Balancing 7820x OC with NH-D15S

[Phaaze88]

I already know I'd get better results on water, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of doing so.
I still want to get the most I can out of this with one of the strongest air coolers out there.

Which solution would yield the larger(yet still small) performance increase,
A)4.5Ghz and cache left at stock 2.4Ghz
B)4.0Ghz and cache bumped to 3.0-3.2Ghz
I've seen that cache overclocking gives good benchmark scores, but it probably doesn't amount to much in real world applications.
Testing is done with Intel XTU.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Typically, you will see a much bigger performance jump from adjusting the CPU frequency than the cache frequency. I am sure that there are some applications that will perform better with a bump in the cache frequency, but I bet they are in the minority. I would go with option A all day long.

 

[Phaaze88]

If the gains from cache frequency are that small, then I'll just leave it alone and focus on cpu frequency. 4.7(MAYBE 4.8) is doable with my current cooler.
Thanks for the tips!

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Are you overclocking the chip through XTU? If so, I recommend overclocking through the bios. 3rd party overclocking software is not as reliable as the hardware bios, even if it is Intel's XTU.

 

[Phaaze88]

Are you overclocking the chip through XTU? If so, I recommend overclocking through the bios. 3rd party overclocking software is not as reliable as the hardware bios, even if it is Intel's XTU.

Oh no. I'm changing the settings in bios, I just use XTU to test stability.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

I like XTU and use it on my Intel CPUs, but it is not the most demanding stress test. So if you are testing for stability you may want to use something else. I am not a big Prime95 supporter as it stresses your system more than real world applications. Aida 64 is a good stress test too that will help you with stability.

Honestly though, if your system is stable through one run of Cinebench, it is probably just fine. Rarely have I had an OC that was stable and completed Cinebench test and crashed in another application

 

[Phaaze88]

Cinebench, huh. I'll keep that one in mind.
As for Prime95, that's the same reason I don't use it; one of the most popular tests, but it's a tad extreme.