3 Step - Core i3, i5, and i7 Overclocking Guides (now includes Sandy Bridge)

Hello XtremeSystems :D

I've looked around the web, and all of the mainstream sites have overclocking guides of some sort, but they're a bit too tame for an user who REALLY wants to learn how to push their system the XS way :D

I've spent a lot of time over the last few months writing, revising, and attempting to perfect overclocking guides for the latest generations of Intel CPUs. Many of you may have seen the previous revision posted at overclockers.com. But I really wanted to take that guide to the next level. These guides are not OCing templates....those are already plentiful, but have very limited effectiveness.
I've seen way too much "give me the settings" type of trial-and-error overclocking going on.:down: If you are serious about pushing your system, a methodical approach is the fastest, and most effective way to do so.

I felt the best way to start was with an introduction comparing the different choices for LGA1156 and LGA1366 platofrms, and it turned into a buyers guide. It should be a good reasource for power users looking for a recommendation on which series to purchase.
Intel Core i3 i5 and i7 Buyers Guide

I broke the overclocking portion of the guide down into three parts, so that I could tailor each section to the specific audiences's needs. I ended up with three very thorough overclocking guides that avoid the fluff, and focus on the good stuff.

3 Step Overclocking Guide - Gulftown and Bloomfield

3 Step Overclocking Guide - Lynnfield

3 Step Overclocking Guide - Clarkdale

3 Step Overclocking Guide - Sandy Bridge

As you work through the guides, take your time and do it right. If you run into problems, take note of where you are at in the process. Take a screenshot of the problem if possible. Start a new thread with the attached screenshot and all of the relevent system information. And we will do our best to help you achieve a good solid, hardcore overclock :yepp:

Any comments and criticizms are very welcome. Although I have striven for perfection, I know these guides are still far from it. :cool:

If anyone is interested in following my work, please do so here, thanks :up:

great reads ... maybe I will go back and play with my 920 a little more :up:

What? No "Overclocking dual westmere's on the SR2"?
For shame...For shame....:rofl:

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Originally Posted by Movieman

What? No "Overclocking dual westmere's on the SR2"?
For shame...For shame....:rofl:

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I agree...totally unacceptable. :p:

Lol :D

haha !


great guide ! Good job :)

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Originally Posted by EnJoY

I agree...totally unacceptable. :p:

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Been thinking, I could probably write up a decent one myself..:rofl:
I think I have more experience with it than anyone except Peter and I haven't broken mine..yet..:rofl:
Sucker has been at 100% load since Mid March and not one hiccup..:up:

Excellent writeup. It must have taken a lot of time and hard work to compile such detailed information on multiple platforms, thank you. I downloaded and printed it to try my hand at pushing my i7 920 D0 rig farther. I have gotten a lot of good help and information @ XS (as always) and this is the most detailed "How To Steps" that I have seen anywhere. :clap:

P.S. I was using your writeup from Overclockers.com :up:

First, this should be stickied. Second, awesome writeup, somewhat simple for the buyers guide, but I like the straight forward recommendations, K.I.S.S. is always good in a guide. Thank you for the time and effort, this couldn't have come at a better time as I am debating on downgrading my system and the buying guide helped a lot.

sticky this for sure, it will help so many people and it is written very well, excellent work miahallen:up:

I basically have two problems with OCing guides. One, some try to make it sound too simple, and in reality every chip responds differently to OCing, so the rules of thumb can feel as if you're using nothing but your thumbs. Two, most of them are written for extreme OCing. Give me a break with this crap. Whatever happened to merely trying to avoid a bottleneck and actually stopping at that point vs trying to get as much as you can out of a chip? A max OC only stresses the CPU unnecessarily if you only want to game on it.

The more OCing guides I read, the less I want to bother with it, especially on a 1366 i7 chip. In reality the only slight bottleneck you're going to get is a fairly small percentage of frames on the more optimized games, so you never see the extra frames because you're still WAY above 60 FPS even with that bottleneck. On high resource games the FPS are nearly the same without an OC because those games are so GPU dependent the CPU doesn't factor in as much.

Bottom line, whether OCing for benchmarks, bottlenecks or bragging rights, it still boils down to something that isn't really necessary for most games.

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Originally Posted by Frag Maniac

I basically have two problems with OCing guides. One, some try to make it sound too simple, and in reality every chip responds differently to OCing, so the rules of thumb can feel as if you're using nothing but your thumbs. Two, most of them are written for extreme OCing. Give me a break with this crap. Whatever happened to merely trying to avoid a bottleneck and actually stopping at that point vs trying to get as much as you can out of a chip? A max OC only stresses the CPU unnecessarily if you only want to game on it.

The more OCing guides I read, the less I want to bother with it, especially on a 1366 i7 chip. In reality the only slight bottleneck you're going to get is a fairly small percentage of frames on the more optimized games, so you never see the extra frames because you're still WAY above 60 FPS even with that bottleneck. On high resource games the FPS are nearly the same without an OC because those games are so GPU dependent the CPU doesn't factor in as much.

Bottom line, whether OCing for benchmarks, bottlenecks or bragging rights, it still boils down to something that isn't really necessary for most games.

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well because this is xtreme systems:D

Thanks for the props guys :)

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Originally Posted by miahallen

Thanks for the props guys :)

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http://i52.tinypic.com/htzrbt.png

very leet:rofl::rofl:

Great Job m8, i've been looking for this guide so far!!! :D

Excellent :up:

Thread stuck..:up:

Thanks Dave :toast:

Finally Dave did something usefull around here :)

Fantastic been looking for one like this for ages esp with the gulftown included

Nice knowledge for all, Thanks for sharing Miahallen :up:

Thanks ZoLKoRn :toast:

If anyone is interested in following my work, please do so here, thanks :up:

I read this guide a couple of wks ago and found it very informative. It's a very structured and straight forward plan. If you don't have a plan like this you'll be running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Nice job Miah :up:

Thanks Ron :)

Bump for Sandy Bridge :toast:

oh wow mia, Bookmarked for reference <3

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Originally Posted by miahallen

Bump for Sandy Bridge :toast:

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Very nice, thanks! :up:

Awesome...thanks:up: Bookmarked and printed for use in the next couple weeks.

@MIA

Don't u need to change the Vcc_IO for the memory instead of the Vvc_SA?

In my testing with the MIVE no, VccSA made a consistent and necessary improvement, VccIO didn't change a thing....but I'm starting to wonder about my UD7; more testing is needed ;)

Okay, so I've been running i7 920 and Corsair Dominator GT 1866 C7 (3x2gb) for over 1.5 years on VTT 1.475v for my 24/7 setup. Anything less, and the ram is not stable. So far no problems. I was under the impression that 1.4v to 1.6v VTT was needed to run high-spec'd memory of its time.

I've been out of the loop, but is it considered 'safe' for 24/7?

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Originally Posted by Lemina

Okay, so I've been running i7 920 and Corsair Dominator GT 1866 C7 (3x2gb) for over 1.5 years on VTT 1.475v for my 24/7 setup. Anything less, and the ram is not stable. So far no problems. I was under the impression that 1.4v to 1.6v VTT was needed to run high-spec'd memory of its time.

I've been out of the loop, but is it considered 'safe' for 24/7?

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Way to much vtt, You should need that much vtt, try running a way lower uncore and try 1.4, Also whats your Qpi pll ?

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Way to much vtt, You should need that much vtt, try running a way lower uncore and try 1.4, Also whats your Qpi pll ?

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AFAIK, my mobo (Asus p6t deluxe v2) bios doesn't have qpi pll. It has cpu pll, that's about it.

Interestingly, I followed the guide and disabled the power features, and I managed to lower VTT to 1.462v thus far. It passed some quick tests on IntelBurnTest and Prime95 and stable thus far, but needs more testing. I'll have to play around with it more when I have time. I'm not asking for much, but I'll be ecstatic with 1.45v.

Run your uncore only 2x, dont worry about trippling it yet as it will require high VTT, leaving it 2x should allow you to lower your vtt to atleast 1.4.. Dont forget to set timings manually and leave QPI link auto that's if you have it on your mobo.. How high do you want your cpu to run @ ?

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Originally Posted by Lemina

AFAIK, my mobo (Asus p6t deluxe v2) bios doesn't have qpi pll. It has cpu pll, that's about it.

Interestingly, I followed the guide and disabled the power features, and I managed to lower VTT to 1.462v thus far. It passed some quick tests on IntelBurnTest and Prime95 and stable thus far, but needs more testing. I'll have to play around with it more when I have time. I'm not asking for much, but I'll be ecstatic with 1.45v.

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What bclock are you working with? Also, what's your CPU freq & CPU voltage at?

Props for this!

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Originally Posted by Bullu$

@MIA

Don't u need to change the Vcc_IO for the memory instead of the Vvc_SA?

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Exactly.
This OC guide is a complete bull:banana::banana::banana::banana:. Testing with IBT is no good, by my experience Prime95 requires even 0.05V more to run, and IBT 20x stable is nowhere near 24/7 stability, Prime on the other hand is, even if only 10min stable, max what you need is 1 notch up (+0.005V) to be completely stable.

So my post alone is a better OC guide, really, for 4.8GHz overclock all I needed to change on my P8P67 was set the right offset value for Vcore. With Prime, you should find this within 1 hour, then test overnight to be completely sure.

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Originally Posted by Planet

Finally Dave did something usefull around here :)

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That one made me laugh!


Great guide, i was having some inside thoughs about some configs and u answered them in the guides. :clap:

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Originally Posted by Gr1mR34p3r

Exactly.
This OC guide is a complete bull:banana::banana::banana::banana:. Testing with IBT is no good, by my experience Prime95 requires even 0.05V more to run, and IBT 20x stable is nowhere near 24/7 stability, Prime on the other hand is, even if only 10min stable, max what you need is 1 notch up (+0.005V) to be completely stable.

So my post alone is a better OC guide, really, for 4.8GHz overclock all I needed to change on my P8P67 was set the right offset value for Vcore. With Prime, you should find this within 1 hour, then test overnight to be completely sure.

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Before you go bustin on the guides, maybe you should read them :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by From the "Methodology" section on page 1

Determining methods for finding a stable overclock are highly controversial, everyone has their own definition of a stable system, but when I refer to “stable” in this guide, I am referring to the stability of your selected “stability test.” So for a power user or gamer who wants a reliable system that won’t ever crash due to an overclock pushed too far, you’d need to test with a program that will load all of the cores and threads applicable to your CPU, OCCT and IntelBurnTest are two popular choices. OCCT uses the same algorithm as Prime95 but has a friendlier interface. IntelBurnTest uses the Intel linpack binaries to stress the system and also has an easy to use interface. In this guide I may use testing that is insufficient in your opinion. It is only a guideline and if you feel more testing is necessary for your system, by all means feel free.

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Originally Posted by maneta

Great guide, i was having some inside thoughs about some configs and u answered them in the guides. :clap:

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Thanks :toast:

Thank you for putting together such nice guides.

It's very helpful, thanks :)

awesome work thanks

Prime95 gave me similar results to IBT, so saying the whole guide is BS is rash to say the least, Gr1mR34p3r. Got an easy 4.6GHz@1.355v with temps in the 70s at load with my 2600K and Z68 thanks to this guide and running beyond stable. People are pushing their voltages and temps higher, but the guidelines for keeping a cool and quiet PC [and a non-fried CPU] are much appreciated!

Thanks for the feedback guys, glad I could help out :up:

Miahellen -

Great work on the guides. If there's ever an Asus or Gigabyte board you need bios screen-shots of, let me know and I will get them to you. I know it can be tricky sometimes to explain the disconnect between different board settings and terminology. Big fan of your work though, keep it up!

Thanks man :up:

Thank you for the Sandy Bridge addition. Will save me a lot of time, research, and questions being the first time I have built a Intel system in over 10 years.

I will check that guide later .. this is what i now tested

5.2Ghz
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2541434

5.3Ghz
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2541887

great info

Fantastic Guide! Went from Core2 to Phenom II back to Core2 and now to a 920 D0 this week so it really helps :D