OC questions for new rig

[JayC]

Hello ladies and gents and happy halloween.

 

I just got my new computer up and running and have some questions to all you that knows more about overclocking and computer builds than me.

 

So here's the specs first:

 

Case: Zalman Z12 Plus (3 12" fans included one intake at the front one out in top at back and one out in back.

Motherboard: ASUS Z170-p D3

CPU: i5 6600k 3,5Mhz

Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer i30

GPU: ASUS GTX 970 Strix

PSU: Corsair VS550 80 Plus

RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866 CL10

Windows 7 Ultimate

 

So that should be a pretty solid setup imo, or at least I think it is.

So first off, I'm not looking to overclock this thing heavily at all...just want to get some extra free juice squeezed out of it.

 

I have started to OC it and got some results but I'm a bit confunded about almost all of it. First I tried the motherboards own built in auto OC profiles and wizard, but the machine wouldn't even start...might be that the PSU is too low in wattage. So I skipped that and tried to go manual. I read up a bit on overclocking and decided to start with some basic setings.

 

What I first did was raise the BCLK (base clock) frequency from 100 to 110MHz, that gave me some boost, but the temperatures where way too high, the system was stable, but the temperature was going over 90 degrees celsius, so I shut down and lowered it to 105MHz, that gave me better temperatures. So I tried to raise the multiplier insted, and BIOS told me that i would get 4,4GHz from the processor. So I loaded up windows, ran some torture tests and it was stable, but temperature hit 84 on full load. Now one of the weird things is that HWmonitor says the cores are running at 4,4GHz but when I check windows basic properties it still says 3,5GHz...but passmark clearly gave me better scores so I'm figuring windows doesn't realize the CPU is running higher than normal.

 

Ok...so all is pretty ok, except for a few things...the temperatures seem way too high at all times to me...it's idling at about 30-35C and some basic loads puts it to 50C, but torture tests throws it to 90C...that seems a too high for that cooler to me. The other thing that is odd to me is that I noticed I have Turbo activated in BIOS, and the BIOS is telling me that the Turbo cpu frequency will be 4,4MHz, but when checking with HWmonitor it states that all cores are 4,4MHz all the time...now i checked with CPU-Z and that tells me it's 3,5 all the time...weird. So should I shut off turbo when overcklocking?

 

Any help with what I should do is appreciated...maybe I should reapply thermal paste? There is difinitely enough air moving inside the case with the 3 12" case fans plus the PSU fan at the bottom.

 

Thanks!

[JayC]

Ok...I scratched everything I had done and simply raised the multiplier and ram speed a bit...so at the moment it's sitting at 4,2Ghz with core temps under 65C...so a vast improvement.

 

But something is still fishy...both windows and CPU-Z says that my CPU is running at 3,5GHz with a multiplier of 35 (which is what this CPU is running stock) but both HWMonitor and Real Temp says it's at 4,2GHz just like I set it. What does this mean?

[JayC]

Yeah, seems windows doesn't show the real speed anymore, it used to in windows xp at least on one of my older rigs. But maybe it doesn't understand speedstep and whatever other stuff there is nowadays.

 

I still noticed something weird with the settings. I had even worse performence test results than with the default bios settings so it definitely didn't work, so I started back once more...raised the base clock to 105 and multiplier to 40...now CPU-Z says 4,2GHz, and the best results so far with temps around 70C, I think I'll leave it at that at least for now. The weird thing is that I have turbo enabled to get it working at all...maybe this MB needs a new BIOS or something but I'm at the latest right now.

 

I think I won't get another ASUS MB...the settings are much harder to understand than on the MSI MB's I installed earlier this year.