Question for Quizz or anyone else on Core i5-2500k

Comments

• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  April 2012

  If you want a large overclock, you should turn off Turbo Boost.

  You should probably make sure that the computer boots and programs install properly before you start overclocking.  If you overclock before even loading Windows and then things go wrong, you won't know if it's purely an unstable overclock or if something else is wrong.  There's no real need for a burn-in time at stock speeds, though.

  If you're looking to overclock the processor to 4.5 GHz, then you'd better get a motherboard, cooler, and power supply that can handle that sort of overclock.  The Corsair H60 that you mention should work fine.  A reasonably good power supply isn't that hard to get, either.  But don't go too cheap on the motherboard and get something that's really only meant to make the processor work at stock speeds.

  You can get a ballpark approximation of what sort of power delivery the motherboard has by counting the power phases.  Compare it to what the same brand has on the lowest end motherboards with the same chipset and various other boards in the same brand's lineup.  There better be quite a bit more there than the lowest end motherboards, as those aren't meant to handle much of an overclock.
• goouie Member Posts: 44

  April 2012

  here are the links to my MB and powersupply

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131701

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010

   

  also if I turn off the turbo boost that means that I run at 4.5 all the time? If I do that I dont mind even having it at around 4ghz, I just wanted it faster then what I was running which was a gigabyte 785 board and a phenom 965BE (stock3.4)

  
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507

  April 2012

  The motherboard and power supply can both handle any overclock that you might plausibly want to do, plus a lot of overclocks that you wouldn't plausibly want to do (e.g., phase change cooling), so you're set.

  My general advice on overclocking is that you don't do it until you come across some program where additional processor performance would be nice.  Otherwise, overclocking just means wasted energy and extra wear and tear on various components.

  Disabling turbo boost and setting the multiplier to 45 will mean that the processor runs at 4.5 GHz at load, but it will still clock down at idle (unless you disable C-states, which I wouldn't).  Going for 4.5 GHz will presumably require you to increase the voltage as well; how much more voltage depends on how lucky you are with the CPU die you got.

  You should also realize that 4.5 GHz is high enough that there's a substantial risk of damaging the processor from electromigration, even if you can keep temperatures down.  Thus, even if you can get a stable 4.5 GHz overclock today (as is highly probable), it might not still be stable at that clock speed a year or three from now.
• goouie Member Posts: 44

  April 2012

  thanks again for your input, I will be getting more speed then what I had originally so I am going to leave it at stock speeds for now, its just a gaming machine and I am going to be playing GW2 on it so it will handle that just fine. Always a pleasure Quizz