overclocking sandy bridge? what's the best way?

neosapien

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Dec 23, 2007
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I'm also using the P8P67 Pro and would like to overclock, but I don't want to go over the stock voltage. It seems that there are a ton of ways to overclock on this board. How do I simply increase the turbo multiplier as high as it will stably go on stock voltage?
 

neosapien

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Dec 23, 2007
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Because at a $10 premium over the regular 2500, I see no need to agonize over whether to go K or non-K. And I bought this 2500K + P8P67 Pro bundle for $360 at Micro Center, and I doubt they had a $350 bundle for a regular 2500 and P8P67 Pro. And it's possible that a 2500K would OC to a higher multiplier, even at stock voltage, than a regular 2500. And a 2500K will likely resell for higher on eBay when it comes time to upgrade and sell off the old hardware. And in the future I might become more adventurous and decide to overvolt my CPU.

Really, there are a lot of reasons why one would choose to spend $10 more (or in my case with a Micro Center nearby, spend less money) to buy a K.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
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I would worry about the voltages that the Asus tuner uses.

Even with voltages set to "auto" my Asus board pushes them up as the multiplier goes up. Still, makes for a quick/easy OC into the 4GHz range.

ViviTheMage, try this: Enable Turbo multiplier adjustment in BIOS and set all four core settings to 43x. Don't touch anything else. Enjoy.

As much as I hate it when people say that such-and-such is "guaranteed" to overclock to XYZ amount, if ever there was a product like that, the 2500K/2600K are it. For the sake of "super-safe" voltages, I'd be pretty comfortable with anything in the low 4GHz range.
 

GR8Madmax

Senior member
Aug 9, 2001
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Watch this, the asus boards have an auto tuning feature that takes all the guess work out of overclocking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vBN-cBPs98


I agree with Shabby if you do not have much OC experience.

The Asus auto tuning feature does a good job of giving you a good but safe OC that will give you reasonable temps.

I had manually OC'd mine to 4.8ghz but that required 1.375v, extreme LLC and phase settings. That was only way I can get it Prime small FFT, blend, and Intelburn test (max settings) stable. Without that much volts/power, one of the OC tests would fail - usually the small FFT.

So I ended up deciding on 4.5ghz as a 24/7 OC and let the Asus utility do it's thing.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Asus utility will OC both your multiplier and BCLK. I personally only let it OC my multiplier to 45. It OC'd my BCLK to 103 but I just backed off in bios afterwards to 100.
 
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neosapien

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Dec 23, 2007
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I watched that video in its entirety a couple days ago, it mostly talks about their various autotuning overclock features that jump up the voltage a great deal, which isn't what I want at all.
 

GR8Madmax

Senior member
Aug 9, 2001
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I would worry about the voltages that the Asus tuner uses.

Even with voltages set to "auto" my Asus board pushes them up as the multiplier goes up. Still, makes for a quick/easy OC into the 4GHz range.

ViviTheMage, try this: Enable Turbo multiplier adjustment in BIOS and set all four core settings to 43x. Don't touch anything else. Enjoy.

As much as I hate it when people say that such-and-such is "guaranteed" to overclock to XYZ amount, if ever there was a product like that, the 2500K/2600K are it. For the sake of "super-safe" voltages, I'd be pretty comfortable with anything in the low 4GHz range.

Zap - The auto settings with my PRO doesn't go above 1.3v @ 4.5ghz. I thought 1.3v is good for 24/7 for these 32nm chips. Are you thinking it should be lower?

Edit: The chip normally idles at ~1.1v (1.6ghz).
 
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shabby

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I watched that video in its entirety a couple days ago, it mostly talks about their various autotuning overclock features that jump up the voltage a great deal, which isn't what I want at all.

It also shows how to manually adjust the multipliers, however not sure how far you'll get with stock voltage. What is your reasoning for not wanting to increase the voltage? The auto tuning is made to work with stock components even with that dinky little heatsink.
 
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neosapien

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Dec 23, 2007
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I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use "Maximum Turbo Ratio setting in BIOS" or "Maximum Turbo Ratio setting in OS", I assume BIOS. But then, if I set the turbo multiplier for a mild overclock, say 40 or 42, the auto cpu vcore voltage will probably boost it too high, which I don't want, I want stock voltage. But if I set the CPU manual voltage to 1.2V (I believe that's my VID), then I think that the CPU won't undervolt correctly when idle. Plus whatever other BIOS settings I may be forgetting.

My reasoning for not wanting to increase the voltage is that power usage and heat generation increase exponentially with voltage increases, and only linearly with cpu frequency increases. I'd much rather have a minor overclock with only linear increases in power usage and heat and performance, than a major overclock with major increases in same.
 

shabby

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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But then, if I set the turbo multiplier for a mild overclock, say 40 or 42, the auto cpu vcore voltage will probably boost it too high, which I don't want

That is quiet the "mild" overclock you're seeking on stock voltage, as for the auto cpu vcore thing im sure you can disable it in the bios. Anyway you're creating an issue out of nothing, go play with the bios settings, everything you need is there.