i5 2500K - Why you no stable???

[Zoidberg]

Hi everyone

 

First time poster and rookie/aspiring overclocker here.

 

I've been playing around with the idea of overclocking my i5 2500K as it's starting to show it's age, at least when it comes to gaming, and I've always used the CPU at stock settings with Intel Turbo Boost enabled. I figured I would attempt the "oh-so-easy" 4.5GHz overclock that I have seen on practically every 2500K OC thread, but I seem to have run into a bit of trouble as both IntelBurnTest (5 runs, maximum stress) and Prime95 (Blend) indicate that the system is not stable. Please note that I would like to run a 24/7 OC if at all possible. I've included an image of the IBT run that was done at 4.5GHz and 1.35v, and as you can see, the instability is NOT due to high temps at all since the highest temp was core 2 at 70C. I have tried increasing the vcore to 1.4v but the problem persists. Any advice that you guys may have will be greatly appreciated!

 

 

 

All changes were made through the BIOS and are shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

Relevent system specs are listed below:

i5 2500K

Corsair H80i v2 AIO

Gigabyte Z77-D3H

G.Skill Ares F3-1600C9D (2x4GB)

Seasonic SnowSilent 750W

Phanteks Eclipse P400S

 

 

P.S. I'm running the above settings with no BSOD up to this point.

Edited August 2, 2017 by Zoidberg

[Leeghoofd]

Looking at your screenshot you test 6Gb out of 8 GB of ram, not a good idea either as your windows needs some spare ram to work with

 

Tips:

 

Put PWM Phase control at optimized or extreme

Vcore Loadline calibration at turbo or extreme. ---> Test again.

 

Though work your way up from 4.0GHz and test. If all stable, move on... If not, it could be your memory.

[Zoidberg]

Thanks for responding Leeghoofd. Apologies, but my internet has been offline and I just managed to get it working this morning again.

 

I had made the changes suggested by you - setting PWM Phase Control to Extreme as well as initially setting vCore LLC to Turbo. I also lowered my clock ratio to 40, kept the vCore at 1.35v and did a few IBT tests with 5 runs at maximum again. IBT testing passed at 4.0GHz, 4.2GHz, but failed at 4.4GHz with a BSOD and the CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT error

 

I then went back to the BIOS and set vCore LLC to extreme, as well as increasing the vCore to 1.4v. I set IBT with 5 runs on maximum and this time passed testing at 4.4GHz (image below)

 

 

 

At this point I admittedly thought that all was going well and decided to go for 4.5GHz, only to get another BSOD with the same settings which the 4.4GHz passed in the last IBT test.

 

What are the odds that my CPU is just simply incapable of doing 4.5GHz?

[Leeghoofd]

Looking at the voltages you have to set, your 2500K CPU is far from stellar... No worries though I would back down to 4.2 at 1.3volts and let her hum along... not bad a 900Mhz OC

[Zoidberg]

Thanks for the assistance Leeghoofd! Admittedly, not what i was hoping to hear but there's nothing that can be done about it I guess. Till next time!