Question Overclocking i5 4690k on Gigabyte H97 Gaming 3 need help

[Goog1eIt]

Hello!

I'm very new to overclocking and I am trying to overclock my i5 4690k.
I bought a corsair H60 cooler and i'm trying to overclock my CPU to 4.4 ghz from 3.5ghz.

I changed the multiplier to 44 and the Vcore to 1.25 and I booted windows. Started intel burn test and checked with speecy as well as realtemp for temperatures.

The bios is showing on the left side that my cpu is running at 4.4 ghz but I can't seem to make it work on windows. It will always show it runs at 3.5ghz even when IntelBurnTest is set on high.
The Vcore is showing at 1.25 as I set it so I don't understand why the cpu doesn't go up to 4.4...
I can't seem to understand why... Anyone can help with that?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Typically, you can't overclock on H97. You need a Z series board. Most overclocking that was possible on H97 was removed via microcode updates. If you want to overclock, you need a Z series board.

 

[Goog1eIt]

Welp... I managed to overclock haha. I don't really know how but it eventually worked using the same settings

 

[Darkbreeze]

Don't update your BIOS, because if you do, you are likely to lose the ability to overclock. You must have a board that never had the BIOS updated because I know they took away the overclocking capability on H97 at some point.

 

[WildCard999]

Does it show 4.4ghz while using HWmonitor?

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

 

[Goog1eIt]

https://imgur.com/Sngjl77

View: https://imgur.com/Sngjl77


this would be a print screen while using HWmonitor.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Or, preferably, HWinfo, using the "Sensors only" option. Uncheck the "summary" option.


*Download HWinfo

 

[Goog1eIt]

Don't update your BIOS, because if you do, you are likely to lose the ability to overclock. You must have a board that never had the BIOS updated because I know they took away the overclocking capability on H97 at some point.

I remember updating BIOS a long time ago because the pc was not booting correctly. they must have made the update that stops OC'ing after I made mine. Guess I'm lucky then haha

 

[WildCard999]

So yea I'd ignore what Intelburntest is saying for the speed as it's clearly running at the correct overclock speed.

And yes don't update the motherboard BIOS further as it may mess up your overclock.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Looks like it's working right to me. Now you need to do the thermal and stability testing. And you NEED to do them. File corruption from instability can happen. There doesn't have to be any signs of instability such as blue screens or freezing for something to not be stable OR thermally compliant. Do the thermal testing FIRST.

CPU overclocking guide and tutorial for beginners

Covering the basics If you found your way here it's likely you are looking for help with basic overclocking. Either that or you're a long time overclocker interested in seeing whether I had any eye opening insights that you may have been lacking. Rest assured, I don't. This is only intended as...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Goog1eIt]

I ran thermal tests with intel burn test at high setting for 15 mins, and my CPU never went higher than 55 celsius. I will run the stress test for an hour with realbench and if that's good I'll run it for 8 hours. thanks for the help guys!!

 

[WildCard999]

Maybe it's been fixed but IntelBurnTest wasn't really a good program a few years ago when I used it (mixed results, the program used to override my voltage).

You might be better off with Prime95 V26.6 (or disable AVX) going with Small FFT's for a few hours.

With that liquid cooler 15 mins is not long enough to fully test the stability of your overclock.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Testing thermal compliance​

Once you get to the Windows desktop, the first thing you will want to do is open HWinfo (Sensors only option) or CoreTemp and take a look at what your core and package temperatures are doing. At idle your core temps should be somewhere below 40°C. Preferably somewhere in the mid to low 30’s. This WILL be affected by whatever the ambient temperature is in the room where you are, so if your are in a very warm region and have no air conditioning going you may have an idle temp that is a bit closer to 40. For cooler ambient rooms or regions it will likely show low 30’s-ish. Be aware that unless you have excessively high idle temps, say, above 40°C, then what your actual idle temps are is practically irrelevant. Cooler idle temps are not indicative of much of anything specific.

Very HIGH idle temps however DO indicate that there is likely a problem with an incorrectly installed CPU cooler heatsink, too high of CPU core voltage or some other cooling or voltage related issue. If you are using one of those other utilities I warned about in the beginning of this tutorial, it may also be that the utility is reporting falsely. In that case, go get HWinfo or CoreTemp and check again.

If idle temps seem fine, then leave your monitoring application open and run Prime95 (Either version 26.6 or the latest version with AVX/AVX2 disabled).

Choose the Small FFT option (NOT "Smallest FFT") and allow it to run for fifteen minutes. If you are using the latest version of Prime95 (Version 29.8 or newer) then you NEED to be sure to disable the AVX and AVX2 options in the main options window. When you disable AVX2 the option to disable AVX will become available. If at any point your core or package temperatures exceed 80°C for Intel or AMD Ryzen platforms, then click the “Test” menu at the top of the Prime95 window and select “stop” or “exit”. Do not simply click the "X" in the top right corner as that will NOT stop the stress test, it will only minimize it to the tray.

You MUST click Stop or Exit from the drop down TEST menu at the top left of the window to stop the stress test.

Stability testing​

So, if you passed the thermal compliance phase the next step will be to test stability. I cannot over stress the importance of not cutting corners when it comes to stress testing. Do not listen to naysayers who try to tell you that if you simply run this or that for 15 minutes, or an hour, or can pass a specific benchmark without errors, that your system is stable. Do not listen to people who say that if it is only a gaming system then stability isn’t important so long as it doesn’t crash. This is unreliable.

It IS important, no matter WHAT you do on the system. Unstable CPU or memory configurations can thoroughly degrade an operating system, game files or other parts of your file system to the point of eventually making them unusable. Instability is also probably not the best thing for the hardware itself.
Do the tests. Do them for the length of time they should be done for and do not cut corners even though it is tempting to do. You will only be hurting yourself in the long run.

Open Realbench and run a 1 hour stress test to begin with. Choose the Stress test option by clicking on the Stress test button. Choose the one hour option. Set the memory option to approximately half of your total installed memory. We are not worried about testing memory right now. If you have more than 16GB of memory, choose the up to 16GB option. If you have 16GB of memory, choose the up to 8GB option. If you have 8GB or less, choose the up to 4GB option.

If you pass the 1 hour stress test and plan to try increasing your overclock a bit higher, then you can start again just as you did in the beginning but bump the CPU core frequency up by another 100-200mhz. If it will post and boot into windows, repeat the thermal test and the stress test.
If it will not POST and boot into windows, or if you get errors or bluescreens at any point, then you will need to bump up your CPU core voltage a bit and try again. We went over that in the beginning so that should be self explanatory at this point.


If you were not able to pass the one hour stress test, then also, you will want to go back into the bios and bump the voltage up a small amount. By small amount, I mean whatever minimal increment the BIOS will allow you to adjust it upwards in. If the voltage was at 1.32v and did not pass, or would not POST, or there were errors or bluescreens or the screen went black and (**)restarted then try bumping the CPU core voltage up to 1.325. If it was at 1.3v try 1.31. Etc.

(**Assuming it did not do so because of a low quality power supply. Very important to have a high quality power supply if you are going to be overclocking. Watts are not the only consideration. A unit with good, clean power that has low ripple and electrical noise is very important in order for the motherboard and voltage regulators to remain stable and not overheat as well.)

Every time you make a change in the bios to increase the CPU core voltage, YOU MUST RUN the thermal tests again to verify you are still within tolerance.

If however you passed the one hour stress test with no errors, no problems of any kind, and do not wish to raise the level of your overclock, or at any time if you get to the point where you are happy with the speed you have achieved up to that point, then you can go ahead and run the Realbench stress test again except this time run it for a full 8 hours.

If it passes that, then close Realbench and open Prime95 again. Choose the Blend test and run that for 8 hours. If it passes that, your system is probably about as stable as can be expected under almost any circumstances and you can call it a day if you are able to pass both of these tests and are still within thermal compliance. It’s worth noting that you may want to periodically check your maximum thermal readings on your monitoring software which you should leave running alongside any stress tests, just to make sure that you don’t exceed thermal limits while testing.

If you remained below the thermal ceiling when you ran the Small FFT Prime95 torture test though, you should not have any issues with thermals on either of these other tests anyway.
If you wish to take the stability testing one step further IN ADDITION to having passed both the Realbench 8 hr test and the Prime95 Blend mode 8 hr test, you can run Prime95 Small FFT for 24 hours and if you pass that there is little else you can do to assure that your system is stable in regard to your CPU overclock settings.

At this point you can move on to using your system normally again, or, if you wish to push things a little further to see how much more you can squeeze out of it, then you can simply start the whole process over again moving up incrementally from where you left off but it is terribly important that you always perform the thermal and stability tests after any changes so you don't end up creating tremendous problems for yourself later on or inadvertently damaging your hardware with an overclock that is beyond what your cooling system, motherboard and CPU are capable of sustaining.

If you have successfully achieved the overclock you were hoping for, then congratulations and at this point you can reconfigure your memory XMP settings or continue on to either tightening your memory timings or overclocking your memory, if you plan to do so.