Overclocking my CPU.

Since purchasing and installing my new CPU cooler, I've been trying to justify using up all my spare cash. It is quite a bit more noisy and a lot brighter with the damn LED casing fans(they're the cheapest). All I can think of was overclocking my CPU, making best use of the stuff I bought. sigh. Let the headaches begin.

Comp Specs: 

Intel i5 760 @ 2.8GHz

2x Kingston DDR3 1060Mhz/2G

Radeon HD6870

GIGABYTE H55M-USB3/mini-itx board

WD GREEN 1.0TB HDD

Cooler Master GX 550watt PSU

Cooler Master V6GT CPU-cooler

First thing first, I googled 'overclocking i5 760', found a helpful forum with more links to guides and member comments of course. I picked a guide and just followed it, setting my goal at 4.0GHz. As I  needed to reset my computer multiple times and will be unable to view the guise in the BIOS menu I wrote all the numbers I need down on a piece of paper, this proved quite useful.

After trying a couple of times, I seem to hit a block at about 3.4 GHz. back to the internets. Reopened my last used pages on chrome and google'd why it crashes or doesn't start at all. Turns out my CPU just isn't getting enough voltage, and while I was still googling I found some numbers I can follow of someone getting 4.2GHz stable overclock. Restarted, put in the settings and started stress testing as soon as Windows loaded. The temperature shot up to 85C and seem to be still going up, at which point I tried to stop it but the computer just froze, frantically tried shutting down with the reset and power buttons, to no avail. I had no choice I flipped the switch to my PSU although I fear as soon as the CPU cooler fan stopped my CPU would fry.

4.2GHz @100% load - 85C

 Luckily when I started it again it still ran, so I went into the BIOS menu again and lowered the overclock down to my previously set goals. It didn't run at a very low temperature but it ran. about 78C which I consider still acceptable considering the stress test was 100% load which is not realistic in normal use. 

The BCLK frequency was set to 190 with a multiplier of 21. Making the core clock 3.99 GHz. just a bit shy of 4. However I was still in the process of refining it, after everything was done I raised the BCLK frequency to 192, and all was well. 4.03GHz. I was ecstatic.

4.03GHz@100% load - 71C

There was still one problem though. Noise. Since the idle temp was about 40C my CPU cooler was really loud. Sigh.

Since I never had a problem running any games I play at max setting at my normal settings and my computer is never shut down, I decided to put everything back to stock. Saved the BIOS I used for the overclock of course, might need it someday when my computer gets left behind by newer games.

Now I'm right where I started with about 5 hours down the drain.

Hey, at least it wasn't boring. Another day without boredom.

Awesome.

P.S. Sorry if the image are too small. can't be bothered to change it now.