Windows 7: Looking to overclock I7 920 Asus p6t se

Hi guys, Im looking to pull some more performance out of my processor and/or ram, maybe in terms of breaking the 4-4.5ghz barrier too if its possible.

I know in terms of performance increase it would be best to just get an SSD, some new ram since mine is pretty shocking (paid $200 for this back in the day) and a new PSU for sure, i do intend to do that once my student loan payment comes through!

My graphics card is currently overclocked, details of it are in the CPUZ screenshot i believe, thats been running 12 hours on furmark fully stable, max temp was 72 degrees



I had a BSOD issue previously that is under control now, the following fix was applied:

VCore 1.2v, vtt 1.24v, RAM 8-8-8-24-88-2t

Other than that, here are the HWMonitor screenshots and the CPUZ screenshots, i am able to run prime95/any other test pretty much whenever since im revising for exams so i just leave it running. the hwmonitor screenshot contains the max temp with intel burn test on maximum

prime benchmarks.txt

p.s i havent underclocked, its that powersave thing on the processor speed i guess (ill disable that after this post)

Just a couple of things to start with.. What is your reason for wanting to overclock? Your current idle temperatures tell me that it wouldn't be a very good idea to overclock without addressing your cooling system first. I would also leave the speed step (power save thing) enabled. Disabling it will only waste power and produce unnecessary heat.

i just needed a little performance out of it since i plan to start recording gameplay's, I'm currently on the edge where i just need a tiny bit more performance to have everything running at a reasonable frame rate

Is the cooling data really that bad? i figured i still had ~10-15 degrees to play around with

Well it's not terrible. It is within the limits, but I don't think you will be able to go past 3.0ghz without running into some heat issues. If you still want to proceed, I will try and get an idea of what your BIOS looks like so I can try and guide you through the process.

Well lets give it a shot and see how it goes anyways, I dont think it'll do too much harm getting some numbers straight off, I'll also start looking into improving my cooling too

Ok, well I'll give you something to start with. Just be sure if you get any BSOD to undo anything you have changed.

1. Enter your BIOS, probably by pressing the DEL key.

2. Move across to AI Tweaker and set the Ai Overclock Tuner to X.M.P.

3. Now here's where it gets a little more difficult. According to your system specs your RAM is running at 1333mhz, so for this you might want to adjust it to DDR3-1066 under DRAM Frequency for the next step.

4. Set the CPU Ratio Setting as high as it will go for now.

5. Adjust the BCLK frequency until your RAM speed gets back, or close to 1333mhz, when you adjust the BCLK your cpu frequency will also increase. If it is running faster than 3.0ghz at this point I would decrease the CPU Ratio until you get around 3.0ghz or so.

6. Move down and adjust the CPU voltage manually to about 1.35v, that should be plenty enough for 3.0ghz. Mine is stable at 4.0ghz with 1.375V, so you should not need to exceed 1.375.

7. You will more than likely need to adjust your DRAM Bus voltage to whatever voltage your RAM is designed to operate at. It should be either 1.5v or 1.65. My BIOS will only increase at 0.02v increments and I figure yours will be the same, so if it is 1.65v you need to reach, 1.64v will work fine, just be sure not to exceed 1.65v.

Hope that helps you out.

tried those settings, bsod within like 5 minutes of just random surfing. My mouse went crazy during that time too, it was working but the razer driver settings (my tweaks for sensitivity and stuff) werent working. would you like me to attach the dump?

Sure, that would be good. Also, did you try increasing the speed in very small increments or did you go all out first try?

Your idle temps are to high but idle temps mean very little. What are your temps under load? With you system set to default run Prime 95 100% and see if your cooling is working properly at stock settings under load. This way you can verify whether or not you have a cooling problem.

@crazy, i went all in with your settings, ill upload another dump since i cant find that one, ill just recreate the bsod

@bear, the HWmonitor screenshot max temps are with prime95 in my first post

update: I reseated my CPU fan the right way this time, CPU fan is at 1440/2200 rpm now (the fan was facing the back of the case before). Idle temps 35C on each core, max load 50C. ill try and get those dumps soon