First OC i5 4670k

[taliyuna]

I just did my first overclock ever and hit 4.3 Ghz although i still have to test it out with prime95 and intel burn. My question : Is playing a hardware demanding game also an adequate way of testing OC cpu stability ? I have Crysis 3 and Rome Total War 2 ready for stress testing if need be;
CoreTemp says at least so far 29,30 degrees idle and World of Warcraft didnt pass 50 degrees celsius after an hour. And here are the specs :
-MSI Z87 G45

-i5 4670k - (not delided dont plan to either)

-Kingston hyper x beast 2*4 gb @ 1600 Mhz (XMP profile says overclock is @1.65v so i dont know if i should use it or not)

-Computer is being cooled by a cheap cooler master 212 evo

All i did was set CPU mode to dynamic and set the multipliers to 43 and the ring multiplier to 42 don't know why i did that heard it helps stability;
I set the voltages to 1.155 but adaptive mode raised it to 1.163v and the ring voltage is a bit lower @ 1.125v;
So far no problems so i was wondering should i keep going lower and find a sweet spot or leave it like this cause the temperatures changed only by a few degrees nothing major
I also heard that it can be pure luck that the computer even boots at 4.3 with less than 1.2 volts but i gave it a shot anyway;
Can someone give me any pointers if there is anything else i should watch out for or give any other type of advice for a nice air cooled OC ?

 

[prestigerg7]

Sounds like you got a good chip. Same motherboard/cpu, mine runs at 1.176 volts just by leavin it default (at 3.80ghz with turbo) 4.2ghz requires me 1.230 volts and 4.3ghz near 1.300 volts so it sounds like you got a good chip.

As far as testing I've heard different stories. Some say running Prime 95 for 12 hours might not find an instability which an intensive game might within 30 minutes. For me personally, the most intensive thing I do on my PC is gaming, so when I mess with my overclocking I run a 10-15 minutes intel extreme tuning utility stress test to see base stability. I'll also usually surf the web with chrome to give it a little extra push. After which I'll jump straight into an intensive game for which I'm running near max. Be it assassins creed 4, bioshock infinite or another game I know will stress it.

And I take it from there. Usually if its not stable within 30 minutes to an hour it will crash and BSOD. At which point if I am continuing to tweek I'll drop the voltage by .010 or so and do it all again.

Also side note for using haswell, if you have your voltage set to adaptive. Running a stress test like Prime 95 or intel burn test will usually override the voltage you have set and increase it. It may overwhelm your cooling depending on what you have. Just keep an eye out. As example when I had my voltage set to 1.230 at 4.2ghz, it pushed the voltage to nearly 1.300 by using intel burn test. The intel extreme tuning utility stress test does not alter the voltages.