New Core i7 2600K rig - Now @5Ghz, Updated in first post :)

[15th Warlock]

Hey guys, a little update, been working with Gigabyte's new beta BIOS F7b, which unlocks the Internal CPU PLL Overvoltage option, this option is key to going beyond 5Ghz with a stable system.

Had to toy with some settings, here's what I changed in my BIOS:

Disclaimer: these are my individual results with this particular board and proc, your mileage may vary, you may get lower results or even better results than me, be aware that over volting your CPU can kill your system if you're not careful, I'm not responsible for any damage to your system from using these settings.


CPU Clock Ratio: 50X
Internal CPU PLL Overvoltage: Enabled
Real-Time Ratio Changes: Enabled
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E): Disabled
C3/C6 State Support: Disabled
CPU Thermal Monitor: Disabled
CPU Vcore: 1.425V
DRAM Voltage 1.65V
Load Line Calibration: Level 1

Here's the BIOS Status at boot:

Beware though, this is a beta BIOS, and sometimes will activate the Dual BIOS function, replacing the BIOS with the default F3 ver. if the system hangs, forcing you to flash the BIOS again if you want to enable certain OCing options, if you are not comfortable having to flash the BIOS please wait for the final release.

Make sure you have a voltage and temperature monitoring program to constantly check your CPU status, as anything north of 5Ghz and 1.45V will effectively double your CPU's temperature.

Here are some bench results:

IntelBurnTest average: 70.51265 GFlOPS:

Super PI 1M 7.49 secs.:

Super PI 32M 7 mins flat:

Sandra Processor Arithmetic aggregate 133.4 GOPS:

Sandra Multi-Core interconnect bandwidth 28.82 GB/s:

Sandra memory bandwidth aggregate: 24.28 GB/s:

3DMark11 default P6400 Marks:

3DMark Vantage default P31760 Marks:

3DMark 06 default 34,576 Marks:

Now for some gaming benchmarks: I took pictures of the settings I used for each game, but then I realized that posting all those pictures would make this post too long, suffice it to say that I used the max settings for all games, at 1920x1200, 4X FSAA, 8X AF, VSync off, using built in benchmarks when available and FRAPS when necessary, doing a one minute run using some of my saved games, if you're curious about the settings I used for each individual game, let me know and I can post the pictures in a separate post. I also monitored temps and volts at all times:

Here're the results:

Batman Arkham Asylum average 91FPS:

Dirt 2 average 119.9FPS:

F1 2010 average 70FPS:

Dragon Age: Origins FRAPS:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7550, 60000, 102, 155, 125.833

Crysis: Warhead FRAPS:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
2368, 60000, 31, 46, 39.467

COD:MW2 FRAPS:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8109, 60000, 84, 160, 135.150

Aliens vs Predator FRAPS:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6076, 60000, 69, 121, 101.267

StarCraft II FRAPS:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
3703, 60000, 49, 64, 61.717

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 FRAPS:
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6340, 60000, 93, 122, 105.667

Well, dunno if I'll try going higher, can boot to Win7 at 5.2Ghz, but I didn't want to push the temps too high as I was reaching 70 degrees already at that speed, and system wasn't fully stable, I got tired of having to flash the BIOS on system hangs (had to do it like 6 times) and I would probably have to push the Vcore beyond 1.45V and do trial and error but with a more stable BIOS that enables PLL overvoltage.

As you can see, the difference in performance isn't so much when going from 4.5Ghz to 5Ghz, and I prefer to use 4.5Ghz for 24/7 as temps are really good and the system is rock stable

Will let you know if I get the OCing bug again one of these days and try to OC more when Gigabyte releases a final version of their latest BIOS.

I want to thank everybody for their posts I really appreciate your words of encouragement you guys rock! Special thanks go to EastCoastHandle for his excellent SB system builder guide, and to blu3flannel for helping me with FRAPS.

I hope I didn't bore you all with this long post I'll keep updating this thread if there's any new developments.

Please reade the rest of the thread for more pics and feedback

 

[phanbuey]

awesome dude !!

 

[Hms1193]

Congrats!

I love that foam thingy in the box.. :3

 

[15th Warlock]

Some new pics:

Current system before dismantling:

Proc out of the box:

Proc and Stock cooler, I thought the cooler was going to be bigger

Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7 mobo:

Some misc components:

 

[blu3flannel]

You're gonna use that GTX 285 for PhysX? That's totally overkill, but totally awesome. You must do some overclocking for us!

 

[15th Warlock]

You're gonna use that GTX 285 for PhysX? That's totally overkill, but totally awesome. You must do some overclocking for us!

Will do I's gonna be a long night

 

[Tensa Zangetsu]

I can't wait to see how this runs!!! Waiting for more pics.

 

[exodusprime1337]

gg on the new specs, definately gonna keep an eye on this thread, keep the pics coming man.

 

[wolf]

subbed, wil be interested to hear your thoughts on the UD7 board and overclockability of that 2600K

 

[Jamborhgini313]

hope you get 5ghz outta that thing

 

[blu3flannel]

hope you get 5ghz outta that thing

Agreed, that'd be sweet. The only way I'd ever upgrade to SB is if I were guaranteed 5GHz. It'd be beastly.

 

[7.62]

Gimme some BC2 goodness.

 

[15th Warlock]

Thanks for all your replies guys! I really appreciate it

System's up and running, installing Win7 as I type this, here are some new pictures:

Look at the size of the cooler! The days of humongous coolers are over with SB I guess Check the comparison with a Zalman PNPS9700:

Here's the proc mounted on the mobo:

Now, some of my secret sauce: Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra 100% liquid metal TIM:

Spreading the TIM over the proc, looks like T-1000's tears

Adding TIM to the H70 water block, you only need a tiny dab and it spreads easily:

Mobo with proc and H70 mounted on case's tray:

Another view from a higher angle:

Preliminary test run:

BIOS start screen, please note this is not an UEFI BIOS, Gigabyte will release a UEFI update soon, as this P67 mobo has full support for it with dual 32MBs BIOS:

Win7 just finished installing while I was typing this! really nice! I can't promise you guys any benchmarks today, as I've got work tomorrow, but as soon as I have all bench programs installed will upload the results here. Will probably post preliminary benchmarks tomorrow night

BTW, do you guys have any suggestions on which benchmarks to run? I'll start OCing at default vCore (1.24V vCore and 1.5V RAM @1333Mhz ATM), to see how much I can push the proc before upping the voltage, right now the proc is idling at a cool 24 degrees according to the BIOS hardware monitor

Once again, thanks for your posts, and keep the suggestions coming

 

[blu3flannel]

Well, definitely 3DMark11, Vantage, Bad Company 2 (if owned), SiSandra, etc. Put a mini test suite together.

 

[15th Warlock]

Well, definitely 3DMark11, Vantage, Bad Company 2 (if owned), SiSandra, etc. Put a mini test suite together.

Well, I have all of those, except for SiSandra, will download it tomorrow

Just a quick 3dMark Vantage run at default settings:

This is all at stock settings, haven't changed anything at the BIOS, or GPU settings, looks promising, will try some OCing tomorrow and post the results

 

[blu3flannel]

Wow, that's 3k better than my very overclocked system! Nice!

 

[Cold Storm]

Looking good! Best of luck on the ocing.

 

[Deleted member 74752]

2D benchmarks would be more telling than 3D. Give us your memory tab in cpu-z as well.

SuperPI 1M and 32M

WPrime v1.55 32M and 1024M

PIFast

 

[TheLaughingMan]

Wow, TIM on the CPU and cooler before attachment is too much TIM.

That is the same stock cooler from the older CPU's. Seriously, what happened to the thing on the left that several review sites got with their 2600K?

 

[caleb]

I accept old hardware donations ^^

 

[overclocking101]

all review sites got those with their samples and most published that retail cpu's will ship with the bigger coolers, so im a little unsure what intel did there.

 

[15th Warlock]

2D benchmarks would be more telling than 3D. Give us your memory tab in cpu-z as well.

SuperPI 1M and 32M

WPrime v1.55 32M and 1024M

PIFast

I will post more benchmarks tonight after I come back from work, tomorrow's my day off and will try OCing the proc as well, it's very tempting to OC when looking at the unlocked mmultiplier in the BIOS! But I was really tired last night

I had GPUZ open at the time of the benchmark, but for some reason, every time I pressed prtscrn to grab a screen shot, it only captured a screenshot of GPUZ's window, so I had to close it, can you guys tell me how to capture full screen shots with GPUZ open? I had not used it in a long time.

Wow, TIM on the CPU and cooler before attachment is too much TIM.

That is the same stock cooler from the older CPU's. Seriously, what happened to the thing on the left that several review sites got with their 2600K?

http://common5.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/24/0,1425,i=243266&sz=1,00.jpg

Those are Coolaboratory's instructions for their TIM, remember, this is a 100% metal TIM and you only use a tiny dab (less than 2 ml) on both the proc and the cooler, it looks like a lot of TIM, but it really is a very thin layer that spreads very easily and behaves almost like mercury, but it's mostly based on gallium, it's almost like painting your proc til you achieve a mirror like finish

all review sites got those with their samples and most published that retail cpu's will ship with the bigger coolers, so im a little unsure what intel did there.

Exactly, looks like Intel pulled the rug from under all i7 2600k owners, those tall coolers were sent only to review sites, kinda sleazy on their part I was surprised and googled it and it looks like all retail 2600k include this puny cooler not that I really care, CPU's cores are idling at 21~24 degrees

Well, I'm off to work, more benchies coming tonight

 

[15th Warlock]

I accept old hardware donations ^^

LOL! Sorry, I'll use those parts for an HTPC

 

[Irish_PXzyan]

Nice one!
I was holding out until the 2600K came out! If everything looks nice here I will have to go through with the upgrade!!
Congratz on the new gear!
Awaiting the BC2 results!!

 

[CJCerny]

Wow, TIM on the CPU and cooler before attachment is too much TIM.

That is the same stock cooler from the older CPU's. Seriously, what happened to the thing on the left that several review sites got with their 2600K?

http://common5.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/24/0,1425,i=243266&sz=1,00.jpg

Yeah...I thought the same thing. WAY too much TIM. Just need one single drop in the center and doesn't need to be brushed out at all. Heatsink does that by itself when it gets pressed down tightly.