First Time Overclocker Questions

[AdvocateOfNyx]

I just changed around some computer parts and want to overclock for the first time.  I have a Core i5 4670k on an Asrock Z87E-ITX with the stock cooler (I know I need a different one).  Here are the questions I have.

 

1. Somewhere I read that with Haswell overclocking you usually can't get full XMP and overclocking at the same time.  Is this true?  Currently I have 4.0GHz at 1.35 volts with XMP enabled @ 2400MHz 11-13-13-31 and everything seems to be okay.

 

2. What cooler should I look at for this CPU?  I'd like something as cheap as possible that will let me overclock to 4.2/4.4 GHz at reasonable temps, preferably air.  If that's not a possibility, what is a reasonable air cooler that I can get to overclock to 4.0+ GHz?  Currently looking at the Hyper 212 EVO.  It's like $20 on eBay.

 

3. I'm at around 85-90 degrees Celsius in AIDA64 @ 4.0GHz (and previously mentioned settings) with stock cooler.  Is it okay to leave it at that for now or could I cause harm to the chip?  AIDA64 reports some throttling sometimes, usually around the half hour mark.

 

4.  Okay so there are two settings in the BIOS and I'm not sure how they're related.  There is a VCore setting which says its the variability of the voltage per core?  this was 1.0 by default and I turned it down to 0.9, I'm not sure of the exact effect this has.  There is also the constant voltage.  I tried 1.2v and 1.3v, both hung before getting into Windows (4.0GHz).  I tried 1.33v and got a BSOD after around an hour of testing, am now at 1.35v with no problems so far.  I'm not sure exactly what this first VCore setting does, though.

 

5. I've been using AIDA64 for testing and HWMonitor Pro for checking temps, is that okay?

 

6. Anything else I should know?