Point me in the right direction

sdhdok · February 20, 2014

Okay so two weeks ago i finally built my first pc the specs are
i5-4670k cooled by a cooler master hyper 212 evo
8 gigs of g.skill ram at 1600mhz
Sapphire r9 290 Tri X edition
gigabyte ga-z87x-d3h
antec 620w high current gamer power supply
and it's all in a define r4 with only the fans that came with the case.
A samsung 840 evo ssd (i also have a 2tb hdd)

I'm currently gaming at 1440p and want to get the most out of my hardware. Everything is still at stock speeds as i have absolutely no idea where to begin learning about over clocking, you guys probably get asked about a million times on this forum so i sorry if this is the millionth and 1 time but can you tell me which componets i should overclock first? Does it make a difference? I have Trixx and furmark installed, but i'm not exactly sure what to do with them, any help you could give me would be appreciated. Ultimately what im asking is...... how the hell do i overclock?

DoubleY · February 20, 2014

Overclock the GPU first. Use a program such as MSI Afterburner and up the Core Clock by about 15 mhz until it's unstable. Then do the same thing with memory clock

Bluuz · February 20, 2014

First of all, do you need to overclock? If everything is running the way you like, there's no need to push your components any further.

If you still want to go through with it, I'll try to give you the 101.

Generally, people will overclock their gpu and cpu because they give noticeable benefits. Memory overclocking is done by those with amd cpu/apu.

Overclocking is all about increasing the speed of your components without damaging them. The most harmful things being too much voltage and too high a temperature.

To overclock your gpu, I recommend using afterburner or precision x. Others exist, but the two seem to have the most functionality and a friendly user interface. Then get something to test stability. Personally, I think furmark is unrealistic and unnecessary stressing. I like to use Unigine Heaven and Valley. Again, everyone has their own preference on what software to use.

Now there are two things to tweak: your core speed and memory speed. Start with core speed. Slowly increase the core by increments of 20 and run a benchmark to see if your setting is stable. If you run into problems, back off a bit. Problems can range from graphical glitches (tearing), artifacts (white dots or other anomalies appearing on your screen), lower benchmark scores, or outright crashing. When you have found out how far you can go without running into errors, that's your maximum overclock. Reset your core speed and repeat the process, this time increasing only memory clock. After you have found your maximum memory speed, combine that with your core speed and see if you run into issues. If you do, lower either parameter until you can maintain those speeds for an hour or so.

Now for the cpu, go into your bios and simply increase the core multiplier by increments of 1 and run a stability test, such as prime95, for about a day. If it is stable, increase the multiplier some more.

Googling "overclock 4670k" or "overclock 290" will give you more specific instructions. This is just a summary of what you'll be going through.