[SOLVED] Core i5-750 OC settings on GA-P55-UD4 ?

Sep 6, 2021
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Hi Overclockers,

I have finally overclocked my Core i5-750 (10years late)

I was wondering if someone could give me some advice to hone my settings in a bit?

CPU: Core I5 750
CPU Cooler: HYPER 212X
Motherboard: GA P55 UD4
Ram: KHX1600C9D3 4GB & KHX1600C9D3K2 8GB
GPU: GTX 750
Power Supply: TX650

Currently I have it sitting at 3.6Ghz with a minor voltage increase.
The temps are sitting around 40'C idle running chrome with 10tabs.

Capture.png



I have seen some over clockers have got there chips up to 4GHz I'm wondering if that's feasible with the silicon I have?
Currently can't get past 3.6Ghz but I am new to OC'ing so it could be my settings or bad silicon...

Can somebody look at my BIOS settings and give me some feedback on what I should tweak with my current setup?

BIOS Settings:

IMG-20210907-123332-Copy.jpg


IMG-20210907-123359-Copy.jpg


IMG-20210907-123342-Copy.jpg


Also you may have noticed that the two ram chips are slightly different, they support up to 1600, currently on running them at 1440 with 8 SPD Multiplier, and the DRAM Voltage set to 1.6.
Should I increase these? They also support CL 9 I have them set to 8 at the moment should I also change this?

Any other tips and tricks for my setup would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
 
Solution
What temperatures your getting when stress testing? Up to 80-85celsius is fine , just look for "max temperature" on hwmonitor after stress testing to see the actual max temp on any core. Which would translate to max 75c while gaming.
You can lower temps by -10 or -20c by delidding, if you dont want to spend more money on cooling. Or just simply use NT-H1 or Kryonaut as thermal paste, only using high quality thermal paste wont lower temperatures that much but 5 celsius less is possible.

Raising CPU vcore => high impact for temperature, Raising VTT => slight impact for temperature, Raising PLL from 1.8 to 1.9v Very slight temperature impact, keep these in mind.
For higher BLCK , UNCORE/Northbridge freq or DRAM frequency you need to raise...
What temperatures your getting when stress testing? Up to 80-85celsius is fine , just look for "max temperature" on hwmonitor after stress testing to see the actual max temp on any core. Which would translate to max 75c while gaming.
You can lower temps by -10 or -20c by delidding, if you dont want to spend more money on cooling. Or just simply use NT-H1 or Kryonaut as thermal paste, only using high quality thermal paste wont lower temperatures that much but 5 celsius less is possible.

Raising CPU vcore => high impact for temperature, Raising VTT => slight impact for temperature, Raising PLL from 1.8 to 1.9v Very slight temperature impact, keep these in mind.
For higher BLCK , UNCORE/Northbridge freq or DRAM frequency you need to raise VTT/QPI.

First thing you need to do is Immidiattely drop the "PCH voltage" from 1.200v back down to the default 1.050v, you do not need to touch this, ive sometimes raised it to 1.10v for over 205-210BLCK but thats literally the last thing to do on the list, i just recommend staying on 1.050v.

You can try going from 1.300 to 1.35 vcore by small increments, and see how the temperatures are under stress. Most likely you start to hit 80-85c rather quickly with that cooler unless you delid. Up to 1.400, even 1.45v is safe with these chips but you need to delid and have way better cooling.

Make sure to use Loadline calibration ON in bios and under stress, idle see with cpu-z or hwmonitor what is the actual CPU voltage/vcore under load, and does it differ from the voltage you set in bios by how much.

With VTT its different thing, you cant see the memory controller temperature inside the chip, and this is the voltage which can degrade it quickly, i would stay under 1.25-1.275v with that cooling, Intel max recommended is 1.21v for VTT and 1.400v for vcore , keep this in mind, you most likely dont need even 1.25. Obviously you need to raise this for very high BLCK. Over 1.35v can degrade chip faster, even when cooled well.

Keep the PLL voltage at default 1.8v and when you start bluescreening or unable to boot to windows

Also i personally like to disable power saving features and turbo-boost altogether, you do not have to do that, expecially with that cooler keep an eye on your temperatures, however it will make the overclock more stable. In the "cpu features or advanced cpu core settings" disable turbo boost, remember to enable "all cpu cores", disable all c1e , c3 c6 c7 states, also disable intel EIST, leave rest on auto or on.

Dram voltage up to 1.65v is fine. However your mixing ram kits which is not a good thing. With a good ddr3 2x8gb kit i can hit 2133mhz dram with 3600mhz northbridge freq
easily with that motherboard. You cannot change the NB freq on ANY p55 chipset motherboard, it will go up when you increase the BLCK and gives slight performance increase the higher it is. Also higher NB freq needs more VTT / QPI voltage.

What Koekieezz is correct i like most x3470 which is 4core 8 thread, if you ever upgrade get either x3440 or x3470. i7-750 can overclock higher but its still 4core 4 thread. So if your results are not enough think about getting x3470 for example.
 
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Solution
Those Xeon X3470 is apparently cheap enough today in the used marked, it priced the same as i5 3470 in my country, so if you want to stay on that platform, go for X3470, just make sure the bios is updated to the latest.

After updated the bios, boot to windows, and uninstall processors in device management (should be 4 in your case) like this:
unknown.png

Then shut down, install the cpu, and go to bios, reset all settings and save them all, then boot to windows.
 
Those Xeon X3470 is apparently cheap enough today in the used marked, it priced the same as i5 3470 in my country, so if you want to stay on that platform, go for X3470, just make sure the bios is updated to the latest.

After updated the bios, boot to windows, and uninstall processors in device management (should be 4 in your case) like this:
unknown.png

Then shut down, install the cpu, and go to bios, reset all settings and save them all, then boot to windows.

Yep im still fine with my x3470 with ddr3 2400mhz CL9, just look at the CPU cache latencies, try to beat this with DDR4 haha.
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/35395290

I can hit 2666mhz at CL10 but why bother going insane with the voltages, i stay at 4.2 or 4.3ghz cpu , 3800mhz nb frequency, 2400mhz dram cl9 for 24/7 overclock.
 
Yep im still fine with my x3470 with ddr3 2400mhz CL9, just look at the CPU cache latencies, try to beat this with DDR4 haha.
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/35395290
You're lucky to run on 2400mhz CL9, i currently use a xeon E3 1240 v2 on a Gigabyte B75M HD3, so no memory oc, and my ram is Teamgroup Vulcan DDR3 2133 CL10, i have a Z77 motherboard but it doesn't work, it does power everything on but no display at all (and no usb/ ps/2 power) :(

Best i could do is really tightening the primary to teritary timing, and it did pretty well compared to my HyperX DDR3 1600.
ddr3_16gb.png
 
You're lucky to run on 2400mhz CL9, i currently use a xeon E3 1240 v2 on a Gigabyte B75M HD3, so no memory oc, and my ram is Teamgroup Vulcan DDR3 2133 CL10, i have a Z77 motherboard but it doesn't work, it does power everything on but no display at all (and no usb/ ps/2 power) :(

Best i could do is really tightening the primary to teritary timing, and it did pretty well compared to my HyperX DDR3 1600.
ddr3_16gb.png

Seems fine, i dont have much experience with ivy bridge xeons, i would assume memory controller is better on these.
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
Yes, memory controller got upgraded in Ivy-Bridge over the prior gen Sandy-Bridge cpus. Pretty much everything did. Only reason the ivys weren't all that much superior to the Sandy's overall was the TIM and it's application vs the Sandy solder.

Biggest issue facing Op is board age. Anything 1st,2nd,3rd Gen now is facing pretty high degradation especially with the caps, so many boards are either starting to fail with voltages on OC, or about to start. Which can make higher OC stability a pain to attain. Sometimes Good Enuff is simply that, good enough, and pushing for more can end up in disaster.

That applies to cpus too, especially ones that saw extended periods of high voltages and frequency from prior OC.
 
Sep 6, 2021
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Hi Overclockers,

Thanks for the comments, @lga1156_ftw with your tips I have now got to 3.80Ghz I dropped most the settings (below) and I even got it to boot once at the default Vcore voltage at 3.8Ghz!

I can't get passed 3.80Ghz now however, as soon as I go above, it fails to boot and the BIOS resets my CPU to the base clock speed of 2.6Ghz, I even tried bringing the vcore voltage up to 1.45v. No avail, any further tips to take this 4Ghz? Or should I be happy with 3.8Ghz for this machine considering it's age.

New OC settings for 3.8Ghz
Vcore: 1.25625
VTT: 1.100
PCH: 1.050
PLL: 1.80
DRAM: 1.50

Turbo boost Off
Load line calibration On
Power saving Off
c1e , c3 c6 c7 Off
EIST Off

What temperatures your getting when stress testing? Up to 80-85celsius is fine , just look for "max temperature" on hwmonitor after stress testing to see the actual max temp on any core. Which would translate to max 75c while gaming.

Temps are looking good to me, running prime95 while writing this and highest temps after about an hour are 77'C, no crashes yet...
Also I have had a decent performance increase with Company of Hero's which is awesome!

Make sure to use Loadline calibration ON in bios and under stress, idle see with cpu-z or hwmonitor what is the actual CPU voltage/vcore under load, and does it differ from the voltage you set in bios by how much.

Under load the Vcore voltage is sitting at 1.264 with a Min of 1.248 showing up hwmonitor, I take it that variance is okay?

Dram voltage up to 1.65v is fine. However your mixing ram kits which is not a good thing. With a good ddr3 2x8gb kit i can hit 2133mhz dram with 3600mhz northbridge freq
easily with that motherboard. You cannot change the NB freq on ANY p55 chipset motherboard, it will go up when you increase the BLCK and gives slight performance increase the higher it is. Also higher NB freq needs more VTT / QPI voltage.

Regarding the memory as I have brought up the BCLK up to 190 and using the 8.0 SPD Multiplier the ram is now running at 1520Mhz.
Should I bring the SPD up to 10 taking the memory to 1900Mhz I notice that the specification only support 1600Mhz for these ram sticks?

I tried dropping the CL down to 7, but set off the memory alarm on boot, so I set it back to 8 CL and dropped the DRAM Voltage back down to 1.50 booted fine after that. I wonder if there's anything more I can do here? These DDR2 sticks support CL of 6, lower is better correct?

Current Settings:

CAS 8
TRCD 8
TRP 8
TRAS 24

Performance Enhance Standard
SPD 8.0

Want go past 3.6 ghz? get the 8xx series CPU, an i7 860 or 870 will be good enough, or Xeon X3450,60, and 70 (X3470 = i7 870 w/o igpu, and it is a good overclocker, since i7 870 and X3470 is better binned).

Thanks Koekieezz I'll keep an eye out for a X3470 locally now, if you think they are the best for LGA1156 socket? Pricing seems reasonable for the used market!

Thanks again for the comments, any further tips would be awesome, if I can take this a bit further... One question if I'm now at 3.8Ghz if I turn turbo boost back on will it boost me up to 4Ghz?

Also does anyone know isochronous support is? I have that Enabled

I never new OC'ing was this fun!
Cheers
 
isochronous support : disable

You should prioritize CPU speed first, after that cache speed , and only after that DRAM frequency/timings.
When you raise BLCK that will also up the dram frequency, as well as uncore/nb freq and Qpi frequency, something to think of.

Are you running CPU clock multiplier/ratio at 20x or 21x? After disabling intel turbo boost are you limited to 20 or can you do 21? Always use the highest multiplier so you dont have to go that high on the BLCK.

Turn QPI clock ratio from "auto" to lowest you can, might be 16x or 18x, this will affect performance slightly and you can tune it more after you found highest stable CPU clock speed and uncore you can get.

Turn down the memory multiplier , drop the dram frequency to even 1000 or 1200mhz while testing highest BLCK possible and return to this after found it.

Like i said in my previous post, higher BLCK needs higher VTT voltage, vcore only matters when you bump up the CPU frequency. I wouldnt go over 1.35v for the vcore with that cooler, for sure you start hitting 85c at some cores.

So max out the cpu multiplier to 20/21 whatever is possible and start upping BLCK in small increments with these settings i just told.
You can increase the VTT to 1.275v for example and see how much more BLCK you can get with that, or maybe 1.300v. Dont go above 1.325v with VTT.

Going from PLL voltage 1.800 to 1.900v can help with over 200blck.

After you start hitting 85c on any core in stress testing, thats your limit on the VCORE, also VTT can raise temperature slightly but its mostly VCORE.

With x3470 you dont have to worry about getting insane BLCK when overclocking, im at 4300mhz only with 204 BLCK since multiplier is unlocked. Ignore the cpu voltage i have 3 fan AIO,
https://valid.x86.fr/xv1ibm

As you can see 204-205 BLCK lands me at 3680mhz on the uncore/northbridge frequency, i need to have 1.335 VTT only because of the high uncore frequency.
 
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