Overclocking

[Djriff]

Hey guys, I've been wanting to do this for awhile but I've been hesitant to try it. I want to over clock my i7 4770K on my z87 mobo. I have no clue what I'm doing and the guides I've found about overclocking make me a tad bit nervous to try it out. Any suggestions on what to do?

[BicycleMafioso]

Hi!

I have a 4770K as well, and I have overclocked both it and previous processors, so I am a bit more experienced than you, but what is it you are nervous about? Complexity? Most guides need to be complex because they need to be thorough.
What you really "need to do" to "get an overclock" doesn't have to be. Doing it properly and optimising it will be time-consuming and sometimes frustrating, but not difficult.

I would recommend watching this one to start off with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CHs5_TdpXE

Feel free to answer questions and whatnot.

[Djriff]

Awesome! I'll watch that when I get home, currently at work right now. I'm mainly nervous about frying my processor. I have a really good cooling system, I Just don't want to ruin it. It was pretty expensive. I read and have noticed that the Z87 has an OC-Genie on it, but I'm not really sure how to use it.

How much of an improvement did you notice after you OC'd?

[BicycleMafioso]

In general, it's very difficult to actually fry a modern CPU unless deliberately attempting to.
Keeping VCore under 1.40 and it should be virtually impossible assuming you have your heatsink attached to it. Higher VCore is still safe, but I can guarantee that it won't happen with 1.4 and under.

I would recommend against using auto-overclockers like OC-Genie (so I'm assuming you have an MSI board, yes?), but it is easy - you literally press it and done. More modern ones might even have targets that you can set for it to reach.
It is a good start, but it tends to overshoot voltage and thus it runs warmer.

I've noticed a ~20-30% improvement in rendering speeds since overclocking it. Considering that it's free, it's not too bad. If I had been doing it for a living, I'd be earning money for it! :P

I don't really play Wow or other CPU intensive games anymore so I can't help you there, but it used to be a pretty 1:1 conversion rate between +% of MHz and +% of (minimum) FPS whilst raiding.

[Djriff]

Oh that's good news then. Currently I'm getting around 45 FPS during boss fights, sometimes dipping to mid 20's when a lot of stuff is going on. I understand that even OC'ing won't keep it at a smooth 60 but even 10 more FPS would be better. The decrease in rendering time would be awesome, I've been doing a lot of video editing as of late and anything to reduce those times is a plus in my book.

[Djriff]

So I was able to successfully OC my CPU from 3.5 Ghz to 4.2 Ghz last night. Been steady so far with memtest and Prime95 ( 6 hours) so I'm fairly happy here. Noticed a distinct improvement with my FPS in WoW as well.

[Lathais]

So I was able to successfully OC my CPU from 3.5 Ghz to 4.2 Ghz last night. Been steady so far with memtest and Prime95 ( 6 hours) so I'm fairly happy here. Noticed a distinct improvement with my FPS in WoW as well.

Prime95 is no longer recommended for stress testing due to certain instruction sets it sends. They can over volt your chip. AIDA64 is what is currently recommended.

[Djriff]

Oh well my info is outdated. Still 6 hours in Prime95 isn't bad. It could have kept going but I stopped it.