Overclocking i5 2500k

[eltiti55555]

What I am about to ask has probably been asked a million times, but I just want to make sure of everything before I take a step forward. I want to oc my CPU (no duh!), but I am not sure what would be the best settings for my mobo and CPU cooler; therefore you can look at my signature to see what I've got, and then one of you can refer me to a guide for dummies that will aid my needs Thanks!

Heatsink : Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus Direct Touch 4 Heatpipe Heatsink AM2 AM3 LGA1366 LGA1155 LGA1156 120MM

[Roby The Beast]

Its an easy shot! Desactivate all energie saver and turbo boost option. After that put the ram at their rated spec, put 1,35V of Vcore and put the cpu multiplicator at 45.

[eltiti55555]

Originally Posted by Roby The Beast

Its an easy shot! Desactivate all energie saver and turbo boost option. After that put the ram at their rated spec, put 1,35V of Vcore and put the cpu multiplicator at 45.

What program should I use to do this?

[Birk]

Originally Posted by eltiti55555

What program should I use to do this?

This is done in your BIOS settings when you first turn on your computer

[keto]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=P67A-UD4-B3+overclocking

[eltiti55555]

Originally Posted by keto

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=P67A-UD4-B3+overclocking

I come here because I know there are lots of experienced people on the matter, if I wanted to follow some random post from a mister nobody on the net, I wouldn't have spent around $200 on CPU.

[Roby The Beast]

Follow my instruction in the bios!

[Perineum]

This is how I would do it....

Leave energy saver alone. Having the CPU cycle down when not in use is an excellent thing.

Set the multiplier to 45 (every 2500K and 2600K I've seen can do that easy)

Test for stability with Prime95. If not stable then increase voltage from stock. (Some CPUs will actually require no voltage)

If not stable for (at least, imho) 8 hours then increase voltage until stable.

Your Hyper 212 should keep max temps in around the 60C range, I'm guessing.

[Roby The Beast]

Energie saver may cause the system unstable no?

[keto]

Originally Posted by Roby The Beast

Its an easy shot! Desactivate all energie saver and turbo boost option. After that put the ram at their rated spec, put 1,35V of Vcore and put the cpu multiplicator at 45.

Why would you want to disable the energy saving features? There's no need until you get way up into the realm of clock speeds that require more expensive/exotic cooling than what is presented here.

Also, disabling turbo (as Roby recommended) means your cpu is going to be full bore overclocked (and power consumption) all the time - SandyBridge (your 2500K and the P67 chipset) have built in features that make this totally unnecesary - the usual recommendation is to change the turbo multipliers (all cores) to the speed you want to see when overclocked, unless you have a reason you want 100% speed all the time.

Before you start, get yourself a hardware monitor program - CPUZ is the standard, but there are others - and a temperature monitor, like CoreTemp or RealTemp. All of those are free and bug/virus free.

You will also need one or more stability testing utilities:
-Prime95 in blend mode is the standard for this cpu/chipset combo. You want it to run at least 12 hours without errors, on all cores, at acceptable temperatures. It's not really 1 test but a long series of tests, that's why you run it for a while...20 minutes or 2 hours isn't completing the full test.
-Some people like IBT (Intel Burn Test) but my opinion is that all it really does is raise your temps. Sure, it can show an instability, but passing IBT isn't necessarily evidence of stability.

There are basically 2 ways you can go about it:

1) Use a utility, like Gigabyte's Easy Tunes 6. It's done from Windows, and allows you to manipulate most of the variables right from your desktop.

2) Do it from bios, which requires doing some reading to understand what the variables are that you will be changing - there are many more of them that can be fine tuned than what you find in a Windows based soloution.

Then you have to chose

2a) offset method, which requires a novel (and it has been written, I'm not going to repeat it here) to explain but generally uses less voltage and allows all the energy saving features to be fully utilized (cpu downclocks to 1600 at idle, at greatly reduced voltage)
2b) manual voltage

Voltage - Intel specifies max as 1.52v. Most people are scared as hell to get anywhere near there, but there's no reason to be PROVIDING YOU HAVE ADEQUATE COOLING. Who doesn't think Intel didn't build a little fudge factor into their number? They're not going to publish a number that's going to kill their cpus. Depends how high you want to overclock, my 2500K took 1.425v to be stable at 4.8 but every cpu is different and you may do better or worse. Lots of reports of people doing 5.0 around 1.5v long term, with great cooling.

Temp - Thermal throttling on the cpu starts at 95C, which means the cpu starts to shut itself off to save itself from overheating. Opinions again vary, but I use 80C as the max peak I like to see under full bench test load (Prime95 after a couple hours), others say 70C but that's pretty conservative. So, depends how conservative you want to be. But bench test load isn't generally a temp you're going to see in day to day usage - for example, if I was at 80C under P95, when I'm playing a game I'm only seeing 55-60C which is wayyyyy safe.

Also, if you're going to use manual/in bios settings, there's a tweak that a lot of people don't know about. P67 chipset can be (not always) a little fussy about RAM. If you set your speed, voltage, and timings to the RAM's manufacturer rating, you are more likely to achieve stability than if you leave RAM on auto. Also, the RAM runs on a subsystem voltage called either vtt (I believe that's what it is for Gigabyte) or vccio. Stock voltage for vtt is 1.05v, but if you are having difficulty getting a stable system try raising it to 1.10v and even up from there in .02v increments if necessary. General consensus is that 1.20v is safe for day to day usage.

Is that better?