Sandy-E OC questions

[moonbogg]

OK, I got a 3930K @ 4.3 and i'm happy, but this isn't about me. I have a friend who is considering a sandy-E build and he thinks he can achieve 5.2ghz or more 24/7 stable with a powerful water cooling setup. I am trying to help him calibrate his expectations.

Questions:

Is over 5ghz 24/7 a reasonable expectation regardless of temps? If you can cool it, can this be expected?

Does buying a 3960 or 3970 give you a healthier chip and allow higher clocks?

I told him 3930K was as good as the others, but i'm not sure about increased OCability due to healthier silicon.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Intel's binning only guarantees what they are rated for. So getting a more expensive chip only guarantees that it'll go to whatever it's has at stock. Getting over 5GHz is... very difficult, and is only really possible long term with a VERY good chip (as in, you'd have to buy dozens until you struck gold in the "silicon lottery"). Even with good cooling, you'll eventually run into a voltage cap, and the chip will die simply from having too much pushed through it.

 

[Torn Mind]

I would think that surface area would be important in heat dissipation.

For that high of an overclock, he might need to go with a phase change system.

 

[Idontcare]

Is over 5ghz 24/7 a reasonable expectation regardless of temps? If you can cool it, can this be expected?

Getting over 5GHz on a quad-core SB like the 2600k or 2700k is pretty uncommon, and those would be generating 2/3 the heat of a SB-E.

I can't imagine it would be common or even realistic with anything less than sub-ambient cooling.

 

[guskline]

OK, I got a 3930K @ 4.3 and i'm happy, but this isn't about me. I have a friend who is considering a sandy-E build and he thinks he can achieve 5.2ghz or more 24/7 stable with a powerful water cooling setup. I am trying to help him calibrate his expectations.

Questions:

Is over 5ghz 24/7 a reasonable expectation regardless of temps? If you can cool it, can this be expected?

Does buying a 3960 or 3970 give you a healthier chip and allow higher clocks?

I told him 3930K was as good as the others, but i'm not sure about increased OCability due to healthier silicon.

moonbogg:
Tell your friend to sign up on the forum and start asking his own questions. Seriously, I don't even own a 3930k or up and you do. You know that reaching such high speeds 24/7 stable is almost impossible. Why isn't he happy with the speeds you are running?

A 3930k at 4.3Ghz like yours is a freakin rocket ship in my book.:biggrin:

 

[Fx1]

why does he need single threaded performance of 5ghz? If he wants 5GHZ then he should get a 3770k and not an hex CPU.

 

[BrightCandle]

2011 overclocks worse than the 1155 for a variety of reasons. The magic overclocks you see around the internet are all based on a stepping of CPU that never reach retail, the retail chips are no where near that good. 4.5GHz is much more realistic for an under water overclock on SB-E. You will very quickly hit extreme voltages going past that point and that will kill the chip quickly.

A few chips do better and are stable but its very rare and 5.2Ghz is not going to happen on water. Phase change should do it but obviously the chip wont last very long (minutes, hours, days, weeks, maybe months, doubtful a year).

 

[Grooveriding]

5.2ghz is the cream of the crop chips for SB-E. It's very rare for a locked in and used all the time system overclock. You'd be lucky to get a chip that can even do that at a sane voltage, regardless of the water cooling setup.

Mine can do 5ghz with 1.53V and gets obscenely hot when being stressed, and my chip is a pretty good clocking SB-E; 4.8ghz at 1.39V. 5.2ghz is a pipe dream most likely.

 

[moonbogg]

All great replies, thank you. I suspected it was a far reach to hit something like that as a regular OC, especially on Sandy-E. I'll pass on the bad news to him, lol.

 

[Rifter]

As long as he goes top notch water cooling or phase and is willing to go through 100-200 CPU's perhaps even more to get to that cream of the crop chip it should be possible.

Just realize that this could cost him $100,000 to buy the cooling parts and CPU's but he could make most of that back selling the CPU's that didnt make the cut. Either way the initial investment would be massive.