i7 920 OC questions

[bigboxes]

Specs: Win 7, Intel i7 920 D0, Asus P6T Deluxe v2, Seasonic M12-850, Thermalright Ultra-120, Super Talent DDR3 1600 (additional info in rig sig)

1. When running prime95 what are safe temp ranges when OCing? It's been two months since I played around with the cpu. It set off the alarm on my mobo so I just set it back to stock. I was wondering what the range of safe temps were and that maybe I just needed to change the alarm settings in the bios.

2. Do I need to turn off turbo before OCing?

 

[SanDiegoPC]

Watching coreTemp 0.995 as I run Prime 95, it turns the numbers orange as it gets over 80 degrees Celsius. So I'm sure anything in the 70's is fine. Turbo is up to you.

 

[dank69]

85c is the 'official' max your cores should reach under load. You can run higher than that but it will likely shorten your cpu's lifetime.

 

[2March]

My advice is to keep it below 80 degrees under full load. I still suspect my C0 to get unstable above 80. Better be safe then sorry.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

85c is the 'official' max your cores should reach under load. You can run higher than that but it will likely shorten your cpu's lifetime.

My advice is to keep it below 80 degrees under full load. I still suspect my C0 to get unstable above 80. Better be safe then sorry.

Yep. It would be a darn shame to cut the life of our chips from 100 years, to 5. Wowzer!!

My opine is that as long as it's stable, run it as hard as you want. I could be ~very~ wrong but I think that the majority of us replace these chips long before they stop working. Just my two cents' worth ....

 

[2March]

Yep. It would be a darn shame to cut the life of our chips from 100 years, to 5. Wowzer!!

My opine is that as long as it's stable, run it as hard as you want. I could be ~very~ wrong but I think that the majority of us replace these chips long before they stop working. Just my two cents' worth ....

That used to work about 8 years ago. These new procs can hit their limits a lot sooner. Anand has many articles about the subject.

 

[exar333]

I would also agree to keep the temps maxing out in the 70s. My C0 peaks at 74 (w/ ~25 ambient temps) at 4.0ghz, but only 67 at 3.8ghz. I decided to be safe and keep it at 3.8 and keep the temps down. Although I haven't OCd a D0 yet, these i7's seem to hit a point of very diminishing returns. 4.0ghz is great in a sig, but I can live with it 200mhz lower, and more manageable temps.

 

[Markfw]

At 3.9, mine is a nice 60-62c max, depending on the ambient. @100% load with HT on.