Who is throttling their CPU and voltage while overclocking sandybridge?

[Rvenger]

I am currently at 4.2ghz using speedstep but I have the itch to take it a bit further. I just want to know how everyone else is running their overclocked setup. I hear that some people are at full speed 24/7 and some are throttling the CPU and voltages.

My MSI P67A-C43(B3) does not have the option to throttle voltages over 1.28v(auto setting).

Thanks for your input in advance

 

[bntran02]

I'm running 4.4Ghz full time without touching voltage. Everything else is left on auto which may mean that voltages are dynamically changed (i dont know...). My temps range from 35F idle to 55F at full load with Zalman CNPS9900MAX.

I also have a very similar board to yours (MSI P67A-G43)

 

[Kenmitch]

With my 2500K I choose to throttle both the speed and voltage of my chip.

I don't see any need to hard lock a overclock anymore. I always skip that step in the overclocking guides as I kinda feel like it's cheating the stability gods

Example: Idle's at 1.6ghz (1.00v) Fully loaded 4.4ghz (1.31v)

 

[Mr Dohz]

For my 2600k

On load 4.5ghz , 1.28v
On idle 1.6ghz , 0.9xx v

 

[Diogenes2]

I hear that some people are at full speed 24/7....
...

Do you have any examples of this ?

What would be the point of running at full speed, when not running some program like Folding@Home ?

 

[MrTransistorm]

Do you have any examples of this ?

What would be the point of running at full speed, when not running some program like Folding@Home ?

At higher multipliers it may be necessary to run it 24/7 with fixed Vcore and power-saving features disabled.

I have gotten my 2600K to work at 5GHz with offset voltage and power-saving features enabled. However, the Vcore was higher than I'm comfortable with, and I wasn't convinced of the stability. The instability comes for most people at these high OC's due to the Vcore not responding fast enough to load changes or dropping too low at idle. A robust VRM on the motherboard should help, though.

Power-saving features are definitely feasible at slightly lower multipliers. My usual OC is at 4.7GHz with Vcore at Normal and DVID (offset) at +0.070V. This is with Turbo, HT, and power-saving features enabled (EIST and C1e).

Currently I'm at 4.5GHz because I'm folding. There was nothing wrong with the 4.7GHz settings, but the heat this month has been oppressive. My CPU is under water now, but even so it was hitting mid-70's C at x47. Dropping to x45 dropped the temps to the upper 60's.

 

[Rvenger]

Do you have any examples of this ?

What would be the point of running at full speed, when not running some program like Folding@Home ?

I wish I could find them for you but I have searched over the months and some people run full speed/voltage 24/7. I think I might sell my MSI board and get an ASRock Z68 so I can overclock higher without running at full blast. I cannot get over 4.2ghz @1.28v but I can run 4.5ghz @ 1.32v stable.

 

[Seero]

What I don't understand is why do people still have their PC up 24/7 and disable all power saving features. Consider my PC slow, but it only takes 20 seconds from cold boot to chrome in under 20 seconds. If hibernate is active, it takes less then 5 seconds.

If it is winter, I understand, but it is summer now...

 

[yottabit]

I built a friend a 2500k build recently (my first experience with SB). He very specifically wanted a stock volt overclock but I explained to him that the auto setting would raise the voltage until it was stable, and we basically agreed to lock it at stock voltage and see how high we could go (unfortunately his mobo didn't have offsets or limits) and ended up hitting 4.1 or 4.2 I think. I gave him my old CM 212+ and it runs very cool- like 55 deg C under Prime95

Also, he puts his computer to sleep whenever he isn't using it and he doesn't pay for his electrical bill, so we didn't feel too bad about locking the voltage

I was mostly concerned about the overclock over time (he plans on using this for many years). He has no idea how to overclock and I can see over a couple years the chip degrading and requiring more and more voltage until it could rise to unsafe levels. This way in a worst case scenario he'd just get a BSOD or something

 

[Rvenger]

Well the good news is that I have a friend at work that wants to buy my P67 MSI board because he doesn't plan on over clocking and wants to use a i5 2400 with discrete graphics. So I gave him a good deal on the board and I ordered a Gigabyte Z68A-D3-B3. Hopefully I will be able to hit 4.5 24/7 as planned.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

is it wise to throttle if your OC voltages are barely stable? I know in i7 overclocking (x58) I was told to turn off throttling, but sometimes I'm kinda annoyed at my 180W idle power consumption. During the summer especially the room kinda heats up too, so I'd like to keep power use to a minimum. If throttling doesn't hurt stability, perhaps I'd like to look into this. I'm barely 4ghz stable on my i7 930. I know if I drop voltages another 0.015, I'll start failing linpack (though its still at least 2 hrs stable).

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

is it wise to throttle if your OC voltages are barely stable? I know in i7 overclocking (x58) I was told to turn off throttling, but sometimes I'm kinda annoyed at my 180W idle power consumption. During the summer especially the room kinda heats up too, so I'd like to keep power use to a minimum. If throttling doesn't hurt stability, perhaps I'd like to look into this. I'm barely 4ghz stable on my i7 930. I know if I drop voltages another 0.015, I'll start failing linpack (though its still at least 2 hrs stable).

I know that its harder to maintain a good overclock with speedstep enabled on older architectures like 775, 1156, and 1366. I'm thinking about enabling speedstep for 24/7 but there is still that stigma in the back of my mind that something could go wrong since it's not like you can really test to see how it will work while downclocked with stress testing.

From the messing around that I've done speedstep seems to work fine but I haven't tried it for the long term. It should work fine since its not like you're touching the base clock or fsb but there is just still that stigma in the back of my mind.