New(ish) OCer looking for info

[PhysicsPhD]

Hey, all.

 

New to the forum, have done some minor OCs over the years, mainly with z97 boards, clock multipliers and vcore settings. Nothing more intricate.

 

So now, I have a new build, and I want to play with overclocking. I'm trying to start by finding basic sources of info: what each setting actually *is*, etc. Let me start with the system build, and what the OC goals are, so I can see if some of you can point me in a good direction:

 

Mobo: Maxiumus X Hero Wifi A/C, Bios 1003

CPU: i7-8700k

Delidded?: Not yet

Cooling: Coolermaster Maserliquid ML120 RGB (planning a hard loop eventually)

Case: Thermaltake Tower 900 Snow Edition( <--- fits lots of cooling loops, actually!)

Memory: 32 GB (8x4) Trident Z RGB 3200

GPU: EVGA 1080ti Founders (no cooling loop on that yet either)

Drive: Samsung 960 pro 512

 

Goals:

So, this PC was built initially as a reply to the wife lol "I can't play games on the family PC? Fine I'll build the biggest most annoyingly RGB PC ever!" But in all seriousness, performs well so far. My interest is less about breaking records, as much as pushing the system to maximize performance while not frying it. As I'm often told there is a balance to OCing vs lifespan, I'm looking for a processor life of about 3 years or so. My old i5 in my z97 GB board has been going for years at 4GHz. I've seen a number or profiles and videos for OCing, but I'm kind of interested in learning more detail into WHAT i'm actually setting (ie what the various voltages, management option, etc are) before I just ramp up core voltages, LLCs, and multipliers.

 

So far (since these tend to come with 'what have you done so far?' request:

I get a nice seemingly solid 4.9GHz at 1.23 volts (adaptive mode), 45x PCR, and turning on the LLC to level 6. Stresses in XTU and Realbench fine with temps in the upper 70s. I've been working to see how low voltage and LLC can go, haven't hit bottom yet, but def made a difference turning on LLC.

 

For 5.0GHz, had to raise vcore to 1.325v (adaptive) and keep LLC at level 6 (couldn't lower to 5 without crashing). Stress test and real bench push that to 90C, so I'm not going to hit that with a long prime95 without better cooling.

 

All have an AVX offset of zero.

 

Advice on further reading is certainly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

JC