In depth overclocking guides???

[corrado33]

Anybody know of any ACTUAL in depth overclocking guides. I want to know what ALL of the settings do and when I should and shouldn't adjust them.

 

When I google for the above I just get "articles" CLAIMING to be in depth, but in reality it's just the same old "raise your multiplier a bit and if it BOSDs then raise your voltage a bit." They mostly ignore any other settings.

 

Are there books about this stuff? Any really good online resources?

[Cereal5]

Watch every YouTube video you can from the big techtubers, is guarantee at least one of them mentions more than it. I know Linus' 5820K on a Rampage V (I think) goes into slightly more depth. 

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, Cereal5 said:

Watch every YouTube video you can from the big techtubers, is guarantee at least one of them mentions more than it. I know Linus' 5820K on a Rampage V (I think) goes into slightly more depth. 

Meh, why is everything videos now-a-day? I don't want to slog through 15 minutes of the same crap to hear a single line or something different. 

 

Text based man! All the youtube videos say the same thing...

[Mira Yurizaki]

Overclock is basically raise either your multiplier or BCLK until it no longer boots, bump up the voltage a little and see if you can continue bumping up clock speeds, then when you have a stable boot, go run a benchmark overnight to ensure it's actually stable. There's nothing magical or technical about it other than that.

 

What more do you want to know?

[corrado33]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Overclock is basically raise either your multiplier or BCLK until it no longer boots, bump up the voltage a little and see if you can continue bumping up clock speeds, then when you have a stable boot, go run a benchmark overnight to ensure it's actually stable. There's nothing magical or technical about it other than that.

 

What more do you want to know?

Ok, maybe I misspoke. I want to know what all (or most of ) the settings in the BIOS do. Not just those related to overclocking. The manual isn't very descriptive. I want to know what limits there are to overclocking other than reaching the maximum for a particular part. 

 

Like I read the other day that increasing BCLK above your RAM speed will make for an extremely unstable system, if you're able to do it at all. I want to read things like that.

[stealth80]

http://www.pcgamer.com/ultimate-bios-guide-every-setting-decrypted-and-explained/

[corrado33]

2 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

http://www.pcgamer.com/ultimate-bios-guide-every-setting-decrypted-and-explained/

That's a start. As a bonus it happens to have the same bios as the old computer I'm messing around with right now.  

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Ok, maybe I misspoke. I want to know what all (or most of ) the settings in the BIOS do. Not just those related to overclocking. The manual isn't very descriptive. I want to know what limits there are to overclocking other than reaching the maximum for a particular part.

That's pretty much it. Overclocking is pushing the part past its factory specifications. There's only an upper limit, and hence only a "maximum" you can reach. There's also no science to overclocking. Either the part you have overclocks well or it doesn't, or somewhere in between. You can't say every Core i7-6700K will overclock to 4.8GHz. A lot will only go up to 4.6GHz, some unlucky folks may get stuck at 4.4GHz. There are some values you can start at, but it's up to you to continue pushing it.

 

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

That's pretty much it. Overclocking is pushing the part past its factory specifications. There's only an upper limit, and hence only a "maximum" you can reach. There's also no science to overclocking. Either the part you have overclocks well or it doesn't, or somewhere in between. You can't say every Core i7-6700K will overclock to 4.8GHz. A lot will only go up to 4.6GHz, some unlucky folks may get stuck at 4.4GHz. There are some values you can start at, but it's up to you to continue pushing it.

 

That is absolutely untrue. There is a science to everything. Science can explain why some chips are better than others given the right technique. 

 

Ok then, let me put it this way. I want to know how each individual setting affects a CPU/memory/GPU, not only in the context of overclocking.

[Cereal5]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

That is absolutely untrue. There is a science to everything. Science can explain why some chips are better than others given the right technique. 

 

Ok then, let me put it this way. I want to know how each individual setting affects a CPU/memory/GPU, not only in the context of overclocking.

Me too lol

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

That is absolutely untrue. There is a science to everything. Science can explain why some chips are better than others given the right technique.

The "there is no science to overclocking" is the fact you can't tell by picking up a random chip, looking at it, and plugging it in, that it'll actually overclock to the same degree as someone else's.

 

The only "science" to explain why some people's chips are better than others is because the chip may be something like 0.1% closer to the perfect spec than the other guy's. But no company is going to invest that much time and effort trying to figure out how just how close to spec their parts are other than checking that they're within tolerance of what's required.

 

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

Ok then, let me put it this way. I want to know how each individual setting affects a CPU/memory/GPU, not only in the context of overclocking.

That's more of an electrical engineering question. And it's the reason why you don't see it in any overclocking guide. So with my limited understanding of transistors, I'll explain why you can only push a part so much and why you need to increase voltage to push it further.

 

Modern integrated chips are built using FETs, or Field Effect Transistors. They have three terminals: source, drain, and gate. The source is where electricity comes from, the drain is where the signal goes to, and the gate is a switch. When you apply a voltage to the gate, it creates a channel for electricity to flow from the source to the drain. The size of the channel and the amount of current that runs through it depends on the voltage of the gate. This makes FETs an electrically controlled switch.

 

Using this diagram, the blue area, called the p-substrate, prevents electricity from flowing from the source to the drain. When a voltage is applied to the gate, it causes the p-substrate, starting from the gate side, to turn into the pink area (called the n-substrate). The more voltage you apply, the more p-substrate becomes like the n-substrate and more current flows through.

 

But FETs cannot turn on and off instantly. There's a ramp up and "cool down" time:

 

When you have a fast enough frequency, but your voltage doesn't change, the "Ton" and "Toff" times basically overlap, which means not enough current flows through the channel. When that happens, you increase the voltage, which as described earlier, causes more current to go through.

 

So why can't you increase the voltage indefinitely? Because eventually you'll open up a channel so wide that an uncontrolled amount of current can flow through. Current generates heat and thanks to semiconductors having this property called thermal runway, chip go boom. An explanation can be found at http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/What-is-the-breakdown-voltage-of-a-FET-transistor

 

This is all a grossly simplified explanation that is getting a lot of things mostly there, but not quite. And this is why nobody has an "in-depth" guide to overclocking.