotta be the motherboard. Intel manages their process to near perfection.
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean it can be guaranteed to clock at a higher speed than it was sold at. It isn't the board unless he has some wacky configuration going on in the BIOS.
 
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soccerballtux

Lifer
Dec 30, 2004
12,553
2
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ketchup79 said:
That doesn't mean it can be guaranteed to clock at a higher speed than it was sold at. It isn't the board unless he has some wacky configuration going on in the BIOS.
Click to expand...
yeah, actually, it basically does. They would NOT bit in as a 2500k if the chip were as bad as he were saying. It would be a much lower end part.
 
Charlie98

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,298
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Couple of things... My first 2500K chip isn't that good of an OC'er, particularly coupled with my Gigabyte Z68 board (DESK in sig below.) Heat was a major issue until I learned to undervolt the vCore and leave the backclock alone. At first I tried to use the Gigabyte OC utility... that's where I learned about the backclock problem; I hope you aren't trying to use the Gigabyte utility.

Later, I swapped that same chip into a Asus Z68 board (in use currently with another 2500K chip in GAME in sig) and I picked up another .2GHz, but could never get it stable above 4.3GHz even with the 'better' board. When I bought a used 2500K, swapping the original CPU back to it's original board, it immediately clocked to 4.5GHz with no struggle on the Asus board; I reduced it to 4.3GHz where it happily runs today.

I think on my original (bought new) 2500K I just drew a short straw. I have it running stable at 4.1GHz, and I'm happy with it. I was disappointed I wasn't able to get it higher... at the time everyone was crowing about their 4.5-4.8GHz OC's and here I was stuck at 4.1. Validation on what I was doing came when I bought the second Z68 board, and further when I got the 2nd (used) 2500K that OC'd pretty easily. I just got a, if not necessarily a 'bad' chip, then just a 'not so good' chip. Sounds like the OP does, too.
 
Ketchup

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
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VirtualLarry said:
I think that you are wrong about that, overclocking isn't guaranteed.
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He is. I can think of several AMD and Intel CPUs that I would have been thrilled to get a 300 MHz overclock out of.

But the fact remains that we aren't getting feedback on temps and other settings the OP is using, so we don't even know that it's a "bad" chip anyway.
 
monkeydelmagico

monkeydelmagico

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2011
3,961
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why yes, yes you did lose the silicon lottery with a 4.0ghz 2500k. It's one of the worst OC's for that chip I've ever seen. But you got it in 2011. And it still works. And it still games like a champ even at 4.0. Wait, what, maybe you won?
 
PliotronX

PliotronX

Diamond Member
Oct 17, 1999
8,883
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Ya know what I like to do when I hit a wall in OC?

A2n2AZl.jpg
 
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soccerballtux

Lifer
Dec 30, 2004
12,553
2
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monkeydelmagico said:
why yes, yes you did lose the silicon lottery with a 4.0ghz 2500k. It's one of the worst OC's for that chip I've ever seen. But you got it in 2011. And it still works. And it still games like a champ even at 4.0. Wait, what, maybe you won?
Click to expand...
he's complaining about 4ghz? 4ghz is a fine overclock, perfectly within the bounds of normal. They always have headroom
 
Majcric

Majcric

Golden Member
May 3, 2011
1,409
65
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Just curious OP, what are you trying to achieve with your overclock? If it's for gaming I didn't notice enough difference worth talking about going from 4.0-4.5 on my 2500k. So I just went back to 4ghz. It does help in benchmarking and perhaps certain applications.
 
Ketchup

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
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Chaotic0ne said:
I'm using a Gigabyte Z68x UD4 B3 with Bios Version F8. I've been having issues getting a stable overclock on my I5 2500k, so would updating the bios possibly have any effect on increasing stability? The way I see it is it couldn't get much worse than it already is. If there is even a slight possibility I could get a more stable OC with a new bios, I'm gonna go for it.
Click to expand...

No, the only updates are for newer CPU's and and upgrade to the UEFI BIOS (which I would not recommend.)
 
BonzaiDuck

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,558
1,983
126
monkeydelmagico said:
why yes, yes you did lose the silicon lottery with a 4.0ghz 2500k. It's one of the worst OC's for that chip I've ever seen. But you got it in 2011. And it still works. And it still games like a champ even at 4.0. Wait, what, maybe you won?
Click to expand...

That it is -- or it seems to be. I still keep thinking that it might be something else, as we've discussed so far. Charlie98's experience is interesting from this point of view. And Ketchup has a point: we'd be curious about other empirical facts of the configuration.

Soccerball is right, though. At least for the spec settings, Intel tests those chips up with wazoo. I suppose I'll revisit the web-page for that motherboard, just to refresh my memory about it.

It may just be the case that there ARE underperforming chips, and the OP just got one from that cohort of the statistical distribution. In my case, if I drew two chips -- a 2600K and a 2700K -- and they clock and volt about the same, it only suggests that I got a couple draws from a better part of that distribution. And it's always possible that the greatest likelihoods in the distribution come from better-performing chips.

I guess "K" means that you can change the multiplier, but you can't always anticipate that your multiplier setting will work out for you.
 
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