Overclocking i7 980X

[saur0]

Hi, i'm playing around with an old i7 980x and trying to learn a bit about overclocking. I have done some research online  and currently have a stable 4.2Ghz using a 32 x ratio, but want to push it further. I have a Corsair H100i fitted and get about 35 degrees idle and 80 after 15 mins under max load. 

 

I've read that I should disable turbo, but couldn't find it in the bios, also that in order to fine tune the overclock I should increase the bclk but I can't find that either. I've also read that I should increase the voltage once over 4ghz but there is lots of conflicting information about that. I have a Asus P6X58D-E motherboard, with 3 x 8GB 2400 RAM. 

 

Any tips or advice would be welcome, i'm not doing this for any reason, other than to learn. Most of the hardware is 10 years old and so i'm just playing around to see how far I can push it and still get a stable system. 

 

CPU: Intel - Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 3.33GHz 6-Core Processor 
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H100i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler 
Motherboard: Asus - P6X58-E WS ATX LGA1366 Motherboard 
Memory: Kingston - Beast 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory 
Memory: Kingston - Beast 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory 
Storage: Kingston - SSDNow V300 Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive 
Storage: Crucial - M500 960GB 2.5" Solid State Drive 
Video Card: MSI - Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card 
Case: Corsair - 600T Mesh (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case 
Power Supply: Corsair - Enthusiast 650W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply 
Case Fan: Corsair - Air Series AF120 Quiet Edition 39.9 CFM  120mm Fan 
Case Fan: Corsair - Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition (2-Pack) 37.9 CFM  120mm Fans 
Case Fan: Thermaltake - CL-F015-PL20BL-A 129.6 CFM  200mm Fan 

[Ashleyyyy]

damn that is a nice machine. me wants!

 

but yeah you can play around with voltage and stuff but honestly i wouldn't risk it. once you do that heat output and power consumption will rise significantly. and it will shorten the lifespan of the system.

 

base clock is not a great idea because as LTT has shown in the past if you adjust it you throw a number fo different things into confusion too, which can make the system unstable very quickly.

 

that system at 4.2ghz is already an absolute beast for it's age and not a bottleneck in gaming at all with that gpu.

[Pasi123]

You probably need to set Ai Overclock Tuner to MANUAL to be able to increase the bclk. I've only bclk overclocked a Xeon X5670 on my P6X58D-E so I'm not sure how different it's from those unlocked i7s.

 

Currently I have my X5670 overclocked to 4.32GHz with 1.35V.

 

I'd recommend checking this thread:

 

[saur0]

Ok so I've done a bit more tweaking and got the bclk up to 137. When I went to 138 windows wouldn't load and got blue screen. 137 take it up to 4.39Ghz, it seems stable but when i run the stress test in real bench it stops after a few mins, i've not tried any other test yet.

 

I have not touched the voltage yet and it is still set to auto, CPU-Z says core voltage is 1.336v

 

When I tested at 136 it ran a full 15 min stress test using real bench without any problems, core temps only reached 80 degrees. 

 

As firelighter487 said it still holds up for its age, once I've maxed out the CPU I intend to do the same with the GPU and RAM.  

[bimmerman]

@saur0 I highly recommend adjusting BCLK up. Most X58 enthusiast boards will happily do BCLK in the realm of 200 MHz or more.

 

This does two things: raises the memory as well as raises the uncore, which affects the cache and other architectural things. The higher BCLK results in a snappier system than higher multiplier does.

 

My Xeon has been running at 4.5-4.7 GHz stable, on an AIO cooler, for over a year, with the 21 multiplier x 215 BCLK. No issues with system stability or weirdness from BCLK-- on X58 specifically, BCLK is decoupled from PCI bus; on newer chipsets this is not true and that's when issues arise.

 

General rules, if you don't go looking in the handy X58 thread here: on Gulftown/Westmere set the Uncore as 1.5x memory multiplier, don't exceed 1.35V on QPI/VTT for long, and try to keep < 1.4V vcore.

 

I've posted a few OC guides specifically for X58 previously in the X58 thread.

[saur0]

thanks, i've been doing some more reading and there are a couple of things...

 

I read that you should use odd multipliers? That seems a bit weird is there any truth in that?

 

The other thing is disabling turbo boost...

 

Quote

turn off all turbo features. The reason is that with these settings on, the operating system and cpu control the clock speed and voltage. This can cause problems when the speed throttles because it might lower the voltage and make the system unstable.

 

which seams to make sense, but I can't find the option to disable it in the bios. I tried disabling speed step whatever that is but it didn't seem to make any difference.

[agent_x007]

Turbo Ratio Limit : [Disabled] ?
Also, set max. TDP value limits (or disable limits of it's possible).

You are OC'ing, yet power throttle will decrease performance (it should maintain stability though).
Also, make sure what your DRAM Frequency is.
You can max. out at x10 multiplier vs. BCLK (so, 160MHz BCLK = 1600MHz on memory). In CPU-z, it correlates with x5 under Memory tab (because real vs. effective frequency).