Overclocking
Overclocking
Overclocking and tweaking then. Always invest in good hardware by the way (MOBO/PSU/Memory/Cooling), the cheaper motherboards are often not well tuned for enthusiast overclocking. Also get yourself a good power supply and proper processor cooling. Overclocking with a more core processor (doesn't matter if that is Intel or AMD) is far more difficult than you'd expect it to be.
Overclocking multi-core on a high clock frequency is a relatively easy to do job, and can be best managed from the BIOS.
BIOS Overclocking
The Guru3D reader-base overclocks mostly from the BIOS to try and find the maximum stable limit. The generic overclock procedure for multiplier based overclocking is as follows:
- Leave base clock (bus) for what it is right now (100 MHz)
- Set the per core multiplier at a maximum of your liking:
- Example 1: 100MHz x 45 = 4500 MHz
- Example 2: 125MHz x 37 = 4625 MHz
- Increase CPU voltage; though AUTO often works fine on many motherboards you can do it manually as well. Start at 1.30 volts and work your way upwards into a state of equilibrium in perf and cooling temps.
- Make sure your processor is properly cooled as adding voltage = more heat
- Save and Exit BIOS / uEFI
In our case we got all cores running at 4500 MHz, however this results in tremendous power consumption and heat levels. Our Corsair LCS cooler is not capable of cooling the proc enough as shown below. In the end, we settled with a x45 multiplier, ~1.25 Volts and obviously we enabled the XMP profile on the memory for quad-channel 3600 MHz.
Um yeah, we aborted overclocking as at 4500 Mhz / 1.25 Volts the 10 cores reached ~100 Degrees C. We did finish one CB15 run though, close to a 2400 CB score.
** in general the latest BIOS updates have lowered power consumption a small notch when overclocked as we can now tweak to 4.5 Ghz with just 1.25 Volts on the CPU. Also performance overall is more consistent. Tweaked things remain a challenge, but slowly and steadily the early release issues are settling down.
Power Consumption
Adding extra voltage on the CPU for the OC also has an extra adverse effect on the overall energy consumption.
