i5 2500k OC question

[Max_73]

My specs:

i5 2500k @4.5 Ghz
Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3
Kingston HyperX Blu 2x4GB
GTX 970
Cooler master hyper 212 evo

I have been running an overclock of 4.5Ghz on my 2500k for a few year. I really dont know a great deal about overclocking but I originally followed this guide as I have a very similar gigabyte motherboard.

At first (about 3 years ago)I was very stable with only around 1.3V but as time goes on I find I keep needing to increase the voltage more to get stability to the point where I need to run the chip at 1.416V for it to be stable. This is also increasing my temps a lot I get around 75 degrees after running prime 95 for 20 mins.

Could the chip be starting to die? is 1.4V+ even safe? and is 75 degrees under load okay at that temperature?

My other bios settings are pretty much the same as on the guide above as I don't really understand many setting like what the "QPI/Vtt voltage" and "system agent voltage" are. Could changing any of these improve my stability so that I can run at a lower voltage?

Thanks in advance

 

[iyzik]

Max "safe" voltage for the 2500K is 1.52v. That being said, I probably wouldn't "daily it" at over 1.4v, personally. And 75c is warm but nothing to be worried about. As for other voltages affecting stability; not really, unless it is the RAM that it causing stability issues. Unlikely though.

 

[Tradesman1]

What cooler? Have you tried new thermal compound?

 

[Max_73]

Cooler master hyper 212 evo and yeah I changed it just the other day. I used Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound.

 

[nikoli707]

its natural for the chip to need higher voltage over time. if you properly changed thermal compound i would imagine it would have helped temps at least a little. i wouldn't mess the vtt or system agent voltage. most agree that 1.38v under load should be max but a bit over likely wont hurt most processors as long as temps are ok. 75c is fine for sandy bridge while most agree to stay under 80c for the long term. but again a tiny bit above 80c for sandy bridge should be fine. as far as temps and voltage sandy bridge is the most resilient of intels core processors.

as far as your overclocking method... did you just copy and paste from that overclocking review? if you did then that is a recipe for bad things. are you using an offset/dynamic vcore or are you using a fixed vcore? how are you reading your vcore? are you saying you put in 1.416v in the bios or is that the vcore cpuz/aida/realtemp/ect is telling you?

 

[Max_73]

its natural for the chip to need higher voltage over time. if you properly changed thermal compound i would imagine it would have helped temps at least a little. i wouldn't mess the vtt or system agent voltage. most agree that 1.38v under load should be max but a bit over likely wont hurt most processors as long as temps are ok. 75c is fine for sandy bridge while most agree to stay under 80c for the long term. but again a tiny bit above 80c for sandy bridge should be fine. as far as temps and voltage sandy bridge is the most resilient of intels core processors.

as far as your overclocking method... did you just copy and paste from that overclocking review? if you did then that is a recipe for bad things. are you using an offset/dynamic vcore or are you using a fixed vcore? how are you reading your vcore? are you saying you put in 1.416v in the bios or is that the vcore cpuz/aida/realtemp/ect is telling you?

I just copied things like the setting for the system agent voltage and the power saving feature settings and so on, not the vcore. I am using the dynamic vcore as my bios doesn't let me set a fixed vcore. My bios claims 1.416V and so does aida64 at idle, cpuz gives me a really weird low vcore reading which is clearly wrong and after googling this apparently its quite common with 2500ks to get a weird vcore reading in cpuz. Under load my vcore drops in aida64 to 1.368V.

 

[nikoli707]

i wouldn't copy those things. my cpu is similar to your and i have a gigabyte bios and all i have changed is offset voltage... everything else is on auto. if i were you i would reset everything back to stock and try redoing the overclock.

cpuz or others are showing a low vcore, something like 0.80v, because the cpu is throttling down when not under load. this is normal and ideal. for initial overclock testing though you can disable c1e, c3, c6 and speedstep to prevent the cpu from throttling so you can get an accurate load and idle vcore reading... but definitely turn the power savings back on once you have found a stable overclock. it is always possible that some power savings are causing instability due to vdroop. the 1.416v is normal vdroop voltage spike when dropping out of 100% load to idle. the 1.368v is the actual vcore we are worried about here and it is in normal range for 4.5ghz on your chip, thats about exactly what i get at 4.5ghz. i would be more worried if you were getting 1.40v load and vdroop above 1.45v. you could always try using some llc but it shouldn't be necessary for 4.5ghz.

the system agent, qpi/vtt, and pll voltages shouldn't need to be touched for a modest 4.5ghz overclock. i would set them to auto or possibly even try lowering them to actually remove some overall heat, but only if stable on auto. i would set auto pll overvoltage to on though.