Question Overclocking Potential Delidded 7700k and Noctua NH-D15 (First ever overclock)

[ThePCGamer123]

Just a basic question about overclocking potential on this absolute furnace of a CPU.

Current set up I have is a 7700k, delidded (thermal grizzly conductonaut liquid metal on inside, Kryonaut paste on outside), with a Noctua NH-D15. A very premium cooling set up, and this will drive everyone crazy, but I've never overclocked this CPU before. I actually got all this stuff to make the computer quieter, haha. I even have this thing inside a bequiet! Silent Base 801 case for ultimate silence, but the case is very well known for being choked for airflow if you don't have a lot of fans, which I do. Before the delid and NH-D15, I had a Corsair H115i 280mm AIO. I remember it being a furnace even with the water cooler, but those temperature problems went away when I had it delidded and got to NH-D15. I was just happy my computer didn't sound like a jet engine anymore!

bequiet! recently made a new Silent Base model with a backwards compatible ventilated front panel (old front panel was almost completely closed off). I got that too, so my system is well ventilated!

I can't tell if this chip ran hot because that's just how it is or if I lost the silicon lottery. Though, with my current set up, it takes a considerable amount of stress to push temperatures past 60 degrees, and usually for long gaming sessions on demanding games like Battlefield 1. Assuming bad luck on the silicon lottery, what is my overclocking headroom here?

All Specs:
i7 7700k (delidded, Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal on inside, Kryonaut on outside)
Noctua NH-D15
bequiet! Silent Base 801, with AIRFLOW front panel
3, 140mm front intake fans
1, 140mm bottom intake fan
1, 120mm rear exhaust fan
2, 140mm top exhaust fans.
Radeon VEGA 64
16GB 3200mhz RAM
Basic trash Toshiba HDD because I spend all my money on fun cooling solutions
MSI z170a Mpower Gaming Titanium Motherboard, not to be confused with similarly named Xpower
I also happen to know my voltages. My board came with a little overzealous voltages on the CPU. Current voltage is 1.28. When I first bought the board it defaulted to 1.4

I think that's it. Thanks!!

 

[Lutfij]

You should be able to hit 5.0GHZ comfortably since you managed to streamline the cooling in and out of that CPU's IHS but since you're going to be pushing higher clocks(and a little more voltage), you will be dumping more heat meaning you're going to hear the fans more(or rather the swoosh of the blades in your case). Make and model of your PSU and it's age?

 

[Eximo]

Yep, 5Ghz is pretty easy to get to. Even my unlucky 7700k was able to do it with 1.416 volts input. Delidded (without liquid metal) and water cooled it still managed to reach the low 80s during benchmarks. A good number of 7700k were able to reach 5Ghz with 1.35-1.38 volts which is much closer to a reasonable voltage. Just work your way up.

Cache ratio is another spot you can get some gains. I used to run 4500Mhz, I think stock was 4200? Been a while.

I just recently handed that system over to my Nephew, so I don't have it to mess with. I did disable the overclock though, give it a little more shelf life.

 

[ThePCGamer123]

You should be able to hit 5.0GHZ comfortably since you managed to streamline the cooling in and out of that CPU's IHS but since you're going to be pushing higher clocks(and a little more voltage), you will be dumping more heat meaning you're going to hear the fans more(or rather the swoosh of the blades in your case). Make and model of your PSU and it's age?

Corsair HX 850i. its about four years old i think? I got it in an RMA after the first one got struck my lightning and don't remember exactly how long ago that was lol.

 

[ThePCGamer123]

Yep, 5Ghz is pretty easy to get to. Even my unlucky 7700k was able to do it with 1.416 volts input. Delidded (without liquid metal) and water cooled it still managed to reach the low 80s during benchmarks. A good number of 7700k were able to reach 5Ghz with 1.35-1.38 volts which is much closer to a reasonable voltage. Just work your way up.

Cache ratio is another spot you can get some gains. I used to run 4500Mhz, I think stock was 4200? Been a while.

I just recently handed that system over to my Nephew, so I don't have it to mess with. I did disable the overclock though, give it a little more shelf life.

When you say 5ghz, is that all cores? Boost clock or base?

 

[Karadjgne]

Base always remains base. As to whether it's boost or all cores depends on how you OC.

If all you do is reset turbo maximums for 5GHz, then core behavior will remain the same, it'll boost to 5GHz on 1-2 cores, 4.9 on 3, 4.7 on 4 etc. If you also lock the cores, then it'll turbo to 5GHz on all cores, but retain stock low power c-states, so it'll idle at 1.6GHz etc.

The other way is a hard line OC, you physically set the cores to 5GHz, and they stay there regardless of load, meaning no idle or low power states. Constant speed. You'll get changes in heat outputs with changes in loads as power consumption changes, but that's it.

Turbo OC is a little more unstable and usually runs slightly higher vid and vcore as a result of needing voltage headroom for the fluctuations.

 

[Eximo]

When you say 5ghz, is that all cores? Boost clock or base?

I set a fixed 5Ghz all core. No boost, no low power states. I didn't really let that system idle, I shut it down when I wasn't using it. I have another low power PC I use for general stuff. That machine was essentially reserved for gaming only. (And given the high voltage I was feeding it, wanted to keep it alive as long as possible)

As mentioned you can configure it in many ways.

Step one is to usually see what the core voltage is reaching under a full load by default. This will give you a rough idea where the CPU cores are at now.

When you start testing the limits of the CPU you want boost behavior disabled so that you can test stability at various fixed voltages and load line level settings. That way you can see if the default voltages were necessary. Once you have a baseline then you can do things like setting a positive offset voltage and re-enabling C-states and testing for stability while monitoring voltage, so how low it goes at idle and the maximum under boost conditions. This is where LLC can get dangerous, as it will estimate necessary power/voltage and can overshoot, resulting in high voltage spikes to the CPU when the load suddenly cuts off. All a balancing act.

 

[geofelt]

How well you can do will be determined by the quality of your chip.
Here are some historical oc statistics from silicon lottery:
https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics
It also depends on if you run AVX2.
w/o AVX2
100% can oc to 4.8 @1.40v.
1% can do 5.3 @1.45v.