Overclocking Retail Intel Core i7-5960X CPUs

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wtfxxxgp

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I think the results are impressive. Wonder what you would have gotten had you gone gung-ho on the cooling. An 8-core CPU that can overclock like this is a beast for any power user.
 
I REALLY liked hearing intel give the OC distribution for the i7-4790K, if there is any possible way you could give the numbers for the i5-4690k that would be great. Nice article.

If you still have the parts an update with the most extreme cooler you could find against one of the CPUs would be interesting, so would freezing yourself (dropping the ambient) and seeing if that allowed another 2 bins, or if it was rounding error.

I missed seeing system power @ the OC frequency, it might be in there tho, re-reading to see if i missed it.
 

mercsniper

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any post on the other numbers used in these overclocking tests? I've had problems keeping my system stable at 3.8Ghz and DDR4 at 2400MHz. EPU was turning on and not turning off causing significant strain and requiring a reboot. I ended up turning EPU off.
 

Daniel Ladishew

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I would also like this set of tests conducted using a premium cooler to show if the significant increase in 5.0Ghz chips is represented in any of the 5 you tested. I can hit 4.5Ghz on my i5 4690K, so seeing 4.6Ghz from the "better" chip does not really show anything worthwhile to me. I think we would all like to see exactly why this chip is worth 1K+ from an overclocking standpoint.
 

vertexx

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Nice article. I'm very interested in a similar one for the 5820k, especially interested whether the 5820k would produce less thermal output under overclocked load.
 
Wow, 8 cores at 4.8ghz! That's insane. Very cool stuff.

Too bad it's still $1000, I think $750-$800 should be it's best price point.

If you have money to spend on an i7-5960X, you probably have enough to pay someone to tune it (overclock) for you.
where's the fun in that?

I can see your point, why would you want to risk damaging $1000 of CPU for a overclock? Well I defiantly do not recommend overclocking a CPU like this if your a newbie (if you really want to though, read a TON on overclocking haswell-E), but the experienced guys who know exactly what they're doing can easily overclock any CPU without destroying it. ;)
 
Nice to see there is still a decent amount of headroom at 1.2GHz with this new chip, which is a whopping 50% better than the 800MHz increase I have my 4690K at over stock boost: 4.7GHz. And that's a good overclock for that chip while remaining stable and cool.

This is just 100MHz shy of the overclock leap my Sandy Bridge 2500K was able to knock out with a slower stock turbo boost speed of 3.5GHz and overclocking to 4.8GHz (I did crack 5GHz successfully with it on four cores, but for longevity backed it down).

As one who has been enjoying overclocking since the Celeron 300A->450MHz days for an easy 50% overclock, I understand with continued µ shrinkage we are approaching the limits of physics and thermals. A good successful overclock today is between 25-35% over stock turbo boost. I see those figures getting smaller. The days of an easy 50% overclock with off-the-shelf cooling are long gone.
 


Yep. The glory days of Sandy Bridge are over (Sandy bridge is still my all time favorite architecture from Intel).
 

joex444

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For something like this if you're looking for a CLC, why would you settle with a single 140mm radiator? The Kraken X61 is a 280mm part which should let it handle a meaningful amount of extra heat. Intel's giving 4.7GHz as an example and here we see 4.5GHz with what I can only think is a small radiator for such a task.

I'd really be interested in overclocks for the other two LGA 2011-3 Core i7 parts. The 5820K is by far the most affordable and has fewer PCIe lanes, while the 5930K has a higher base clock and the full 40 PCIe lanes. Given both of these parts are 6 core one would assume they could overclock better.

Also fascinating would be actual benchmarks. What does 4.5GHz on all 8 cores actually look like? How does that compare to a stock 5960X, 5930K, or 4790K?
 

gamebrigada

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Got a 5960x last year at PAX, was the winner of the intel badge thingie. I can almost say it wasn't worth it, the financial burden to make a machine around it was spectacular at the least.

Anyway, running at 4.5 stable with a kraken x41. I dropped it down to 4.4 because it would at times crash, but I believe it to be a motherboard issue (x99 deluxe from asus) rather than the proc. These procs are unbelievable, but I'm thinking intel has gone a long way at getting their shit together, when I started with the one I got, the maximum overclocks on these puppies was all over the board. anywhere from 4.3 to 5.0.
 

ralanahm

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My peaks 250 to 300 watt according to Asus 1 second average. Using big nocturnal with three 150mm fans on full. But I am not using the advanced/ln2 OC settings just normal and for long runs it trottles 80c and keeps the watt in 220 to 250 range.
 

alidan

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If you have money to spend on an i7-5960X, you probably have enough to pay someone to tune it (overclock) for you.
where's the fun in that?

you need the power than 5ghs can enable but don't have the ability or knowledge to do it yourself, so instead of risking the processor not knowing what you are doing, pay someone who does to push it to its limits.

granted, single core performance will get the biggest benefit from this, all the heavy loads i would want to put on an 8 core cpu would be better served by a multi cpu motherboard and getting a few 6 core chips for less than 1 8 core cpu
 

knowom

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If you have money to spend on an i7-5960X, you probably have enough to pay someone to tune it (overclock) for you.
where's the fun in that?

you need the power than 5ghs can enable but don't have the ability or knowledge to do it yourself, so instead of risking the processor not knowing what you are doing, pay someone who does to push it to its limits.

granted, single core performance will get the biggest benefit from this, all the heavy loads i would want to put on an 8 core cpu would be better served by a multi cpu motherboard and getting a few 6 core chips for less than 1 8 core cpu
As would single core performance if they actually made CPU's and boards for that purpose.

That's what AMD should focus on single and dual core APU's with great IPC on a dual socket platform that can dual/triple/quad crossfire the APU graphics with each other along with discrete graphics.

Not only that, but dual socket enables the possibility of more memory capacity as a nice bonus and better cooling dissipation due to two heat sinks which is a nice bonus.
 

Math Geek

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now that is a very intriging sounding system. piggybacking the igp's from multiple APU's could make for some very interesting potential capabilities. modular mobo that hold 4 of them allowing a single one to start and adding as needed. hhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

*checking phone book for amd's #*
 
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