Can i3 3220 Overclock to 3.6Ghz?

[ericjohn004]

I decided to change my case on my rig to the Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window(Black). And now I have a left over Antec 902 v3 case, a 1TB Seagate HDD, a Gigabyte UD3H MoBo, and a Scythe Ninja 3 CPU cooler because I went with a H100i.

So all I really need is a processor, PSU, RAM, and a graphics card is optional. Although I'll probably get a 650ti.

So I am an overclocker and since I already have an overclocking motherboard, and a nice CPU cooler, I was thinking I could go with the 3220 clocked at 3.3Ghz and I'd bump it up to 3.6Ghz. Is this possible? It seems like it should be since I see some Ivy Bridge K owners using the BCLK even though your not suppose to. If I didn't have a good OCing mobo or a good CPU cooler I wouldn't worry about it, but since I do, whats the max I can get out of an i3 you think? I know you can do this because I see AsRock marketing the fact that you can overclock CPU's with locked multipliers on their website. But I do see lot's of people saying that it isn't worth it. I think an i3 would be a really potent chip, especially for games and single threaded tasks if it was overclocked to 3.6-3.8Ghz.

Is this possible?

 

[Sakkura]

You can only adjust the BCLK, which has very little headroom. You'd be lucky to get more than a 5% overclock. To adjust the multiplier, you need a CPU with Turbo Boost enabled. So a Core i5-3330 or above. A 3570K (or 3770K) is obviously the easiest one to overclock because it has a completely unlocked multiplier.

 

[unreal9400]

Yes, but I would not recommend doing that.

 

[fil1p]

Hey,

You could adjust the BCLK but that would affect the clock speeds on not only your CPU but your RAM, and other parts of the CPU and motherboard. Also that would give you a very limited overclock as the base clock (BCLK) cannot be pushed very far, only a couple of mhz (~1-5mhz) so you would end up with a rather small overclock. Also as you would be changing the clock speeds of other components you risk instability. Also such as small overclock would not bring much of a performance increase.

For your CPU its best to leave it at stock, and as your CPU does not have Intel turbo boost there is not much you can do. I would leave it alone, or if you really want to overclock get something like the i5-3570K or the i7-3770K, or you could wait for the new Haswell chips which are going to be released later on.


Hope this helps!

 

[ericjohn004]

Yeah I pretty much knew everything I'm hearing here already. I was just wondering if anyone has pushed their own chip to around 3.6Ghz. And Schmuckly seemed to answer my question with his link. If ya'll would read my whole post maybe you'd understand my question a little better.

It says that the 1st place overclock on this site is near 3.6Ghz. So to get to 3.6 must be pretty hard.

I haven't gotten an i3 yet I was just contemplating getting it. I already have an i5 if you looked at my sig. I'm thinking of building another rig with spare parts. And an i3 fits the bill being that this is a cheap build and I already have a z77 board.

 

[Sakkura]

You mention the Asrock No-K OC feature, but like I said, it requires Turbo Boost enabled CPUs (Core i5s minimum).

As for BCLK overclocking, that doesn't even require a Z77 motherboard. Though all high-end boards are Z77 anyway, and those would be your best bet theoretically.

 

[ericjohn004]

I didn't pick this board out specifically for this CPU. It was for my 3570k and I broke off a PCIe slot so I got a new one. And since I'll only need this extra PCIe slot if I use SLI, I'll be able to use it with this CPU. Any other cheap Intel CPU's that overclock well and are fairly good? You mentioned a Clarkdale?

 

[ericjohn004]

How about the CPU's that came out before Sandy Bridge? Are they fairly cheap now? I'm looking to spend no more than 150$ on a CPU. I have to go Intel because of the motherboard.

 

[fil1p]

Well before sandy bridge we had Nehalem, the Bloomfield i7's would oc nicely, with some good cooling you could get 4-4.2Ghz. You could probably pick up a i7-930 and a X58 motherboard on ebay. The i7-930 runs for ~$110-130 on ebay, and for ~$100-150 you could get a nice motherboard. Or you could go with a i5-3570k and a z77 motherboard. The i5 3570k is $189 at MicroCenter.