Asus Z97-a with I5 4690k

[Russvox1]

Hi Guys, I have just got rid of my Asus sabretooth wth FX8350 which I was happily Overclocking to 4.8ghz and very stable. (I have a corsair H55 water cooling system).

I've changed to intel as I read that the cpu performance is just way better. In fact even on stock I've doubled my FPS in things like Black Flag and Arma 3.

Thing is though I'm really struggling to OC. I've read many people have 4.6ghz with 1.22v, but I cant get above 4.0ghz with 1.25v? It just crashes out on start up?

Also I'm really struggling with the BIOS.. I've seen a few threads where people have put the Overclocking profile to "XMP"? I don't have that in the drop down, it just says manual or automatic? So all i have been doing is changing to manual, changing to all cores, changing the multiplier then manually upping the core voltage.

I'm not sue if I'm doing anything wrong or missed anything, but any help would be much appreciated!!


Cheers

Russ

 

[sirstinky]

Hi Guys, I have just got rid of my Asus sabretooth wth FX8350 which I was happily Overclocking to 4.8ghz and very stable. (I have a corsair H55 water cooling system).

I've changed to intel as I read that the cpu performance is just way better. In fact even on stock I've doubled my FPS in things like Black Flag and Arma 3.

Thing is though I'm really struggling to OC. I've read many people have 4.6ghz with 1.22v, but I cant get above 4.0ghz with 1.25v? It just crashes out on start up?

Also I'm really struggling with the BIOS.. I've seen a few threads where people have put the Overclocking profile to "XMP"? I don't have that in the drop down, it just says manual or automatic? So all i have been doing is changing to manual, changing to all cores, changing the multiplier then manually upping the core voltage.

I'm not sue if I'm doing anything wrong or missed anything, but any help would be much appreciated!!


Cheers

Russ

From experience, Asus's z97 and z78 boards come with their overclocking utility that does all that for you. I think it's called Ai Tweaker? It should be an app that runs independently of the BIOS and you launch it from Windows. Give that a try. If you really want to overclock, just know that it's not as easy as it looks. You have to balance the multiplier and voltage to get the best match. It can be incredibly tedious. As much as 1/10 of a % in vCore can cause an instability, so you really have to do a lot of trial and error and patience. That said, you also need to be careful because although the chip has built in thermal shut-down, you can fry it before it has a chance to shut itself off.

 

[Russvox1]

Thanks mate, I'll have a look. I was also looking into the 4690k. Will I really notice a difference between stock and say 4.1ghz?

As the reason I changed was my FX8350 was bottlenecking my card (GTX970 Superclocked) HARD! I checked as I said on Black flag and Arma and got a fair gain on stock. People say that the 4690K wont bottleneck my card at all...

So I'm really saying I guess, is it worth overclocking do you think??

 

[RAZER Gamer]

I have an Intel i5-4690k and have overclocked it to 4.4Ghz and it's stable and under 60 degrees under load. I also have an Asus Z97 Pro Gamer motherboard. Have you installed the Asus Suite 2/3? In this program you can manually overclock or use the 4 way or 5 way optimization tool to automatically overclock.

I used the 5 way optimization (its 5 way not 4 on my motherboard) to get to 4.4 Ghz.

 

[RAZER Gamer]

My voltage is 1.250 and clock speed is 4.4 Ghz.

 

[Russvox1]

Ok cool, ill have a look. Have you noticed a gaming performance boost from stock to 4.4?

 

[RAZER Gamer]

Yes a bit. It added some extra fps in certain games.

 

[RAZER Gamer]

It's hard to tell how much though because I have also overclocked my gpu.

 

[Russvox1]

Ive just checked some Youtube vids of Asus Suite. It looks as though it does it all for you and you literally juts leave it to it!

Cheers guys! Ill let you know my results

 

[Russvox1]

Yep Ai tweaker got me to a slid 4.2 and I'm happy with that. Cheers guys

 

[sirstinky]

Thanks mate, I'll have a look. I was also looking into the 4690k. Will I really notice a difference between stock and say 4.1ghz?

As the reason I changed was my FX8350 was bottlenecking my card (GTX970 Superclocked) HARD! I checked as I said on Black flag and Arma and got a fair gain on stock. People say that the 4690K wont bottleneck my card at all...

So I'm really saying I guess, is it worth overclocking do you think??

4.1 ghz is only a few hundred mhz over stock and about equal to turboboost. You may see a difference, but it won't be much. To really get into some good performance you'd need 4.3-4.5 ghz. Its possible to get to those numbers pretty easily, but it's trial and error. Also your cooler has to be up to the task. Any good air cooler or water cooler would do it. I think your H55 will be adequate.

 

[sirstinky]

Yep Ai tweaker got me to a slid 4.2 and I'm happy with that. Cheers guys

Great! Glad that worked. You should get better performance with that. The Ai Tweaker is cool in that you have manual control or you can let it do it for you. I used it and I think i got 4.2 on a i7-3770k using the Z77-A.

 

[armorer1984]

I know this is old, but I have this same combination of hardware. I am using a custom water cooling loop and am hitting 4.7ghz without any trial and error. Now, keep in mind my temps are maxing out at 70c using OCCT for an hour. Using the Windows-based tool I was able to get to 4.2, which as previously stated was about equal to the turbo boost. Not much improvement. When you boot into your BIOS and select "Advanced Mode" there is an area where you go to adjust the clock settings. If you reset everything back to stock for ease of adjustment, then select the overclocking mode "XMP" and boot it up, you should be seeing 4.6-4.7ghz. Now, bear in mind that the voltage is a bit high as it usually goes with factory auto overclocks. I was able to bring mine down to 1.252 before instability set in. I found my sweet spot to be at 1.258.

Hope this helps!

As a side note, I was able to coax 5.1ghz out of this setup using a VID of 1.364. But my temps were running in the low 80's and I really didn't want to push it. But I did get accomplish my goal of seeing how far I could push this chip. Hope it helps anyone who is interested.