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Killavuulken

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Apr 28, 2015
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Hi all,

I'm building a new setup and I'm just looking to try and future proof it best I can on my budget, there's no game right now that I want to play apart from EvE Online which this setup will run on max settings no problem. I'm hoping to get to around 2020 with little or no upgrades but I'm sure that won't happen :). My real quandary is weather to go modern i5 or older i7 and if I'm getting enough for the money I'm spending.

Approximate Purchase Date: In the next 2 weeks

Budget Range: 1000£ | 1500$ | 1360€

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming 95% and the rest sits in the 5% range

Are you buying a monitor: I don't intend to.

Parts to Upgrade: Buying a full new setup so all parts need to be purchased.

Do you need to buy OS: No, I'll be putting Windows 7 on it I think.. I have Windows 10 on a laptop and I'm not a huge fan.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Amazon UK mostly, I'd like to keep everything together but if it can't be got at all on Amazon UK then I don't mind going to other sites in the UK.

Location: Northern Ireland, UK (so many UK mainland offers for free postage don't cover us)

Parts Preferences: Nvidia/intel combinations never let me down so I'm sticking with them when it comes to GPU and CPU but otherwise I'm open-minded.

Overclocking: Maybe, I've never done it nor have I ever done watercooling.. I wouldn't be totally against trying something new but my preference is to stick with what I know but ultimately I need to go with the best option available.

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe, again never done this but it's always something I would try.

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080 I've never considered going higher to be honest. This resolution always seemed to be good enough for the eyeballs :).

Here is what I'm currently looking at: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZdjJhM If you have any suggestions or comments please leave them and I really appreciate the response.

I'm not concerned about the noise of the PC, as long as it doesn't sound like a F15 on take off. Energy usage isn't really that important either as long as it's not going to drain massive amounts of electricity.


Thanks all for reading and taking the time to respond.

- Killa
 
Solution
Chayan4400
Sorry, I was out for a bit :). If that cooler costs £65 then it isn't worth it! You can have better coolers for the same price. The 2TB you have at home is fine, and much better than the WD Blue I had in my original build. The 500GB SSD should a nice addition.

Back to business, the cooler; for that price you can get the Noctua NH-D14, one of the best coolers on the market (Second only do the newer NH-D15). The downside is you'll also have to upgrade your case, as the S340 is too small to fit it:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£200.95 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£56.90 @ Amazon UK)...
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Thanks for your response mate :)

So I read here:

BCLK depends on the CPU. Check values in the table above.

Enter the BIOS
Go to OC Tweaker – CPU Configuration
Set the BCLK you need (in my case 122) <-- So I set this to 115
Go to OC Tweaker – Voltage Configuration
Set the CPU Core Voltage to 1.325 and the the CPU Loadline Calibration to Level 1 <-- do I set the same voltage?
Go to OC Tweaker – DRAM Configuration
Load the XMP Profile
Adjust the DRAM Frequency to a value around 2600 MHz <--do I set the same value here?
 
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The voltages should be about the same. You'll need to adjust the RAM frequency to that of your RAM, which in your case looks like 2666 also. If it's stable when you apply this overclock, you might try dropping the vcore in small increments until it becomes unstable. Use the lowest vcore that the system will remain stable at. This will help to ensure the temps stay low. If it's not stable, you'll have to gradually increase the vcore. I wouldn't go beyond the recommended 1.4 vcore. If you cant get it stable with less than 1.4, drop your bclk one number and repeat the steps.
 
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Hi BadActor,

So I went into the bios and had a look at it, I changed it to 115.. I could be wrong but it seemed that at that number it only clocks it to 3.8?

In this picture http://overclocking.guide/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/151219214427.jpg The first number there is roughly 3800MHz

when I put in 141 it then sat at 4500MHz roughly but the target memory speed was just a little over 3000.. however my memory is only 2666?

from my view it seems that I can't have 4.5GHz with 2666 memory unless the memory can OC to 3000? am I right or am I just talking nonsense

Sorry for the questions, just trying to understand this all..

:)

PS. I was just looking at this video.. is this accurate? he is saying the multiplier is 32 not 39 and for his 32 vs your 39 he is using a higher blck number, that's what is confusing me at the moment so does that mean the higher multiplier the lower blck number?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUTPgWYTqyk
 
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Sorry, I was thinking the base frequency was 3900. That's the boost clock. The base frequency is 3200, the multiplier is then 32, so 4500/32=140. You are correct. [strike]You will have to overclock your RAM. If it doesn't you'll have to drop back on your bclk or use faster RAM.
[/strike]
Edit - Flashback to the old days. Not true now as they are not linked.
 
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Wait. Can you change the RAM frequency independent of the CPU frequency?

"However, for Skylake CPUs, BCLK and PCIe have a dedicated reference clock which always stays at 100 MHz – no matter how you change the BCLK. In other words: You can push the BCLK without worrying about other components."

I just read this and you may not have to overclock the RAM. Sorry, this is new for everybody.
 
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I didn't see your post but the crazyiest thing happened :O

I did what that guy did in his youtube video, then the PC went to restart and wouldn't even go to bios.. just running and sleeping screen, done it 4 times and then finally booted up for me, should I go back and take back down the ram voltage and the ram freq?
 
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When I select that profile and keep it at 140 it wants to put my ram to like.. 3800mhz... thats worse

All I could do for now was put the blck to 125 which gives me 4ghz with 4.5ghz cache and I left it with the 1.325 voltage (cpu)

I've got the rest back on auto and the XMP profile is on the ram indeed, sitting at 2665 which is exactly bar 1 mhz from what it should be if I recall, I'm not so sure 4.5ghz is achievable with this ram..

My computer just restarted and booted fine with the 4ghz OC


 
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Remember, just booting isn't enough. You need to stress test too. Non-K CPUs have locked multipliers; Sky OC only enables BCLK overclocking. 1.325V is a bit too high for normal operation; 4.5GHz has been obtained on the 6500 at 1.3V and a 141Mhz BCLK (The max recommended voltage for an overclock on a PC to be used daily).

Bump the BCLK by 40MHz to 140MHz. This should give you 140*32 = ~4480MHz. That's a very good overclock if you can achieve it, seeing as the stock speed is over 1.2GHz less. Enable XMP and set Core voltage to 1.25V. Remember though, just like any overclock, different chips produce different results. Not every Core i5 6500 will hit 4.5GHz. Overclocking via BCLK means that the entire system is sped up - and that includes RAM. In the memory settings, you'll find that the RAM has also increased in speed, and it will need to be reduced to match the rating of the modules. Reduce the RAM's multiplier to bring it back to 2666MHz. Try to boot with those settings and stress test with AIDA64 or OCCT for an hour. Monitor it periodically for crashes or BSODs. If it crashes, bump the voltage by 0.05V and try again. Continue until you can run the stress test for an hour without crashing. If you cannot reach stabilization before reaching 1.3V, then decrease the BCLK in 2MHz increments with stress testing in between.

When you can run a CPU stress test for an hour, next step is stress testing overnight to ensure it really is stable. Set it to run at about 6pm, monitor it about once an hour till you go to sleep and check if it is still running in the morning. If it is still running fine in the morning, then the overclock is most probably stable. You can run it for the rest of the day, just to be sure.

EDIT: Also monitor temps while running stress tests. You want to keep it below 70C, which should be no problem with the Noctua. Just ensure that temps aren't crazy high after 2 minutes of stress testing, and check again after an hour to make sure they haven't crept up over 70C. If they have, stop and lower the overclock.

After you have a successful CPU overclock, you can also overclock your RAM. Your sticks are designed to hit 3200MHz easily. This isn't needed however, so let me know if you are interested in RAM overclocking and I'll guide you through it. It's pretty similar to CPU overclocking but testing programs and some other minor things are different.

When you think you've got a stable overclock, post your CPU BCLK, RAM Multiplier and Core voltage, along with your CPU temps under load.

EDIT 2: I edited and added some important information. If you've already read this post, please read it again :). If you are overwhelmed by overclocking, keep in mind that even at stock speed the 6500 is a very powerful CPU and will not bottleneck the 980 at all. You can always run at stock speed, and you'll see little to no difference in performance. Then, later on when you know more about overclocking you can try out an overclock. This is useful especially when the system is older and not running as well as it used to; an overclock will give it a performance , and may even allow you to add a more powerful GPU that would otherwise create a bottleneck in the system.

This is a very interesting article: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-intel-skylake-core-i5-6500-review

It shows just how much of a difference you can expect with an overclock to 4.5GHz.
 
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Just waking up was a long night haha, gonna read what you said.

Build is up and running, no problem.. looks great also but my cable management and lights aren't so great, perhaps on monday or tuesday ill go back and fix some of that and then get some pictures, I'm very thankful for the help guys btw

just reading your posts now mate
 
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In the end I left it at 2666 ram and 4ghz overclock which is still great compared to 3.2ghz, I gained a lot of knowledge from this build and dipped my feet in overclocking. It was a great help to have you both walk me through it but I think when it comes to overclocking if you want to min/max you really MUST have the knowledge yourself because as you said no 2 cpus are the exact same so they require 'personalized' tweaks

Thanks guys :)
 
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You did achieve 4GHz with no problem, correct? Reset the BIOS to default settings, then apply 135MHz BCLK and 1.3V. Disable all CPU power saving options and C states. See if that works.

What options do you get under DRAM Frequency and DRAM reference clock?

 
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I was typing my last post when you posted yours. Don't worry, a 0.6GHz is very good for your first try. You can try for 4.2GHz at ~1.275V but I suspect that your CPU may simply not be capable of 4.5GHz without further adjustments, or even at all. Sky OC is so new that even I'm not quite sure how exactly everything works. In any case, even at stock speed your PC is more than capable of maxing out any game at 1080p. Keep the 4GHz overclock, stress test overnight and enjoy your PC! You did well for your first try at overclocking :). Later on when you get to know more about fine tuning your overclock you can try again.

If you have any more problems later on, post back here or start a new thread and we'll do our best to help you.
 
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Hello! It's been some time since your build :). I thought you'd like to know a trick I learnt about SkyOC: if you want to try and push your overclock, reduce your RAM multiplier to bring the RAM down to ~2400MHz and then try increasing the CPU BCLK. That worked for a few people, so with a bit of luck you can push your PC even further.


As always, if you have any questions or problems with the build, post below or start a new thread and we'll do our best to help you.
 
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Thanks very much for that response, I never got back to you to say I never attempted it again 😀.. I might give it a go over the next few days. 😀

 
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