Discussion Z77 motherboard BCLK overclock 107.4MHz boot to Windows!

[Jimboss99]

Hi everyone!
I've just been tinkering with my motherboard base clock and found the max. stable. Please let me know what you think!
My motherboard is the ASUS P8Z77-M PRO. I have 3 storage drives in the PC.
Here is the data:

107.6 - no boot, overclocking error

107.5 - stuck/freezes at windows login screen

107.4 = (107.39 cpu-z) loads into windows crashes in Cinebench R15

107.3 = (107.24 cpu-z) - works Cinebench R15

Thanks for looking! I would like to know what other people achieved for their base clock for comparison if possible, Cheers!

 

[13thmonkey]

That's way beyond 'safe' in my opinion, it probably won't release the magic smoke, but as you are mucking about with the Bus that drives the PCI-E bus speed and the sata ports and you are well outside of spec there's a great risk of disk corruption, as you are overclocking sata too. The generation after this decoupled those buses and the bclk and made it more useful.

 

[Jimboss99]

Ah I've read about this before So if it wasn't for the fact that it is connected to the pci-e and sata ports it would be fine?
Also does a high bclk damage/ degrade the motherboard itself in any way?

 

[13thmonkey]

I wouldn't think it'd degrade anything, but normal OCing doesn't degrade anything until it just dies, it's very much a working/not working situation. It can however easily cause odd little problems though, I think from memory the limit was around 103 before you started to hit dodgy territory, hence why I think you are way over the limit.

 

[mdd1963]

it will be just a matter of time before the drive's installation gets corrupted...; as long as you accept and anticipate that risk, have fun with it...

 

[tennis2]

I thought you could increase non-k IVB multipliers by 4 on Z series mobos. I see you've got MCE enabled also. All on 1.1V... Nice!

 

[Jimboss99]

I thought you could increase non-k IVB multipliers by 4 on Z series mobos. I see you've got MCE enabled also. All on 1.1V... Nice!

Yes, I can increase the multiplier from 39 to 43 in the bios. But I set it to 41. The processor doesn't run at 4.2GHz or 4.3GHz on all cores using 42 and 43 multipliers, it just goes back to 4.1GHz on all cores. So I leave it on 41 so the processor doesn't suddenly spike to like 4.6 ghz as a result of turbo boost.

And thanks, The first picture I ran the processor deliberately at a lower speed and I don't know why, but the second picture I ran it at the max frequency I could get it on all cores - I don't think it is fully stable at that voltage, I think that was the IDLE voltage. It runs more like 1.185v under load and has the occasional spike to 1.25v! But I turn load-line calibration off because I don't want to take any risks with any bigger voltage spikes!

 

[tennis2]

What if you revert BCLK to 100 and up the multi to 43 though? That's what I was getting at. Basically the same 4.3GHz (although you're currently @ 4.39 w/ 41 multi), but perhaps more... stable/ safe. Then, who knows, maybe you can break 4.4 by upping the BCLK again.

 

[Jimboss99]

What if you revert BCLK to 100 and up the multi to 43 though? That's what I was getting at. Basically the same 4.3GHz (although you're currently @ 4.39 w/ 41 multi), but perhaps more... stable/ safe. Then, who knows, maybe you can break 4.4 by upping the BCLK again.

I know exactly what you mean, I didn't explain it very well. It was late, Sleep deprived ramblings!

If I set the multiplier to 43 with 100MHz BCLK, under max load the processor will revert back to 4.1GHz,
It won't let me run the processor at 4.3GHz on all cores with a 43 multiplier.

That's just how it works with ivy bridge and this happens with other people as well.

I would run it with a 43 multiplier if it ran the processer at 4.3GHz on all cores but it doesn't.

Does that make sense? Not very good at explaining.

 

[tennis2]

Totally makes sense! Odd that it does that, but good to know.

Not many people know of this "loop-hole". I theorized that it was possible a number of years back, but have never been able to personally confirm or find others that have tried.