# Overclocking a Core i5 3570k



## trparky (Apr 14, 2017)

I've been so far able to overclock my Intel Core i5 3570k CPU to 4.2 GHz from the stock clock of 3.4 GHz, that's a 800 MHz increase. Surprisingly I did it simply by enabling something called ASUS Optimal mode in UEFI BIOS.

Right now the bus speed is running at 103 MHz and the CPU ratio is at x41 to run at a clock speed of 4223 MHz with a voltage of 1.312. Is that voltage too high or do I have room to go further? Temps under a full Prime95 load hovers at around 85c and idles at around 35c.

I am water-cooled, no air cooler here. ThermalTake Water 2.0 closed-loop kit here.


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## Folterknecht (Apr 14, 2017)

Hi,

1) Fill out your system specs
2) VCore seems a little high for 4.2 GHz - most samples will probably do that below 1.25-1.20V.
3) OC with "Auto OC" option / 1-click is a bad idea in general. Please do yourself (and hardware) a favor and read up on overclocking - you can start here for Sandy/Ivybridge CPUs

Furthermore messing around with BCLK for no reason  when you have an unlocked Multi available and you are still far away from the limit of the CPU, just shows you why among other things 1-click auto-OC is bad. A BCLK that is too high can cause all kinds of nasty things depending on the platform and individual hardware you are using. The safe limit for Ivybrdige is around 105 MHz btw.
When experienced users do that it's usually to eeck out the last MHz and they are aware of the possible consequences on their platform. For novices an unlocked Multi is more than good enough and it doesn't mess around with the RAM at the same time.


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## Sasqui (Apr 14, 2017)

See my specs.  All I did was change the multiplier and mess with CPU voltage.  I think I'm at 1.35v Vcore

Though it's watercooled, I'd easily get to 4.5 on air.  Would not have been possible without delidding.

85c under Prime95 is good.  If it can survive a 12 hour run, it'll take on anything.


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## trparky (Apr 14, 2017)

My motherboard is an ASUS P8Z77-V, BIOS version 2104.

Anyways, I decided to stop my experiment reset the system back to optimal defaults. To be honest I wasn't seeing the kinds of performance increases that I was looking for. I have one game that is heavily CPU dependent and even with that 800 MHz overclock the increase in performance was negligible at best. I figure that the game is just that poorly written and that no matter what I throw at it I won't see the kinds of performance increases I was looking for. I was looking to eek out 20 more frames per second and I was lucky to see an additional 5 (yeah, not even worth it).


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## P4-630 (Apr 14, 2017)

trparky said:


> I was looking to eek out 20 more frames per second



You were looking at the wrong hardware...
Try a better graphics card!


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## trparky (Apr 14, 2017)

Starcraft 2 is not graphics card dependent, I have been told this by many people. You can put a GTX 1080Ti into the system for Starcraft 2 and it will do nothing for that game. The code for that game is just that shitty under the hood.

It's like who the hell did they have write that game? A couple of unpaid interns? Someone straight out of college with no previous C/C++ experience? You can throw hardware all you want at this game and it will do nothing for you and I've Google'd this, the general idea is that the game is just that badly written under the hood.


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## R00kie (Apr 14, 2017)

trparky said:


> Starcraft 2 is not graphics card dependent, I have been told this by many people. You can put a GTX 1080Ti into the system for Starcraft 2 and it will do nothing for that game. The code for that game is just that shitty under the hood.
> 
> It's like who the hell did they have write that game? A couple of unpaid interns? Someone straight out of college with no previous C/C++ experience? You can throw hardware all you want at this game and it will do nothing for you and I've Google'd this, the general idea is that the game is just that badly written under the hood.


Well, it depends what youre running it on. A GT610 is not gonna perform like a GTX1080 if youre going to overclock your processor.


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## trparky (Apr 14, 2017)

I've accepted the fact that the game (Starcraft 2) just won't run that well no matter what I do. It's a losing battle I have on my hands here, I'm not going to win here.


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## P4-630 (Apr 14, 2017)

trparky said:


> I've accepted the fact that the game (Starcraft 2) just won't run that well no matter what I do. It's a losing battle I have on my hands here, I'm not going to win here.



Just curious, what GPU do you have?

What are your system specs? Also at least 4GB ram is recommended for this game.


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## trparky (Apr 14, 2017)

AMD R9 380.


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## trparky (Apr 15, 2017)

If you want to know what's happening, here is what's happening...









When there's not much going on on the screen FPS is pretty high (50+ FPS) but when I get as much action going on like what is in the video FPS numbers drop through the floor and I don't understand why.

This is what I call my system stress test attack mode, it's a way to find out if the system can cope with as many units on the screen as there are and it's obvious it can't. Why it can't I have no idea.

Is there something wrong with my system or am I just asking for way too much here?

@P4-630 I have 16 GBs of RAM in this machine.


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## Mussels (Apr 15, 2017)

trparky said:


> Starcraft 2 is not graphics card dependent, I have been told this by many people. You can put a GTX 1080Ti into the system for Starcraft 2 and it will do nothing for that game. The code for that game is just that shitty under the hood.
> 
> It's like who the hell did they have write that game? A couple of unpaid interns? Someone straight out of college with no previous C/C++ experience? You can throw hardware all you want at this game and it will do nothing for you and I've Google'd this, the general idea is that the game is just that badly written under the hood.



as a starcraft II player with a 1080 and a 3770k, you are correct - its CPU (and to an extent, RAM) dependant. It's directX 9 is all, the core game is *old* despite the recent expansions and DLC's.

Do a manual OC (Multiplier + voltage) and see how far you get, but to be honest you wont get past 4.4GHz or so without delidding - even with a delid on water i struggle to get the higher clocks because these chips just run hot for their wattages.

As far as that video goes, i play 4v4 on arcade ( LOTV monobattles, mostly) and even i tank down to 15-20 FPS on a mix of medium settings w/ ultra textures in large battles like in your video.


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## trparky (Apr 15, 2017)

DirectX 9? Crap. So that means we have to go through potential compatibility layers when running the game on newer versions of Windows that have newer versions of DirectX such as Windows 10. DirectX 12 emulates older versions which heaps on layers of crap between the game and the hardware. Ugh.

@Mussels OK, so I'm not the only one that tanks down that low. Well... at least I'm not the only one. Does that make me happy? No.


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## Mussels (Apr 15, 2017)

trparky said:


> DirectX 9? Crap. So that means we have to go through potential compatibility layers when running the game on newer versions of Windows that have newer versions of DirectX such as Windows 10. DirectX 12 emulates older versions which heaps on layers of crap between the game and the hardware. Ugh.
> 
> @Mussels OK, so I'm not the only one that tanks down that low. Well... at least I'm not the only one. Does that make me happy? No.



nothing at all to do with compatibility layers, DX9 is 100% natively supported. It runs better in 10 than older OS's due to better CPU utilisation with things like core parking. It's literally just a single threaded game (one for game, one for GPU drivers) and thats all there is to it - overclocking is all you can do, because if the *OTHER PLAYER* lags you will too - its a P2P game after all.


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

OK, I managed to get this chip of mine overclocked to 4.4 GHz, that's a whole 1 GHz faster than stock speeds. I have set the CPU voltage manually to 1.34 volts.


The reason why it says "1.352" in the caption is because I hadn't saved the 1.34 volt setting to the UEFI yet.

I have thrown the IntelBurnTest at this overclock and ran it at "Stress Level High" and it appears to be stable at 4.4 GHz. I'm just wondering if I'm pushing too much voltage into the chip. Is 1.34 volts too high?


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## Mussels (Jun 24, 2017)

trparky said:


> OK, I managed to get this chip of mine overclocked to 4.4 GHz, that's a whole 1 GHz faster than stock speeds. I have set the CPU voltage manually to 1.34 volts.
> View attachment 89414
> The reason why it says "1.352" in the caption is because I hadn't saved the 1.34 volt setting to the UEFI yet.
> 
> I have thrown the IntelBurnTest at this overclock and ran it at "Stress Level High" and it appears to be stable at 4.4 GHz. I'm just wondering if I'm pushing too much voltage into the chip. Is 1.34 volts too high?



1.4v is the higest i'd run 24/7, as long as temps are <80C load i'd say you're peachy.

Dont forget you can tweak the voltages down slowly to try and tune it in.


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

Am I too close to the 1.4v limit with my current 1.34v setting?


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## Mussels (Jun 24, 2017)

no, you'll be fine.

You have your overclock stable - next step is to slowly tune in the voltages and get that same stability at lower volts. Might not be possible, but very likely is (i can get 4.5Ghz with 1.25V, so yours should be able to go lower)


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

I'll play with it some more tomorrow, for now I just want to stream some NetFlix.


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

Sorry about the double post but I managed to get it down to 1.275v, just a tad bit higher in voltage than @Mussels has his at. Sadly I can't get the chip to do 4.5 GHz, it BSODs at anything higher than 4.4 GHz. I'm now running the IntelBurnTest in "Very High" mode to test system stability.

I'll edit this post with the results of the "burn" test.


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## rtwjunkie (Jun 24, 2017)

trparky said:


> I was looking to eek out 20 more frames per second and I was lucky to see an additional 5



Actually, that 5fps extra for the 380 is pretty good. Your CPU was indeed feeding the GPU better. 

BTW, as others have said, 4.2 should easily be attainable for 1.25v or less.  No harm at all in leaving it there. The overall improvement in games will be seen over time, especially once you upgrade the GPU.

Because SC II is so single thread defendant that keeping your clockspeed as at least 4.1GHz or higher.


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

Alright, I have it locked in at 1.275 volts as what the picture below shows. It's also clocked at 4.4 GHz, a full 1 GHz faster than the stock clock of 3.4 GHz.




I also ran twenty passes of IntelBurnTest in "Very High" mode, passed with flying colors and temperatures are well within acceptable margins. Finally that water cooling is coming in handy.

Sadly I can't get the chip to do 4.5 GHz, it BSODs at anything higher than 4.4 GHz.


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## Mussels (Jun 24, 2017)

only further advice i have for you there is the VCCSA and PLL voltages can likely be lowered as well, reducing wattage and heat without altering stability.


i'll do a quick reboot and get you the voltages i'm using, and edit them in here in 2 minutes

Edit:

VCCSA 1.107v (this was for my 2400mhz ram, so you can stick with yours at the lower setting - or try lower again)
CPU PLL: 1.653v (lower was more stable at higher clocks - and shaved about 5C off load)


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

Will it really change anything? I kind of confident in my overclock right now and I don't want to muck things up.


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## MrGenius (Jun 24, 2017)




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## Mussels (Jun 24, 2017)

trparky said:


> Will it really change anything? I kind of confident in my overclock right now and I don't want to muck things up.



if you can shave 5-10C off your load temps at the same clocks, why not give it a try?


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## MrGenius (Jun 24, 2017)

Here's my 3570K non-Vcore voltage settings:

*CPU IO*
1.0500V

*CPU SA*
0.9400V

*CPU PLL*
1.5000V @ up to 4.7 GHz
1.5500V @ 4.8 GHz(highest 100% stable clock)
1.6000V @ 4.9 GHz
1.7000V @ 5.0 GHz(highest semi-stable clock)

Other voltages:

*DRAM Voltage*
1.6030V

*PCH 1.05 Voltage*
1.0500V

Notes:

Base clock @ 100 MHz
16GB(2 x 8GB) DDR3 2666 @ 2400 MHz
Delidded with CLU under the IHS.
120mm AIO water cooled.
Setting the CPU PLL below 1.5000V locks up my system(makes the screen go black and requires a hard shut down). Keeping the CPU PLL as close to as possible, but not below, Vcore seems to work best(most stable).
Internal PLL Overvoltage: Enabled("_Enable Internal PLL Overvoltage for K-SKU CPUs to get better overclocking capability_")
CPU Core Vdroop Offset Control: +100%("_Higher offset percentage will be more helpful for extreme overclocking_.")
Digital Compensation Level: High("_With option High it provides better performance on current stability while overclocking_")
CPU Core OCP Expander: Enhanced("_Expand the limitation of CPU Current Protection. For extreme overclocking purpose. Warning: Expanding the CPU OCP limitation means less protection to the CPU.") _
CPU Core Switching Frequency: 2x("_Increase PWM working speed to stabilize CPU Core voltage and minimize ripple range. Warning: MOSFET will be hotter when the value is higher_.")
OverSpeed Protection: Disabled(no clue what it does)
Enhanced Turbo: Enabled(keeps all 4 cores at the same clocks)
EIST, C1E, Intel C-states: All disabled
This is my second 3570K in the same system(the first one I "accidentally" fried with 2.2V Vcore). The second one does need slightly less Vcore and CPU PLL to be stable at the same clocks as the first. But the first one, also delidded with CLU under the IHS, was 100% stable @ 5.0 GHz(until I killed it).


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

I'll have to think about it. Having a closed-loop water cooling kit kind of negates the whole temperature issue since it can handle the heat output and then some.

I will say one thing, having an extra 1 GHz of clock speed is helping a lot. Even in Windows with general multitasking. Virtual machines no longer bring the system to its knees. Now I understand when people say... Clock speed matters.


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## Mussels (Jun 24, 2017)

trparky said:


> I'll have to think about it. Having a closed-loop water cooling kit kind of negates the whole temperature issue since it can handle the heat output and then some.
> 
> I will say one thing, having an extra 1 GHz of clock speed is helping a lot. Even in Windows with general multitasking. Virtual machines no longer bring the system to its knees. Now I understand when people say... Clock speed matters.



And this is why i totally love the 3xx0 series CPU's - every last one of them overclocks to some extent (at least 400mhz, some do more with the right board), and they've only gotten cheaper with time


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## trparky (Jun 24, 2017)

And with the Asus P8Z77-V motherboard that I have in this thing along with the liquid cooling this chip can really fly. I just kind of wish that I had gotten the i7 instead of the i5 when I built the system for the additional hyperthreading threads.

But overall it's a nice boost in performance, a free upgrade.


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## Vario (Jun 24, 2017)

trparky said:


> And with the Asus P8Z77-V motherboard that I have in this thing along with the liquid cooling this chip can really fly. I just kind of wish that I had gotten the i7 instead of the i5 when I built the system for the additional hyperthreading threads.
> 
> But overall it's a nice boost in performance, a free upgrade.



Looks great man.  As far as i5 vs i7 having had both, not a big deal.  For Ivy daily, I usually just aim for the best I can get under 1.3v and 80*C.  Sandy and Ivy are easy processors to overclock, just bump the multiplier and offset a tiny bit and you're done.  I'd recommend doing offset overclock rather than manual.  That way you use less voltage when you are idle in windows.  I also don't use any load line callibration I just give it a tiny bit more offset.

Overclocking helps a lot in Starcraft 2 more than any other game I've done.


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## trparky (Jul 5, 2017)

Voltages are still at 1.275 for the CPU and it's been a week and a half with the processor clocked at 4.4 GHz (vs stock 3.4 GHz). I've been using the system for gaming and several virtual machine sessions and the system is stable, no BSODs. I call this overclock successful.

Getting an additional 1 GHz out of this chip has breathed in life into this system. Who would have imagined that an additional 1 GHz would improve things so much? I imagine that I'll be able to keep this system for another year until perhaps Intel Cannon Lake (whenever the hell that comes out). Now I just need a new GPU but damn the prices are high. Damn miners.


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## Liviu Cojocaru (Jul 5, 2017)

trparky said:


> Voltages are still at 1.275 for the CPU and it's been a week and a half with the processor clocked at 4.4 GHz (vs stock 3.4 GHz). I've been using the system for gaming and several virtual machine sessions and the system is stable, no BSODs. I call this overclock successful.
> 
> Getting an additional 1 GHz out of this chip has breathed in life into this system. Who would have imagined that an additional 1 GHz would improve things so much? I imagine that I'll be able to keep this system for another year until perhaps Intel Cannon Lake (whenever the hell that comes out). Now I just need a new GPU but damn the prices are high. Damn miners.



It is a good boost in performance with that extra 1Ghz, this should be enough for another year or so even if you get a new Videocard


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## Mussels (Jul 6, 2017)

trparky said:


> Voltages are still at 1.275 for the CPU and it's been a week and a half with the processor clocked at 4.4 GHz (vs stock 3.4 GHz). I've been using the system for gaming and several virtual machine sessions and the system is stable, no BSODs. I call this overclock successful.
> 
> Getting an additional 1 GHz out of this chip has breathed in life into this system. Who would have imagined that an additional 1 GHz would improve things so much? I imagine that I'll be able to keep this system for another year until perhaps Intel Cannon Lake (whenever the hell that comes out). Now I just need a new GPU but damn the prices are high. Damn miners.



just like me, you now have the problem that most new hardware is actually a speed downgrade - short of going ryzen for more cores (but not faster per core), or going extremely expensive with a modern intel K chip :/


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