Trade a 3770 for mildly OC'd 2600K?

gipper53

Member
Apr 4, 2013
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My current desktop has a 3770 (non K) in a Z77 mobo. At work we are repurposing some older CAD workstations to "general office" boxes. These stations have 2600K CPUs, and the IT guy is cool with me swapping one out if I want to.

I have a Hyper 212 Evo cooler and a Corsair CX430 in my PC. The PSU is powering a GTX 960 4GB, 2 SSDs and a single HD. I have four fans in the case counting the cooler. Will these support an overclock in the 4.3-4.5 Ghz range on the 2600K? I'm more concerned with the PSU handling the power needs safely with overclocking.

Will I see any tangible CPU gains with this swap? Editing camera RAW files in Photoshop is my primary "power user" work. I'm not willing to spend cash upgrading the PSU or cooling to take the 2600K to the limits. This is something I can do for free, just wondering if it's worth the hassle or I should stick with what I've got until it's time to build a whole new box? That will probably be 2018 as the current PC handles my needs just fine.

What would you do?
 
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Geforce man

Golden Member
Oct 12, 2004
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I would not. If you have a board that is capable of o/c, a p67, z68, z77, you can go up to 4 bins higher, so you'd have 4200Mhz on all cores on your 3770. I'd do that, for the free 400Mhz gain.
 

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
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I would take the 2600k. You only need to gain 200 MHz to make it faster, plus maybe another 200 MHz to make it worthwhile.
 

.vodka

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3770 can be overclocked up to 4 bins, yet the turbo rules remain (+400 MHz 1 core, 300 mhz 2 core, etc). 2600k is effectively unlocked and can easily do >4.5GHz on all cores. Photoshop is going to love that. As for the cooling you've got, that 212 Evo won't have problems with a 4.5GHz 2600k, neither your PSU because of the 960's low power consumption.
 
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cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
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I wouldnt be arsed..
1. You would gain next to nothing
2. Is your time free?
3. There is always a chance, miniscule perhaps, that you will foobar something in the swap.
- If it aint broken, dont fix it.
- Use the time to spoil your girlfriend instead and get some.
 

gipper53

Member
Apr 4, 2013
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Thanks for the replies, everyone. Think I might just leave it be for now. The machine is running great, and as said: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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You lose PCIE version 3.0 with a Sandy Bridge (K or non-K) -- whether the board is Z68/gen3 or Z77. If you want to tinker and violate the "ain't broke don't fixit" maxim, you can OC a 2600K -- a good one -- to 4.7 with a better cooler than a 212 EVO. But for that, with a budget of $80, I wouldn't cheap out on the cooler.

I HAD a used, un-abused i5-3570K that I picked up in a bundle. We had a Z77-A motherboard, and if I'd left the Ivy Bridge socketed in the Sabertooth Z77 board in the same bundle with 16GB of XMS DDR3-1600, I would've been able to overclock it and reap benefits. I damaged the socket when I was fiddling with the board. I gave the Ivy to my brother with the Z77-A -- all stock-clocked. I might have kept it, put it in a Z68/Gen3 board, and had some OC wonderfulness. Together with the PCIE v.3.0.

But if you really want to build a great system, you'd want that PCIE v.3.0.

For the OP's case, I can't make up my mind what I'd do in his situation. This because I'm an OC addict.
 
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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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For the OP's case, I can't make up my mind what I'd do in his situation. This because I'm an OC addict.
The OP would see so little benefit (if any) by going from 4.1Ghz IV to 4.5Ghz SB that it's really not worth it unless doing this out of pure tinkering pleasure.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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The OP would see so little benefit (if any) by going from 4.1Ghz IV to 4.5Ghz SB that it's really not worth it unless doing this out of pure tinkering pleasure.

Well . . . I guess that's what I implied no less. I personally tend to exceed the boundaries of practicality with this stuff.

One reason I was never that enthused about Ivy Bridge was the general motivation to de-lid it. But it is still a more impressive chip than the Sandy. Slightly more, anyway. The Sandy overclocks better by a hair in some tests I'd seen.
 

Denithor

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Apr 11, 2004
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Ivy has about 5% over Sandy IPC.
Your i7 3770 will easily do 4.3GHz on all four cores with very simple setting in BIOS.
4.3GHz * 1.05 = 4.5GHz (about equal to average overclock on SB quads)
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Ivy has about 5% over Sandy IPC.
Your i7 3770 will easily do 4.3GHz on all four cores with very simple setting in BIOS.
4.3GHz * 1.05 = 4.5GHz (about equal to average overclock on SB quads)

And he doesn't even have a "K!" I just wasn't enthused to fiddle around with it; I got the 3570K bundled with a board that I particularly wanted, then destroyed by accident. The used processor and the RAM were easily worth what I paid for the whole enchilada, so I can't cry about it. Since I just used it to build my brother's system, I don't bother with the overclocking, because it doesn't interest him. He's happier than a pig in s*** anyway.
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
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That's the thing, Ivy was the last generation where you could OC a non-K chip if you had it on a Z-chipset board. Options in BIOS allow to run at four bins over max turbo speed on all four cores. So the i7 3770, designed to run single core turbo speed of 3.9GHz, can be set to run at 4.3GHz on all four cores.
 

gipper53

Member
Apr 4, 2013
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Well gang, I decided not to do the 2600K swap but took the advice of the "unlock limited bins" on my 3770. Never even knew about that trick. My Gigabyte D3H board only allowed a max multiplier of 41, but it added some speed. Doing a benchmark on RAW to JPG exports from Photoshop, it made the process 5% faster taking several runs and averaging. Nothing to brag about, but hey...I'll take a free 5% speed bump. I got basically a free upgrade to a 4770!
 
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Ieat

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Jan 18, 2012
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You can probably get it to 4.2 by changing the base clock to 102.5. I have mine set up to 4.4 with 2 cores, 4.3 with 3 cores and 4.2 with all cores.
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
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I personally wouldn't touch a BCLK overclock, can do bad things to SATA drives & etc.