New overclocker but need fine tuning tips

[muellertr]

I just upgraded pc, 

have 850watt ocz power supply

msi z87-g45 gaming motherboard

core i5 4670k cpu

and 2 4gb sticks of corsair vengeance running on the xmp profile at the 1600 speed, in slots 2 and 4.

cpu cooler is phantec PH-TC12DX

graphics card is nvidia 660ti

the pc is almost solely used for gaming, 

 

 

i have got a stable overclock of 4.4 ghz after reading a ton and watching many videos, temps are what i think are good, aida64 stress test with stress cpu, stress fpu and stress cache turned on, only hits 60c. on cores at most and seems to work fine.  

 

my concern is only that i have no idea if everything i have set is safe, and if there is something i could set that would make it noticeably better.  dont even really feel i need the 4.4 yet, but want to have the profile saved for when i do want to use it.

 

I will post my currents settings to make it easy to review what i have come up with, just let me know if i have any major mistakes and for the 4.4, does it look good, it seems that if i lower any of the voltages that i have set, i crash so i think i have them as low as they can get with my currents settings anyway.

 

If it seems like i could set up another profile even higher than the 4.4, tips are gladly accepted on which settings and in what order i would want to change them, but that is only if you want to chime in on that, mainly, i want my 4.4 to be the best it can be!

 

cpu base clock (mhz)

100.000

current cpu base clock strap

1.000

adjust cpu base clock strap

auto

cpu base clock apply mode

next boot

cpu pcie pll

auto

filter pll

auto

adjust cpu ratio

44.000

adjusted cpu frequency

4400 mhz

cpu ratio mode

dynamic mode

eist

enabled

intel turbo boost

enabled

enhanced turbo

auto

legacy tweaking

disabled

adjust ring ratio

43.000

adjusted ring frequency

4300 mhz

dram reference clock

auto

dram frequency

auto

adjusted dram frequency

1600 mhz

extreme memory profile (x.m.p.)

enabled

load memory presets

disabled

dram timing mode

auto

memory fast boot

auto

svid communication

auto

vccin voltage

1.860

cpu core voltage mode

override

cpu core voltage

1.230

cpu core voltage offset mode

auto

cpu core voltage offset

auto

cpu ring voltage mode

adaptive mode

cpu ring voltage

1.190

cpu ring voltage offset mode

auto

cpu ring voltage offset

auto

cpu sa voltage offset mode

auto

cpu sa voltage offset

auto

cpu io analog voltage offset mode

auto

cpu io analog voltage offset

auto

cpu io digital voltage offset mode

auto

cpu io digital voltage offset

auto

internal vr ovp ocp protection

auto

internal vr effeciency management

disabled

dram voltage

auto

pch 1.05 voltage

auto

pch 1.5 voltage

auto

cpu memory changed detect

enabled

Edited November 27, 2013 by wevsspot

[wevsspot]

Mueller, I went in and changed the font color on your settings detail.  Black isn't such a good choice.  Hard for some of us to read it on the deep blue background.

[RedFury77]

looks pretty safe to me.  I believe you can take the vcore up to 1.3v  and temps to 80C and still consider it a 'safe' OC (for that chip).

[ir_cow]

Looks like your ring ratio is a bit high but I also see you have 1.2v into the ring voltage which is good. If you start hitting stablity issues you might find thats the reason. I have problems hitting 4200.

 

Other than that, your settings seem fine. As for temps, anything below 98c is "safe" but at 1.2 vcore you will start to see a rise in temps quickly, thats just the nature of haswells for now. Would I run it above 80c 24/7?, No, but thats just me.

[muellertr]

Looks like your ring ratio is a bit high but I also see you have 1.2v into the ring voltage which is good. If you start hitting stablity issues you might find thats the reason. I have problems hitting 4200.

 

Other than that, your settings seem fine. As for temps, anything below 98c is "safe" but at 1.2 vcore you will start to see a rise in temps quickly, thats just the nature of haswells for now. Would I run it above 80c 24/7?, No, but thats just me.

Thank you, i definitely have no clue what ring ratio or voltage does, and not sure i need to, I have seen some overclocks where they set the ring ratio just one step below the core ratio, which is what i did, but i did see several overclock examples where the ring ration was several steps lower, so instead of 44(core), 43(ring)mhz ---------   they would have 44(core) and maybe 40(ring) for example, ..

 

so in newbie kinda terms, can you try to explain just a couple things briefly, if I were to lower my ring ratio a few steps, what does that do specifically, is it simply a slower overclock, even though I would be leaving my core ratio the same?  I guess what is the benefit of having it either higher or lower?

 

and then I am assuming if i were to take my ring ratio down, then I should be able to most likely bring my ring voltage down a little too?

 

And by all means, it's Turkey Day!, I dont expect anyone to respond today..

[muellertr]

I am still looking for some tips on this, its pretty stable, sometimes even sitting on the desktop and not in a game it will crash, not often but once in awhile, should i assume a voltage needs bumped up a little, or could it be other things, 

 

and if i were going to set up an even higher overclock, what would be the order of things to raise, what first, then 2nd, etc...

 

and lastly, is there a benefit to having ring multiplier close to the cpu multiplier or should it be several steps lower, like if im putting cpu at 44mhz, should the ring be at like 44 or 43, or should it be down like 40 or lower, and whatever the correct answer is, can you attempt to explain what the difference would be between having a higher or lower ring multiplier? i understand one may work better than the other but does the ring multiplier increase performance also if it is higher as opposed to lower, what exactly does that one do? am i shooting for a higher or lower number for ring multiplier?

[ir_cow]

I would check out the OCC Haswell Guide. Even though its for the i7, most, if not all the same stuff applies since they are both Haswells.

 

Here is information about ring ratio:

"

CPU Ring / Voltage BIOS Options:

The CPU Ring, formally known as "Uncore" controls the CPU cache and can be run in "Synchronous" or "Asynchronous" AKA it does not have to match the CPU frequency. It is, however, best to keep as close to the current CPU frequency as possible to get the best results. From my research people are receiving mixed results; some can run it higher than the CPU frequency, others cannot rise it as high. It seems the Haswell CPUs are all over the place, so you will really need to play around with the CPU Ring for the best results.  Last up is the CPU Ring Voltage. You are going to want to keep this below 1.2v and, generally when reaching about 4.5GHz, you will have to raise the CPU Ring and voltage."

 

Basically the ring ratio is for the cache on the chip, so the higher the frequency the faster the cache is. Does it matter? I didn't notice any difference, other than if it wasn't within range of the CPU frequency it would BSOD. Older CPU you could see the difference, but that was a few generations ago.

 

I'm curious myself what the actually results would be from different ring ratio. Like I said older cpus, by running higher cache speeds you would get faster encode times or FPS in games that are CPU bound. I can't see much of a different past a few seconds or 1 FPS max for the haswell.

[Braegnok]

welcome to OCC Mueller,..

 

The data bus frequency control (Ring Bus) to put in simple terms, the Ring bus interconnects the various sections of the architecture to transfer data around the CPU die, the Ring bus is adjustable up to 80X ratio just like the CPU, and is typically clocked 100MHz below CPU core frequency.

 

Nice explanation of MSI Z87 BIOS adjustments :   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7mLP3pGvnDU

Edited December 1, 2013 by Braegnok

[muellertr]

very good, to the last 2 posts, so for my current oc, of 44, i will have to see what works best, it is mostly stable but will blue screen on occassion, so i guess at this point i am to assume that i will try to keep ring at 43, and slowly increase either vccin, ring v, or core v, and see if i can get a completely stable situation.  it is pretty good now with low temps, but i need to get rid of all crashes all together, and when i hit that point, if i want to try to set up and oc for say, 4.6, where would be my best or typical place to start , which voltage to try first, second, 3rd, etc..?

 

ill report back with my final stable settings for the 4.4...after a few days.

[ir_cow]

you may not be able to, most haswells can't get past 4.5ghz. Usually I'll bump up the cpu voltage before anything else. since your already at 1.2v for the vring, you shouldn't go higher for a safety thing.

 

Like I said before, you may have to lower the ring frequency to achieve higher cpu frequency. It's odd I know but that's how it can go. It really don't matter what I do my cpu-ring will not pass 4200 without crashing.