Safest speed and voltage for i5-6500 OC on H170A motherboard

[ThisIsCheez]

Hello,

 

Title pretty much says it all. I have a MSI H170A Gaming Pro that allows me to overclock my locked Skylake i5-6500. I am currently running the stock cooler so I haven't pushed it any higher than 100mhz over, but I'm getting my Hyper 212 in the mail today so I'm pretty excited to crank this thing up a bit.

 

Here's my questions/concerns. Will overclocking a locked processor cause any issues at all, or is it fine as long as I keep the temps stable? I don't foresee it causing issues since there's plenty of motherboards that feature being able to overclock locked CPUs, but I just want to make sure. Also, is there any concerns with overclocking on a H170A board? I've read online that H series that can overclock don't do it "well" but I don't really understand why. Does it have to do when voltage regulation? I have to assume since the manufacturer gives you the ability to OC with the board they made it safe to do, but once again, I want to make sure.

 

Finally, what speeds and voltages are safe for this setup? I don't plan on going crazy, just raising the base clock from 3.2 to 3.6 and the turbo from 3.6 to 4.0. Will changing to multiplier mess with my memory speeds as well?

[Megah3rtz]

I didn't think H170's motherboards could overclock, you sure about that? 

[Lays]

Overclocking with BCLK is fine on Skylake. Just remember BCLK oc's will mess with memory speeds, so you may have to change the memory speed in BIOS if you have stability problems.

 

As far as you can go will be fine, keep it under 1.4v if you have a good cooler, shoot for 1.3-1.35 if you have a mediocre cooler. Stock cooler, probably not much further than stock voltage would be OK.

[ThisIsCheez]

3 hours ago, Megah3rtz said:

I didn't think H170's motherboards could overclock, you sure about that? 

 

[ThisIsCheez]

4 hours ago, Lays said:

Overclocking with BCLK is fine on Skylake. Just remember BCLK oc's will mess with memory speeds, so you may have to change the memory speed in BIOS if you have stability problems.

 

As far as you can go will be fine, keep it under 1.4v if you have a good cooler, shoot for 1.3-1.35 if you have a mediocre cooler. Stock cooler, probably not much further than stock voltage would be OK.

When changing my memory speed is it as easy as "I overclocked my CPU 400mhz so lower my memory 400mhz" or is it not that simple?

[Lays]

8 hours ago, ThisIsCheez said:

When changing my memory speed is it as easy as "I overclocked my CPU 400mhz so lower my memory 400mhz" or is it not that simple?

memory multiplier x bclk = memory speed

 

So if you're on the 2133 multi for memory, if you have 105 bclk, you do 2133 x 1.05 = 2239 mhz for instance.

[corrado33]

8 hours ago, ThisIsCheez said:

When changing my memory speed is it as easy as "I overclocked my CPU 400mhz so lower my memory 400mhz" or is it not that simple?

It's definitely not that simple. There are only certain ratios available to multiply bclk by to get a certain memory clock.

 

By the way, overclocking normal chips by changing bclk is pretty normal, and not special to your board or chip in any way. My board from 2010 can do it just fine. It's just that overclocking with the core clock is more... complicated than simply changing the CPU ratio on modern boards. 

 

If intel is to be believed, the non-K versions of the chips are the chips that weren't GOOD ENOUGH to unlock, so you may not see great overclocking potential.