OC 930 Advise/feedback and comparison to other i7s

[Sin Stalker]

My current system isn't amazing. It's a first gen i7, 12gb of ram and a GTX 660. I just discovered that I can overclock the 930 and I'm considering doing it, but wanted feedback and advise before I do.

 

I have the stock cooler still, that came with the CPU. At stock 2.8ghz, I'm running temps around 52 on average.

 

I'm not wanting to do crazy overclock into. I'm not that courageous. Some people have gone to around 4ghz. I'm thinking I'd kick it up to 3.2ghz and see how well that works.

 

 

So with my thoughts on this explained, my questions reside on advise, warnings and feedback?

 

I am also wanting to know what the difference is between two different gen i7s running at the same Hertz? Does the architecture make the newer one faster, or would both be the same speed, but the newer is more energy efficient?

 

I'm hoping that OC my current CPU will bring new life into my system. I'm currently wanting to upgrade but can't afford it, so hoping this could hold me off for another year or two. Am I wrong for thinking this?

 

 

Thanks.

[Damascus]

You can safely OC with an inexpensive cooler.  grab a hyper 212 evo or decent notua/be quiet!/cryorig CPU cooler for $30-70 and you can very safely OC

 

Would NOT suggest OC'ing on stock unless intel used to sell good coolers with their CPUs

[ottoyu34]

I have had around 5 first gen i7 systems when it was the thing, I still have the i7 980x as my main rig. Only downside of OC these puppies is that they give out a lot of heat and power consumption also goes up quite a bit, and they are pretty hungry for power to begin with.

 

But if you're looking for something like 3.2-3.6Ghz a mild overclock will be doable with a value-oriented cooler such as the Hyper 212 evo.

 

I suggest making sure you have adequate airflow in your case and install a decent cpu cooler and thermal paste before anything. Intel did bundle a decent size cooler when I had my i7 920. It ran hot around 3.5 or so until mounting kit came in for me.

 

Also, what mobo do you have and SSD installed?

[andreweddy]

i have a asus p6tpro workstation motherboard. so 18 phase power design should see a nice smooth power delivery, 1200 watt coolermaster psu, i have a zalman cnps 10- extreme air cooler, it only maxes out temps at 40 in stock mode at the moment, and antec 1200 case keeps airflow nice so should overclock nice, also the stepping is the d varient so again should be a better overclocking ship, and yes i have an ssd 

 

cheers

[Sin Stalker]

6 hours ago, ottoyu34 said:

Also, what mobo do you have and SSD installed?

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and I have a Samsung EVO 850.

 

I'm not too worried about power consumption. My PSU blew awhile ago and I replaced it with the same wattage. That wattage is now more than I need. I got 850w because I had two GTX 285 in SLI, but after one died, I am running a single GTX 660 I got off craigslist for $20. My worry about the tower style cooler is the RAM clearance. I don't think there is enough room on this MOBO. 

 

I'm running HWMonitor and my values are around 50 degrees right now, with a min at 40 and a max at 70 to 73. I also figured I could try out some soft OCing and go until my high temps reach 80-85 range, then stop until I grab a better cooler.

I've been reading some OC forums and heard the main issue with OC is the volts, not the heat. But maybe I'm just being a noob. 

 

The point of this is also to not spent too much more money on this system. I've considered upping the ram and GPU but can't justify it. Its age has me worried and if it blows, I won't have money for a new system. I don't have enough money anyways, but I'll have even less.

 

[ottoyu34]

UD3 should be decent enough to support most oc.

 

I had a Corsair RM550x for a i7 930 at 4Ghz and it was solid. Coolers like the Hyper 212 are small enough it won't overhang towards the ram from I recall correctly.

 

You will be limited by your cooling capacity in most cases, assuming your components are able to support higher OC.

[Sin Stalker]

16 hours ago, ottoyu34 said:

UD3 should be decent enough to support most oc.

 

I had a Corsair RM550x for a i7 930 at 4Ghz and it was solid. Coolers like the Hyper 212 are small enough it won't overhang towards the ram from I recall correctly.

 

You will be limited by your cooling capacity in most cases, assuming your components are able to support higher OC.

But if I only want to OC from 2.8ghz to 3.0 or 3.2ghz, do I need an upgraded cooler?

 

Ideally I want to try it out, get my barrings and assess the performance increase. Then I'd be interested in buying a better cooler. I may even want to try out liquid cooling option, if it is available for this older MOBO and CPU.

[ottoyu34]

It really depends on how well is the cooling you have. That's the limiting factor

 

You probably could OC with stock cooler even but it will probably speed up earlier and generate more noise.

[Sin Stalker]

On 3/22/2017 at 5:07 PM, ottoyu34 said:

It really depends on how well is the cooling you have. That's the limiting factor

 

You probably could OC with stock cooler even but it will probably speed up earlier and generate more noise.

 

On 3/21/2017 at 1:17 PM, andreweddy said:

i have a asus p6tpro workstation motherboard. so 18 phase power design should see a nice smooth power delivery, 1200 watt coolermaster psu, i have a zalman cnps 10- extreme air cooler, it only maxes out temps at 40 in stock mode at the moment, and antec 1200 case keeps airflow nice so should overclock nice, also the stepping is the d varient so again should be a better overclocking ship, and yes i have an ssd 

 

cheers

 

On 3/21/2017 at 9:32 AM, Damascus said:

You can safely OC with an inexpensive cooler.  grab a hyper 212 evo or decent notua/be quiet!/cryorig CPU cooler for $30-70 and you can very safely OC

 

Would NOT suggest OC'ing on stock unless intel used to sell good coolers with their CPUs

 

 

Let's say I feel comfortable enough to try overclocking closer to 4ghz. Would I need a stock cooler or will that air tower cooler be enough?

 

 

[ottoyu34]

You will need a higher end air cooler or AIO with 240 rad.

 

It helps if you have 1600Mhz ram

[Sin Stalker]

1 hour ago, ottoyu34 said:

You will need a higher end air cooler or AIO with 240 rad.

 

It helps if you have 1600Mhz ram

I have 1600 ram. 

This is them, only I have six of these for a total of 12gb. : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231325

 

What's a 240 rad? My case is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021

 

Do you mean radiator? I think I only have room for one that would fit on my rear fan.

[Damascus]

This person uses one of the largest CPU (and best) coolers available and it fits just fine.

 https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/HNvV3C

 

Get yourself one of these three, They are the best cooling you'll get in that case:

 

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/4vzv6h/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd15

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xFw323/cryorig-cpu-cooler-crr1a

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9bFPxr/be-quiet-cpu-cooler-bk019

 

 

 

 

THESE ONES CAN"T DO 4Ghz!  \/

 

If they are out of your budget get one of these:

 

 https://pcpartpicker.com/product/nMtCmG/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rrv6gt22pkr1

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/hmtCmG/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr212e20pkr2

[agent_x007]

Traps for OC'ing on LGA 1366 :
Use higher BCLK to overclock (you can set fixed CPU Ratio to get higher than official spec. - ie. maximum Turbo multipliers [any CPU]).
Use fixed Vcore voltage so that MB won't over do it, and makes CPU temps higher than they really have to be.
QPI/DRAM (or Uncore) Voltage/Frequency are critical with higher ammounts of RAM to be stable when overclocked.
QPI Frequency is second after that (usually, setting it to "Slow Mode" will resolves any issues at 200MHz+ BCLK).

Higher clocked VRAM isn't necessary in overclocking on LGA1366, because you can decouple RAM speed from core speed quite nicely (200MHz BCLK [or 50% OC on any CPU], requires only 1200MHz frequency on memory, and that's effective value). BUT, to set any RAM Frequency, IMC/L3 (or Uncore) has to work stable at twice the effective frequency you set.

For example : 1600MHz requires 3200MHz minimum for L3/IMC, for 1866MHz it's 3733MHz, etc.

PS. Stable OC on my i7 : 
I'm using this cooler : LINK

[ottoyu34]

I won't completely agree. It's kinda like turning off HT on an i7 will get higher frequency but you might lose some performance in benchmarks.

 

Not really traps, but those are great tips. Like I said, I went through about 5 different setup of gen1 i7 and I do find some setups tend not to like 200Mhz on the QPI link.

 

But maxing out the Multiplier is a great tip to keep the QPI mhz lower. Only issue with decoupling DRAM:QPI link to under ratio is lowering uncore and dram frequency and could lower your performance.

 

One thing I want to add is, the more sticks of DIMMs you have, the more load you will have the uncore/mem controller, putting more stress on it making stable oc harder.

[Aphexxis]

I have a similar CPU, a XEON 5640 at 4.2ghz.

 

I have seen some extremely crazy overclocks on this XEON by others, even hitting Sandy clocks of 4.5ghz on air.

 

Oddly in Crysis 3 at least, at 4.5ghz on both the XEON and 2600k chips, the 1366 PC pulls ahead.

 

The 45nm i7's are limited by heat output and being 45nm.

 

These xeons becoming very popular these days due to how cheap they are.

[Vode]

On 3/21/2017 at 5:24 PM, Sin Stalker said:

My current system isn't amazing. It's a first gen i7, 12gb of ram and a GTX 660. I just discovered that I can overclock the 930 and I'm considering doing it, but wanted feedback and advise before I do.

 

I have the stock cooler still, that came with the CPU. At stock 2.8ghz, I'm running temps around 52 on average.

 

I'm not wanting to do crazy overclock into. I'm not that courageous. Some people have gone to around 4ghz. I'm thinking I'd kick it up to 3.2ghz and see how well that works.

 

 

So with my thoughts on this explained, my questions reside on advise, warnings and feedback?

 

I am also wanting to know what the difference is between two different gen i7s running at the same Hertz? Does the architecture make the newer one faster, or would both be the same speed, but the newer is more energy efficient?

 

I'm hoping that OC my current CPU will bring new life into my system. I'm currently wanting to upgrade but can't afford it, so hoping this could hold me off for another year or two. Am I wrong for thinking this?

 

 

Thanks.

My advise is to update your BIOS to the newest one. Buy a Xeon E5640 for around $15 and overclock it. That will bring you a decebt performance boost for very little expense.

 

 

[Vode]

55 minutes ago, Aphexxis said:

I have a similar CPU, a XEON 5640 at 4.2ghz.

 

The 45nm i7's are limited by heat output and being 45nm.

 

These xeons becoming very popular these days due to how cheap they are.

Yeah, good thing is the E5640 is 32nm and it has 12MB of Cache. 

[Sin Stalker]

5 hours ago, Damascus said:

This person uses one of the largest CPU (and best) coolers available and it fits just fine.

 https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/HNvV3C

 

Get yourself one of these three, They are the best cooling you'll get in that case:

 

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/4vzv6h/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd15

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xFw323/cryorig-cpu-cooler-crr1a

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9bFPxr/be-quiet-cpu-cooler-bk019

 

 

 

 

THESE ONES CAN"T DO 4Ghz!  \/

 

If they are out of your budget get one of these:

 

 https://pcpartpicker.com/product/nMtCmG/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rrv6gt22pkr1

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/hmtCmG/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr212e20pkr2

Why not a closed loop cooler?

 

My main concern with those tower coolers is the clearance for my ram. I've seen way WAY too many build logs, including ones on LTT, where the tower can't fit without some machining or alterations. 

 

4 hours ago, agent_x007 said:

Traps for OC'ing on LGA 1366 :
Use higher BCLK to overclock (you can set fixed CPU Ratio to get higher than official spec. - ie. maximum Turbo multipliers [any CPU]).
Use fixed Vcore voltage so that MB won't over do it, and makes CPU temps higher than they really have to be.
QPI/DRAM (or Uncore) Voltage/Frequency are critical with higher ammounts of RAM to be stable when overclocked.
QPI Frequency is second after that (usually, setting it to "Slow Mode" will resolves any issues at 200MHz+ BCLK).

Higher clocked VRAM isn't necessary in overclocking on LGA1366, because you can decouple RAM speed from core speed quite nicely (200MHz BCLK [or 50% OC on any CPU], requires only 1200MHz frequency on memory, and that's effective value). BUT, to set any RAM Frequency, IMC/L3 (or Uncore) has to work stable at twice the effective frequency you set.

For example : 1600MHz requires 3200MHz minimum for L3/IMC, for 1866MHz it's 3733MHz, etc.
 

Traps? I didn't understand most of what you said. I'm just getting into OCing.

32 minutes ago, Vode said:

My advise is to update your BIOS to the newest one. Buy a Xeon E5640 for around $15 and overclock it. That will bring you a decebt performance boost for very little expense.

 

 

How is that better than a 930?

[Vode]

3 minutes ago, Sin Stalker said:

Traps? I didn't understand most of what you said. I'm just getting into OCing.

How is that better than a 930?

The Xeon has 12MB Cache vs the 930 has 8MB

The Xeon is 32nm vs the 930 45nm - That means it will OC higher and consume less power.

The Xeon has an 80W TDP while the 930 has 130W - which means the Xeon will run much cooler.

 

And you can sell your 930 after you get the Xeon running on Ebay for more than the Xeon cost.

 

I got my Xeon E5640 running at 4.2Ghz no problems.

[Sin Stalker]

34 minutes ago, Vode said:

The Xeon has 12MB Cache vs the 930 has 8MB

The Xeon is 32nm vs the 930 45nm - That means it will OC higher and consume less power.

The Xeon has an 80W TDP while the 930 has 130W - which means the Xeon will run much cooler.

 

And you can sell your 930 after you get the Xeon running on Ebay for more than the Xeon cost.

 

I got my Xeon E5640 running at 4.2Ghz no problems.

Given the different architecture, I assume that the Xeon would beat the i7, when both are at the same clockspeed? And this Xeon still has quad core and hyperthreading???

 

Where the heck do I find it for $15? 

 

I need to sort out cooling still...

[Vode]

14 minutes ago, Sin Stalker said:

Given the different architecture, I assume that the Xeon would beat the i7, when both are at the same clockspeed? And this Xeon still has quad core and hyperthreading???

 

Where the heck do I find it for $15? 

 

I need to sort out cooling still...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-CPU-Computer-Processor-SLBVC-2-66GHZ-12MB-Quad-Core-5-86GT-s-E5640-/192106019877?hash=item2cba693c25:g:qBQAAOSwa~BYUCgW

 

Xeon will be only slightly faster at the same clockspeed and that's because of the extra 4MB Cache. Yes, it's a Quad core with Hyper Threading!

[Sin Stalker]

Just now, Vode said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-CPU-Computer-Processor-SLBVC-2-66GHZ-12MB-Quad-Core-5-86GT-s-E5640-/192106019877?hash=item2cba693c25:g:qBQAAOSwa~BYUCgW

 

Xeon will be only slightly faster at the same clockspeed and that's because of the extra 4MB Cache. Yes, it's a Quad core with Hyper Threading!

So why is it called a Xeon and not i7 with a string of numbers behind it? Also, this puts it in 2nd gen cpu? I do like the thought of upgrading gens.

 

I'll grab one as soon as I sort out cooling. Thank you for the advise. To you have your BIOS settings available? I've only been looking at 930/920 settings and never messed with the BIOS before that. 

[Sin Stalker]

6 hours ago, Damascus said:

This person uses one of the largest CPU (and best) coolers available and it fits just fine.

 https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/HNvV3C

 

Get yourself one of these three, They are the best cooling you'll get in that case:

 

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/4vzv6h/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd15

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xFw323/cryorig-cpu-cooler-crr1a

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9bFPxr/be-quiet-cpu-cooler-bk019

 

 

 

 

THESE ONES CAN"T DO 4Ghz!  \/

 

If they are out of your budget get one of these:

 

 https://pcpartpicker.com/product/nMtCmG/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rrv6gt22pkr1

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/hmtCmG/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr212e20pkr2

Why those over something like this?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181029

 

Isn't water cooling superior to air? Or is there something wrong with that cooler? Or something about closed loop vs air tower coolers that I don't know about?

[Vode]

4 minutes ago, Sin Stalker said:

So why is it called a Xeon and not i7 with a string of numbers behind it? Also, this puts it in 2nd gen cpu? I do like the thought of upgrading gens.

 

I'll grab one as soon as I sort out cooling. Thank you for the advise. To you have your BIOS settings available? I've only been looking at 930/920 settings and never messed with the BIOS before that. 

It's a server CPU from 1st gen i7, only on 32nm. It has ECC support and other features we don't care about. It cost over $1000 at release.

 

Also I'm pretty sure the L2 cache is bigger on the 32nm chips, which is good.

[Sin Stalker]

1 minute ago, Vode said:

It's a server CPU. It has ECC support and other features we don't care about. It cost over $1000 at release.

But windows 10 is fine on it?