Overclocking and CPU cooler advice needed

[ddswh1pk0s]

Hello everyone

 

I am looking on getting an aftermarket cooler for my CPU so I can do some mild/moderate overclocking, I have some questions I would like answered as well as a recommendation for a cooler around $100 AUD. I heard that there are some air coolers that can produce similar temps to liquid coolers at my price range, so please feel free to recommend any air or liquid coolers.

 

1) If my stock turbo frequency of my CPU is 4.0Ghz, and I overclock to 4.0Ghz, will the turbo boost frequency stay at 4Ghz unless I change it? Should I change the turbo boost frequency if I am overclocking?

 

2) What programs should I use for stress testing? I've heard that AIDA64 is pretty good for stress testing, and that prime95 is not very good for stress testing Haswell CPUs.

 

Here are some pictures of the inside of my rig at the moment, specs are in my signature

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[TarPitGaming]

1. Yea 4.0 to 4.0

[TarPitGaming]

Recomend the noctua NH-D15 for $88.89

or corsair H100i GTX for $109.99

[anders_b]

for best overclocks get a liquid nitrogen cooler

[Guest]

I would suggest to pick a shadow rock cooler of be quiet

[runit3]

What CPU and what board is that?

[Guest]

and something else I would suggest is to dust out your case, I notice a little bit of dust on your pictures
dust affects cooling performance

[ApolloX75]

What are you overclocking? 4670K? 4690K? 4790K?

Any of them can be cooled rather effectively for under $40 with a Hyper 212 Evo and a modest overclock.

If you want better the BeQuiet Dark Rock series is good as is the Noctua ND15.

You can always go AIO with a Corsair H105 or H110, but a 120mm H80 would work just as well.

Lots of options!

[ddswh1pk0s]

1. Yea 4.0 to 4.0

Ok cool so if I overclock to 4.0Ghz should I turn up the turbo boost frequency or leave as is? Do people adjust it when they overclock?

 

 

Recomend the noctua NH-D15 for $88.89

or corsair H100i GTX for $109.99

Cool I will check those out thanks!

 

 

for best overclocks get a liquid nitrogen cooler

What do the cheapest liquid nitrogen coolers out there cost? they sound pretty expensive and I don't really feel comfortable handling liquid nitrogen.

 

 

What CPU and what board is that?

Like I said in OP the info is in my signature but it is a 4690k and Gigabyte Z97M-D3H.

 

 

and something else I would suggest is to dust out your case, I notice a little bit of dust on your pictures

dust affects cooling performance

I'm going to do some dust removal when I get my new cooler

 

 

What are you overclocking? 4670K? 4690K? 4790K?

Any of them can be cooled rather effectively for under $40 with a Hyper 212 Evo and a modest overclock.

If you want better the BeQuiet Dark Rock series is good as is the Noctua ND15.

You can always go AIO with a Corsair H105 or H110, but a 120mm H80 would work just as well.

Lots of options!

I'm overclocking a 4690k. I was looking at a 212 evo but since the temperatures in summer can get up to 35c (95) I wanted something a bit better. Thanks for the names of those coolers I will look into them

[runit3]

-snip-

Sorry, the MOBO color threw me off and I didn't see the heatsink under the wiring :blush: To directly answer the OP,

1) Your Turbo boost is an Intel feature that does not boost all the cores of the CPU, only one core is boosted to Intel's Turbo spec'd 3.9GHz. When you overclock the CPU you have a few options depending on your board. Either fully manual ratio control per core, "optimized tuning" that the board will choose to enable on its own (along with other parameters -including voltage), or flat matching core settings.

 

Out of the 3 options I would only recommend matching all core settings, meaning every core will be set to the multiplier of your choosing. Whichever option you decide to go with Intel Turbo Boost is forgone, some boards will still show it as "enabled" but it has nothing to do with how your CPU is actually being overclocked. If you are referring to a modular set of speeds the CPU will operate at, those are C-states, a power saving feature of the chip. When the CPU is at idle it will downclock automatically, then when it comes under load it will run at the speed you set. Voltage should be set at manual for all stress testing and will be non-variable, but you can move it to adaptive once you are 100% done with synthetic benchmarks, then the voltage will vary within a range you set -similar to how the CPU downclocks/upclocks under load.

 

2) Intel XTU, AIDA64, Cinebench R15, and 3DMark are all good programs for preliminary stress testing. Those coupled with some real world tests that you devise based on what you do everyday would iron out any potential instability. I usually run all of those programs listed + multiple Flash players, video encoding suites, and games.

 

As far as AIO's go I would recommend the H105 or Kraken X61, just make sure they will fit the N500 (I see the Seidon 240m would fit according to Coolermaster's website, it's also an option). If 35C are your ambient temps you'll definitely want a 240mm rad over a 120.