Overclocking the old Intel I7 5820K to a safe level

Dec 17, 2018
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Hi all,

After messing around and tweaking my gaming settings i seem to have found a bottle neck in my PC's performance and i reckon it is my CPU that is causing it.

So i need to find a safe setup so my CPU wont decided to suicide on me leaving me to clean up its thermal paste mess!

I have experienced OC in the past but i am still a novice when it comes to ‘voltages’ so some expert input would be much appreciated :).

Here are my specs:

CPU: Intel I7 5820K 3.3ghz Haswell
CPU Fan: Corsair Hydro H105 240mm Extreme
Ram: Team Group Elite 32GB DDR4 2400MHz Quad
Motherboard: MSI X99A SLI
Power: be Quiet! 1000W 80 Plus Gold Modular
GPU: Asus 980ti

Any voltage settings you guys think would be a good setting to have would help me loads! ( I have a CPU & GPU stress tester to test the settings)

Many Thanks

Colin H
 
Solution
Your CPU is not a dinosaur just yet. Intel has been pretty stagnant on performance since your 5820 was released, so you are not missing out on too much.

Overclocking is really not some mythical science. It is also harder to damage a CPU these days as they have built in save guards to protect from damage.

My personal rule of thumb is to keep voltage below 1.4 (preferably below 1.35) and average load temps below 80C. Some people are willing to go to 1.45 volts and some people wont go above 1.3 volts. It really just depends on your risk acceptance.

You have a decent cooler so you should be able to get a decent OC. I would go into the bios and set your vcore to 1.3 and your frequency to 40. This will give you a 4ghz clockspeed at...
Your CPU is not a dinosaur just yet. Intel has been pretty stagnant on performance since your 5820 was released, so you are not missing out on too much.

Overclocking is really not some mythical science. It is also harder to damage a CPU these days as they have built in save guards to protect from damage.

My personal rule of thumb is to keep voltage below 1.4 (preferably below 1.35) and average load temps below 80C. Some people are willing to go to 1.45 volts and some people wont go above 1.3 volts. It really just depends on your risk acceptance.

You have a decent cooler so you should be able to get a decent OC. I would go into the bios and set your vcore to 1.3 and your frequency to 40. This will give you a 4ghz clockspeed at 1.3 volts. Save and boot your system. Download Intel XTU to watch your temps and run a Cinebench r15 benchmark. Run the benchmark in window mode and watch your temps in XTU. For me, spikes above 80C are fine, but averages are what I look for. For daily use, below 80C is fine for the long term.

If your system crashes at any time, dont worry, just go into the bios and up the voltage to 1.31. If your temps are too high, then lower the voltage. If you finish the bench and your temps are fine with no crashes, go into the bios and change the frequency to 41. Rinse and repeat till you get to the highest frequency.
 
Solution
Dec 17, 2018
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I thought as much, I know the CPU is not out of date yet but i am just concerned that it is the cause of the bottle neck on performance in games, i can run a game in low settings and get the same FPS as if i had the game in Ultra settings, to me this seems unusual as i should be getting some sort of FPS increase as the quality drops.

 


Dropping the settings does not impact the CPU. It impacts the GPU. The CPU will put out the framerate regardless of the settings, the GPU will slow down when you increase detail, textures, etc. What resolution are you gaming at? What are your CPU/GPU temps.
 
Dec 17, 2018
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My Loaded GPU is about 70/80'C
My idle GPU is about 30'c
My GPU is slightly over clocked using the Asus built in App (forgot what it's called) but it's a single button overclock for newbies like me.

CPU loaded is about 35'C
CPU Idle is about 20'c

I have 2 monitors a
Primary Screen for gaming:
Acer Predator XB240HA 24" 1920x1080 TN G-Sync 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red

Secondary screen:
BenQ XL2720Z 27" 1920x1080 TN 144Hz 3D Vision 2.0 Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red

I run both at there designated screen Res of 1920x1080 and the games use the desktop setting
I get about 90fps in Overwatch and 100 fps in Wolfenstien: New Colossus
the BenQ screen tears quite a bit thats why i am on the 24" Acer.

 

indigo.root

Prominent
Nov 21, 2018
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There're a lot of manuals overclocking Haswell-E's. I don't really get why I see a suggestion to setup 1.3v to get 4ghz, because 5820k can do 40x even without messing with voltage (sometimes). At least, 39x is more than possible. I found it handy to set it to 40x first and look at the automatically found voltages in CPU-Z – it was something about 1.185-1.19.

The rule of thumbs is to set suitable voltage for you and then look for a good ratio it can handle and I don't think 1.3 is okay for this model efficiency-wise. I mean, be aware that there's a point when your CPU starts to produce much more heat for the next 100mhz you get – it's the thing you should avoid not only because your PC becomes louder, but because of the electricity bills too. Haswells are pretty hungry beasts, you know, so it's better for you to find a really sweet spot, not pushing the limits.

I myself was able to stabilize it @ 4150mhz (all cores), 4450mhz (intel boost for the first two cores), 1.2v only. It works all day, stress-tests are passed, played a heavy game for 60 hours – no crashes or something. Couple years ago I had a bad setting ≈ 1.275, 4.5ghz all cores. I consider it bad because 300mhz for 4 of 6 cores are not worth +75mv and all that heat it produces.

Also you may turn off hyperthreading, if you don't use it for render or something. Games rarely use even that 6 physical cores, so they won't make use of 12 logical ones for sure. Without HT overclocking is more stable, CPU became less power-hungry. The setting I've mentioned above still utilizes HT.

There's also a lifehack with cache/ring/uncore ratio. If you managed to find some good voltage:clock ratio, but the system is not that stable (crashes, but rarely), you can try to lower cache ratio to stabilize it. 100mhz of cache speed is not the thing you'll notice (it's barely noticable even in synthetic tests), but there're reports that it can help a lot, improving overall stability.