Help overclocking G3258 on a Asus Maximus VI Impact board

[ganons]

Built a budget PC for the 1st time for some emulation and I need help overclocking the CPU. I joined the Asus rog forums but it doesnt let me post yet. Here are my parts:

Asus Maximus VI Impact
Pentium G3258
HyperX FURY Series 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz CL10 DIMM
Be Quiet Pure Power L8-CM 430W PSU

Gets a bit confusing with voltage adjustment and ram speed. Is overclocking suite recommended or BIOS? I have a stock cooler and hoping ro reacg 4.2 ghz though Ive read some managed higher.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm surprised you spent $200 on a motherboard and $50 on a CPU, rather than the other way around. I suppose if it's just for emulation there wouldn't be much point in an i5, but I doubt you'll get much more out of it than with a $75 motherboard.

Anyway, to answer your question:

This guide is loosely what I followed when overclocking my brother's Haswell i5 system, and should answer most of your questions. Things might be labeled slightly differently in your bios, but it shouldn't be much more different than that.

Some thoughts:

Don't overclock using baseclock/bclock, use multiplier adjustment.

You probably shouldn't touch your RAM speed. Just set it to what it's rated for and forget it.

Most people choose to use "offset" or "additional turbo voltage" when overclocking. As you increase your multiplier, you'll eventually become unstable. Increasing your voltage (via more offset) will give you stability at your chosen clocks. However, you probably don't want to exceed about 1.300v (as measured with CPU-Z from within Windows).

Try to avoid exceeding ~90-95c when stress testing. If you're getting above that, it's a good idea to back off your voltage and/or overclock a little.

I've used Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility to overclock with great success, but YMMV. Bios generally has more things you can play with to get the most out of your chip.

Most CPUs will do better than 4.2ghz without exceeding 1.300v, but it's a silicon lottery.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm surprised you spent $200 on a motherboard and $50 on a CPU, rather than the other way around.

Edit: My G3258s are on Gigabyte H81 boards that have a max vcore of 1.2v, and can't even manage a VRIN of 1.8v. I have them at 3.6Ghz (36x multi). I had them at 3.8Ghz initially, but they crashed doing DC.

 

[know of fence]

You may find the AT artictle about the Pentium, of interest, I used the table from it as a guideline, although I've had to set voltages that were on average 50 mV higher than those given, to achieve stability under torture test load.

You'll definitely need your motherboard OC software just to get an overview of the features and you can use it for a quick auto-OC, later you can move to set things in the BIOS. AT likely used a good chip and an expensive cooler to get those results, gotta temper your expectations, especially if you are going to use Intel's iGPU.

Also I really hope you invested in an aftermarket cooler, 40 bucks buys you completely silent running @ 3.8 GHz at stock voltages around 50°C, never exceeding 60°C.

 

[ganons]

Thanks guys. I actually bought the mobo from ebay listed as untested and after a bios flashback it came alive. Got it for £46 ($72) delivered

Anyway Someone said this "If ur in the stock cooler dont mess with voltage just set the multiplier to 40. Test that then increase it 1 at a time until it fails.

And No just leave it at 1866mhz or even better set it to 1600mhz but with tighter timing."

 

[Leyawiin]

I actually bought the mobo from ebay listed as untested and after a bios flashback it came alive. Got it for £46 ($72) delivered

Good deal! Folks around here tend to shoot first and ask questions later.

 

[know of fence]

Thanks guys. I actually bought the mobo from ebay listed as untested and after a bios flashback it came alive. Got it for £46 ($72) delivered

Anyway Someone said this "If ur in the stock cooler dont mess with voltage just set the multiplier to 40. Test that then increase it 1 at a time until it fails.

And No just leave it at 1866mhz or even better set it to 1600mhz but with tighter timing."

That's good advice, almost everyone (including myself) begins like that just turning those dials. What will inevitably happen is you get error messages and various blue screens, either immediately or after a while. At that point you will start to wonder if you broke stuff already. Then you will hopefully find a way to restore BIOS to defaults, and not OC for a while.

This first lesson is called instability, where you learn the value of a steady running system and then develop a need to know and an ability to test if your PC is stable or rather if your settings allow it to run without incidents.

Granted you don't need to learn by trial and error, but you also need not read every guide available, though the one posted by Yuriman is very informative.

 

[ganons]

So I tried yesterday and increased the multiplier to 40 loaded dolphin emulator which is cpu intensive and noticed on coretemp that the cpu speeds fluctutates from 799, 2xxx, and 3999. Is it not supposed to be fixed at 3999 through out?

 

[Flapdrol1337]

If it stays at 4 during stresstests like prime it's just clocking up and down on demand.

 

[ganons]

Is it mandatory to do stress test as I remember Linus (youtube guy) saying its not best to do it

 

[know of fence]

So I tried yesterday and increased the multiplier to 40 loaded dolphin emulator which is cpu intensive and noticed on coretemp that the cpu speeds fluctutates from 799, 2xxx, and 3999. Is it not supposed to be fixed at 3999 through out?

Your motherboard is preset to Adaptive mode, this allows it to use power saving features like Speedstep to change frequency and voltage depending on load. More importantly adaptive mode can increase voltage to Asus specified values, even when you just change the multiplier.

In fact if you run at 4.0 GHz now, your motherboard likely cranked up the voltage already, way beyond "stock" but within certain limits. There actually is no setting that is "stock", you can only set "Auto" or a number.

The next thing you do is determine what stock means for your CPU, you can look up Vcore in CPU-Z, or your motherboard software when the CPU is at full load. You can check VCore for 40x multiplier as well as return the CPU to 32x and check actual "stock" voltage, compare and write them down.

Then you set Vcore in the bios to whatever number you determined earlier. You completed your first OC by setting both voltage and frequency.

The next step, the actual fine tuning requires new software to monitor temperatures, fan speed and stress test the cpu, and some commitment on your part, taking notes, reading up on stuff.

I actually prefer adaptive mode for daily use because it runs cool when not loaded and saves power, but to achieve the highest OC the guide doesn't recommend it. Knowing your frequency and voltage you can move on to "Override mode" that fixes your frequency. Also by default windows "performance mode" will keep the CPU from lowering clock frequency, this mode can be set in Windows Power Management or from the motherboard software, though again I go with standard or "balanced mode" for daily use.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Is it mandatory to do stress test as I remember Linus (youtube guy) saying its not best to do it

If you don't test there's a bigger chance of random crashes, corrupt data, ect.

If you don't handle important data and don't mind a crash once in a while I guess you don't have to. But I'd still do some, crashes or a corrupt install are annoying.

 

[Yuriman]

There's nothing wrong with stress testing. Stress testing is just finding out more quickly than just using it normally, whether or not the settings you've chosen will have random errors and crashes.

 

[soccerballtux]

You may find the AT artictle about the Pentium, of interest, I used the table from it as a guideline, although I've had to set voltages that were on average 50 mV higher than those given, to achieve stability under torture test load.

You'll definitely need your motherboard OC software just to get an overview of the features and you can use it for a quick auto-OC, later you can move to set things in the BIOS. AT likely used a good chip and an expensive cooler to get those results, gotta temper your expectations, especially if you are going to use Intel's iGPU.

Also I really hope you invested in an aftermarket cooler, 40 bucks buys you completely silent running @ 3.8 GHz at stock voltages around 50°C, never exceeding 60°C.

this is actually pretty tempting

how's the per core IPC compare to FX?

 

[VirtualLarry]

this is actually pretty tempting

how's the per core IPC compare to FX?

Uhh, much, much better?

Does this mean that you might become a "G3258 troll" too, as you put it?

 

[ganons]

Had two bsods yesterday while using dolphin emulator about 15 mins in. Once at 4ghz and 4.2 ghz, both times the only thing I did was changing the multiplier to 40 and 42. So the next step would be to manually set voltage rate?

 

[know of fence]

Had two bsods yesterday while using dolphin emulator about 15 mins in. Once at 4ghz and 4.2 ghz, both times the only thing I did was changing the multiplier to 40 and 42. So the next step would be to manually set voltage rate?

You need to find out what your V core is at your current multiplier and at 3.2 GHz, just to get an idea of the numbers, as well as to know what the motherboard is doing when set on Auto. You can either use CPU-Z or your motherboard software.

 

[crashtech]

I didn't see overheating with the G3258 and stock cooler if voltages were kept within reason, but some overclock well and others don't. I had one that would do 4.8 easily, and another that would barely do 4.0. You probably need more voltage and that is OK within reason, especially if you are actively monitoring CPU temps.

Don't they supply the copper-cored cooler with the G3258? It should handle all but the most extreme OC for a dual core.

 

[know of fence]

I didn't see overheating with the G3258 and stock cooler if voltages were kept within reason, but some overclock well and others don't. I had one that would do 4.8 easily, and another that would barely do 4.0. You probably need more voltage and that is OK within reason, especially if you are actively monitoring CPU temps.

Don't they supply the copper-cored cooler with the G3258? It should handle all but the most extreme OC for a dual core.

Do you recall, what the default/auto (32x) voltage on that Pentium you got to 4.9 GHz was? Or maybe you have and would like to share a neat table with voltages and temps, just like Ian from AT. Also you've apparently tested the stock heatsink as well as the Coolermaster 212 Evo and didn't notice like a 20 degree C difference?

 

[crashtech]

Do you recall, what the default/auto (32x) voltage on that Pentium you got to 4.9 GHz was? Or maybe you have and would like to share a neat table with voltages and temps, just like Ian from AT. Also you've apparently tested the stock heatsink as well as the Coolermaster 212 Evo and didn't notice like a 20 degree C difference?

I didn't record any of that information, but due to a timely stroke of luck, I have that same CPU back in my possession. I might do some testing this weekend, but not sure where to post it. A new thread?

 

[ganons]

You need to find out what your V core is at your current multiplier and at 3.2 GHz, just to get an idea of the numbers, as well as to know what the motherboard is doing when set on Auto. You can either use CPU-Z or your motherboard software.

Loaded up Dolphin, cpu at stock and it looked like it was at top speed and the Core VID read 1.088 V. This was with bios defaults. So what do you recommend next?

 

[know of fence]

I didn't record any of that information, but due to a timely stroke of luck, I have that same CPU back in my possession. I might do some testing this weekend, but not sure where to post it. A new thread?

Why isn't there a Pentium topic (like an Anniversary Edition Anonymous or a Proud Pwners of Pentium) a safe environment to ask simple questions, and compare results. I remember people complaining about too many threads started. But it's really not just cheap and cheerful, the huge range from 3.2 to 4.x GHz warrants discussion. Also even though the G3258 was out for a while, I think it may get a second wind, now that we know that potential Broadwell upgrade/replacement isn't all that bad.

 

[StrangerGuy]

You could have a $10000 mobo with over 9000 power phases and still might not break 4GHz with a G3528, even when bargain basement boards are offically specced to handle much higher TDP 4790Ks. They are just that crappy binned, end of story.

 

[richierich1212]

With the 4 G3258s I've tested they all hit 4.2GHz fairly easily with ~1.15vcore with the included stock cooler.

 

[know of fence]

Loaded up Dolphin, cpu at stock and it looked like it was at top speed and the Core VID read 1.088 V. This was with bios defaults. So what do you recommend next?

1.088 V sounds about right (a little high maybe). Even 0.01 Volts changes have a measurable impact on power consumption and heat, you should avoid going close or over 1.350 V. Because changing voltage and loading a cpu pretty much heats it instantly, you need a software that can reliably measure temperatures.
Many people use RealTemp because it shows temperatures for both cores as well as records a maximum. You can use the portable version without installation, you'd have to create a shortcut to the desktop yourself to the "RealTemp" executable because you'll be using it quite a bit.
http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/
So what are the maximum temperatures for each of the two cores after, you stressed the cpu for a while?