Worth it to still overclock i7 7700k?

[Omie]

So my GTX 1080Ti recently died on me and my friend let me borrow his RTX 3070. I play on 1440p but I hear since my CPU is pretty old I could be bottlenecking. I also struggle a lot with my computer microstuttering in every game. But I find that if I use Asus's MCE and sync all cores to my 7700k's turbo boost of 4.5GHz, a lot of the microstutters disappear as my CPU stays locked at 4.5GHz on all cores when gaming.

 

However, I also hear that using Asus's MCE usually applies an unnecessarily high amount of voltage to the CPU. I used HWInfo to monitor temps, and it looks like my voltage is at 1.25V at 4.5GHz and max temps seem to hit 70C, while my average temps are around 62-65C. I'm also using the H115i as my AIO.

 

Given my temps and situation, would it be worth it to OC my 7700k? I was thinking maybe trying somewhere around 4.8GHz (with load line calibration at lv5) at the same 1.25V Asus MCE uses.

[Levent]

You already have overkill cooling. As long as you are able to cool it down and have it stable, overclocking is always worth it on desktop use cases.

[Omie]

4 minutes ago, Levent said:

You already have overkill cooling. As long as you are able to cool it down and have it stable, overclocking is always worth it on desktop use cases.

Gotcha. What voltage do you think I should stop at? Right now thinking about trying 4.8GHz at 1.25V.

[Levent]

Just now, Omie said:

Gotcha. What voltage do you think I should stop at? Right now thinking about trying 4.8GHz at 1.25V.

Google google search showed me that 1.25v might be the stock voltage on 7700K and I saw people pushing more than 1.35v for 5ghz overclocks. I would say keep the voltage and try to find the highest stable overclock. I highly recommend testing worst case scenario loads (like prime95 Small FFTs with AVX enabled) to see if stable and you are able to keep it cool.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Well yea obv it is worth it due to the i7 only having 4 cores and also being old so low boost clocks, still worth it ocing in these somewhat older generations

 

For an efficiency oc then stick with 1.25 or 1.3v and see how high you can push the clocks

 

But since you got a good cooler you could prob do some higher volts like 1.4 or 1.45, the intel max volt spec is 1.52v for 14nm though i dont reccomend going that high unless your cooler can keep the cpu under 80c, obv at these volts you would have already encountered diminishing returns though if your cooling can handle it then why not esp when you have a 3070

[DoctorNick]

1 hour ago, Omie said:

So my GTX 1080Ti recently died on me and my friend let me borrow his RTX 3070. I play on 1440p but I hear since my CPU is pretty old I could be bottlenecking. I also struggle a lot with my computer microstuttering in every game. But I find that if I use Asus's MCE and sync all cores to my 7700k's turbo boost of 4.5GHz, a lot of the microstutters disappear as my CPU stays locked at 4.5GHz on all cores when gaming.

 

However, I also hear that using Asus's MCE usually applies an unnecessarily high amount of voltage to the CPU. I used HWInfo to monitor temps, and it looks like my voltage is at 1.25V at 4.5GHz and max temps seem to hit 70C, while my average temps are around 62-65C. I'm also using the H115i as my AIO.

 

Given my temps and situation, would it be worth it to OC my 7700k? I was thinking maybe trying somewhere around 4.8GHz (with load line calibration at lv5) at the same 1.25V Asus MCE uses.

Up to 1.45v should be fine. Monitor with HWinfo64, and check under vcore.