Need help: Haswell 5960x OC on ASUS X99 Deluxe

[Earwax]

I got the ASUS X99 Deluxe, 32GB (4x8GB) GSkill 2400 DDR4 memory and the Nepton140XL closed loop cooler they used here for the review. I can't get this thing to OC well at all. Perhaps I'm just way too out of practice, maybe I should reset the CPU and redo the thermal paste.

Currently at stock when I run OCCT my cores are hitting the low to mid 60s. My idle temp is also around 33C. Am I doing something wrong?

I briefly tried putting the core voltage up to 1.2 and running it around 4GHz, but literally any increase in the voltage results in the cpu going overtemp in under a minute under stress testing.

Any suggestions? It's been a while since I put a system together.

Additional Specs:
EVGa Geforce Titan Black Signature Series
Corsair 1200i PSU
Samsung EVO 500GD SSD
Win 7 x64 Ultimate

 

[Earwax]

And the good old BIOS update over at ASUS has everything running 15C cooler. Im an idiot.

 

[Burpo]

Lol, no you're not! You figured it out didn't you?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Lol, no you're not! You figured it out didn't you?

Exactly!! +1 to that!!

Folks had been egging me on to upgrade my Z68 BIOS from #606 to the latest. I actually ordered the $10 PLCC BIOS chip revisions from ASUS, but never installed them. Even so, I'm still of the opinion that I didn't need to do it. Yet -- a BIOS revision can be a fairly easy thing without buying PLCC chips. I just had a bad memory of updating my 680i BIOS back in 2007.

That being said, I am watching members like Earwax in anticipation of my Haswell-E build -- planned for next year. What I've seen from sparse customer reviews: You can get to 4.4 Ghz on the lesser E processors (5820K and 5930K) on an AiO cooler and maybe -- marginally and by the skin of your teeth -- with an NH-D15. The indication seems to be this: 4.6 to 4.7 is attainable, with custom-water cooling.

Even so -- and right away -- I suspect that the Nepton 140XL may be too limp for this rodeo. Even the Nepton 280 surpasses the NH-D15 by only 5+C degrees in some benchmark tests, and I think the AiO coolers I'd seen in the "hearsay" results I cited were in the Nepton-280 class.

I think someone also said they could get a 5930K to 4.4 without changing the load VCORE.

The upshot of it -- I'm a freakin' vampire. I'm on a fixed personal budget under fixed income, and I make my choices like a certain President seems to choose foreign intervention.

That's partly why I'm not ordering parts for my project this year. I want to see reviews, BIOS revisions, over-clocking experiences -- triumphs and frustrations. that's the vampire part of it: I need guinea-pigs!! Forum posts and rants! You are all my test subjects! Heh-heh.

Also -- consider that the 5960X is the top-end 8-core processor, and those I've cited here are the 6-core offerings. I think I read somewhere in the last couple days that the extra cores really puts a hurt on OC efforts -- that from a review web-site.

Oh. And about the BIOS revision, ASUS and temperatures. This was the same thing that differentiated the original #505 Z68 BIOS from the #606. I remember that.