i5 6400 oc - Can they all oc?

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dimster123

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I am interested to buy a i5 6400 and oc it!

I found some used ones on ebay and I am tempted to buy one of these babies.

My question is are all of them capable of oc?

I know that the motherboard and the bios version are important so considering that you have an ideally capable mobo, would also any i5 6400 have a 100% overclock ability?
 
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Might not be a direct answer to your question, but I can help a bit.
Right now, I'm also in germany, and I'm from a third world country as well. So my advice can get you, maybe.

I have discovered that you can get some pretty good deals if you look for 4670k or 4690k on Auktions on e-bay. You can easily secure a 4670k for €100-120, if you try on 2 or 3 Auktions and are a bit patient. That will get you a very easy to overclock chip, and the performace difference between Haswell and Skylake is really small, so you might even get better performance (haswell chips almost always get to 4.4 or 4.5GHz), without having to overclock uaing hard methods.

I strongly recommend you take a look at used haswell overclockable chips, especially bidding...
Intel had not intended for these CPUs to be overclockable but it is possible to overclock as long as you have the right motherboard and BIOS version running on it.

From what I have read about it, the i5 6500 gets a better overclock than the i5 6400. Another thing to be aware of is that you won't get accurate temperatures for your CPU and there is a chance you could fry your CPU.
 
Yes I know about these issues (temperature, mobo Bios combination etc). I do not intend to break a record,I can use an aftermarket cooler and a logical amount of voltage and oc level.
I want to get rid of my fx8320e 🙁
 
The purpose of doing this is for the obvious reason, to save money. I can get a used i5 6400 for 120 euro, whereas a new is 170 euro. Plus the rest (mobo, ddr4 ram), I see that is a win situation. A new i5 6600k costs around 240 euro.

I have seen some guides and everyone has great results or at least they show only the good results.

I understand that Intel does not want us to oc these cpus because they lose money and therefore they push people to buy the k versions with BIOS disabling oc, microcode updates (what is this anyway?).

I am looking for some value here as I am on budget as always. If you want to tell me the obvious and not explain your thoughts with some concrete examples and experiences or specific posts please do not reply as we are wasting both our time.
 


What country do you live in and what is your budget for overall for CPU, Mobo and RAM?
I urge you not to be rude, as I don't think I'd want to help someone who doesn't want to listen to advice, and doesn't know what they're talking about.
You can either let people correct you and accept it, or you can ignore it and make an uninformed decision based on your own arrogance.
I'm just trying to get you to make the best decision financially. Don't hate me for it. I explain above why overclocking non k processors is a bad idea, re read it please.
 
Also in regards to your above post, intel does not only market chips as non-k and k to as you say: 'scam consumers of their money.'
The K versions of CPUs have better voltage handling, and are able to run at higher speeds and voltages with improved stability. The non k chips are designed to run at a certain voltage and rated speeds to ensure consistency and good performance.
Note that overclocking is not for everyone, and therefore increasing the price even for those who do not need it would be a poor decision on Intel's part, as sales would be lower for average consumers who do not know how to overclock.
 
6400's have been known to hit 4ghz+ in some instances.

As has been stated previously this is entirely chip & board dependant.

These kind if results are not guaranteed , I personally think that 3.2ghz would be a walk in the park & that's still a fairly decent saving over a 6500.

Board wise only these 2 are guaranteed overclocking boards with a locked chip now

Fatal1ty B150 Gaming K4/Hyper
Fatal1ty H170 Performance/Hyper

These have a completely separate blck clock for the CPU so overclocking does not affect stability in other parts of the system.

While I agree with chugalug on 99% of his advice , the 6400 I think personally has been forced to that lower clock just to offer something between the i3 6100 & i5 6500 for business or other use.
I'd bet its just a standard 6500 that's been locked at a lower clock speed
 
There is another alternative to overclocking these locked processors, and that is the Asrock Hyper series motherboards. They use an onboard clock generator rather than Bios trickery to allow bclck overclocking. That being said, my instinct tells me that the 6400's in general won't overclock as well as the 6500/6600/6600K simply because they are binned lower. People are getting some impressive overclocks anyway with these CPU's, so if the price is low enough, and you would be happy at 4.4 or 4.5, they may be a real bargain.

http://www.eteknix.com/asrock-finds-way-bypass-intels-non-k-bclk-oc-limits/

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asrock-hyper-oc-motherboard-launch,31960.html
 


Yup.
The 6400s will be lower binned chips, meaning the overclock will definitely be much smaller.
This is probably the barrier I encountered while overclocking a 6400 for a build, although at the time I assumed that it was because of the voltage concerns of the non k chips overall as a pose to purely with the 6400.
The 6500 may yield better overclocking results, but take this with a grain of salt, as putting yourself in someone else''s shoes, you wouldn't be too over the moon posting on forums about the poor results you got from overclocking. These may well be people who got lucky in the silicon lottery in terms of chips, so there's always that to consider.
If you want to save a bit of money though, I suppose its a good alternative now that a few things have been cleared up.

Go for the i5 6500 and the H170 hyper as it is, and try for a moderate overclock, around 4.3 or 4.4GHz would be good.
Don't try to push it too far or you might end up frying your chip! :)
 


Non K works well on Z170 mobo with Non-K OC enabled BIOS. Capability is slowly expanding to other chipsets as well: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asrock-hyper-oc-motherboards-available,32165.html

I use a i3 6100 on MSI Z170M. Many BIOS are available for other brand mobo.
 


I live in Germany and I am in immigrant so you get the picture. I am not a rich person. Anyways..

I am not sure how I end up being rude or arrogant (!) by asking for evidence and actual posts or info regarding your claims. I usually do a research when I want to buy new products and I do not take someone's unjustified opinion for an answer. I think it is your problem here as I made myself clear on my second post. The problem at this time is that I do not have lots of time to do a research, so I would be grateful if you can give some deeper info because all that I find are successful oc results which I understand it can't be always true.

I use this website, idealo.de with my broken german to buy new items. My budget is the lowest possible for a good price/value ratio. If I have to pay 400 euro for skylake I could wait a bit longer for Zen and then make a decision.




I think you need to take a break dude you say things that I have never said. Are you asking for attention or what?
 


I don't think you were rude. Try not to let Chugalug's uninformed notions get to ya, he spews them on other threads too.

For a budget solution, I highly recommend looking into the i3. Paired with hyperthreading, it's same number of logical cores as i5 w/o HT. Single core performance is particularly good on an overclocked i3, so well suited for gaming and general purpose use. In case you're wondering about i3 capabilities, my build's bench is viewable here: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/1177978

Good luck!
 
Keep in mind that with base clock overclocking you can quickly run out of ddr4 frequency headroom because the lowest ram divider is 2133.


Example:

To achieve a 4.6GHz CPU overclock with an i5-6400 you will need to raise your base clock to 170.4MHz, which will raise DDR4-2133 to 3634MT/s. Obviously a generic DDR4-2133 kit would not be able to run that fast.

With that said you will need to see what gives more clock headroom per dollar when you make your purchase. It could very well be cheaper to get a slightly higher clocked i5-6500 since it starts with a higher base clock and will allow for lower speed RAM required to reach the same CPU clock.

Example: To achieve a 4.6GHz CPU overclock with an i5-6500 you will need to raise base clock to 143.8MHz, which would raise DDR4-2133 to a speed of 3066MHz. That's much easier to do than on the i5-6400 simply because of RAM frequency headroom.
 
So far thank you everyone about your information.

Yes, i read about ddr4 timings and non k oc but it was not so clear . Thank you also for the examples. It does makes sense now. I need to read a bit about BCLK now although it looks pretty straightforward.

Also I know ASRocks is one of the few motherboard manufactures that ignored Intel "orders" to remove Bios oc capabilities. ASRock ftw Lol.
I hope they have some decent power phase mobos or does it not play any role as it is for oc an fx cpu?
 
Power handling isn't nearly a concern as it is on the AMD side. The problem you run into with these Intels is the internal TIM, and crowded die in general that has a harder time dissipating heat.

The theoretical part of base clock overclocking is straightforward. It's math. But where people fail often at this is memory tuning. If you can't learn how to manually set your timings, you will fail at this. I see it all the time, even with the moderators and editors here. So be sure you have a good understanding about manually loosening timings, ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST THE FIRST ROW.

Example success due to properly compensating RAM frequency/timings: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/q1-2016-system-builder-marathon-1232-dollar-prosumer-pc,4515-2.html

Example failure because left timings in AUTO: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/q1-2016-system-builder-marathon-662-dollar-budget-pc,4523.html

I personally fine tuned my i3-6100 to 4.6GHz, but it took quite a bit of time to properly stabilize each setting.

I'd really like ot get my hands on a Skylake Celeron and abuse one to 5GHz or more, which should be much easier due to much less crowded CPU die.
 
I want to know more about Intel micro update. I only know that it blocks non k cpus to overclock but how does it work?

Is it a hidden update in eg. like windows updates? How does it affect the cpu? Is it only a software or on hardware eg, cpu, motherboard (eg. efuse whatever) alteration?

How can I prevent this update? Are there any scripts or specific software for this ?
 
Ms 'forced' someboard manufacturers to release & update bios on boards to remove the facility to oc non-k chips.
If you have a board with an older bios you still can.

The safest bet is one of those asrock hyper boards I listed.
Asrock have no ties with ms so have ignored their wants completely .

Bear in mind the big 3 (Asus/MSI/Gigabyte) all make prebuild machines with Intel chips & didn't want to rock the boat

Good on asrock for ignoring them & releasing 2 boards that are plainly geared up with the express intention of overclocking locked CPU's- a straight 2 fingers up to MS imo.
 


Microcode updates are "corrections" implemented at the BIOS level that control CPU features. These updates are issued by Intel and adopted on a voluntary basis by board manufacturers and shipped out in form of BIOS revisions. These corrections need to be re-applied at every boot-up to have effect, which is why using older BIOS or beta BIOs allows Non K OC. Windows updates are not relevant here.



Microsoft has nothing to do with this.
 


This is incorrect.

Source?
 
Might not be a direct answer to your question, but I can help a bit.
Right now, I'm also in germany, and I'm from a third world country as well. So my advice can get you, maybe.

I have discovered that you can get some pretty good deals if you look for 4670k or 4690k on Auktions on e-bay. You can easily secure a 4670k for €100-120, if you try on 2 or 3 Auktions and are a bit patient. That will get you a very easy to overclock chip, and the performace difference between Haswell and Skylake is really small, so you might even get better performance (haswell chips almost always get to 4.4 or 4.5GHz), without having to overclock uaing hard methods.

I strongly recommend you take a look at used haswell overclockable chips, especially bidding in Auktions. Be sure follow all the articles that might be interesting, and only bid qhen there are 30 seconds or less remaining, with your maximum price.

With this method, I lost about 10 Auktions, but won around 3, which means I got 3 parts for a GREAT price.


There are also used Mobo+CPU+Ram combos for really cheap on the auktions.
 
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