Oveclocking with MSI mobo

[Vanaraud]

For starters I want to add its my personal trial error experimentation and OC can damage your PC parts. Especially without learning more before. And my writing is more a glimpse on OC not a tutorial to go by with. OC at your own risk!

 

Despite of having picking my parts by myself haven´t yet built the PC as of yet. I have let local buisness built them for extra warranty. So now I built my PC and as I got unlocked multiplier CPU I decided to do simple overclocking on it. In the process I discovered some somewehat annoying things on MSI motherboard.

The PC specifications are as follow:

 

CPU: i5 3570k@3.4Ghz(6mb L3, 1mb L2, 128kB L1)

HSF: Arctic 7 pro @2000rpm with Arctic mx-4

Mobo: MSI Z77- gd65

RAM: 2x4 GB Corsair Vengenace 1600mHz(OC) 1.5V

Case: Corsair Carbide 500R mid-tower

PSU: Chieftec 750w 75% cable management

some  HDs and SSD and HD6950 graphics

 

As I started with OC I read some tutorials and checked voltage limits. Soon I begin with disabling options in BIOS and setting manual values. I discovered most of them had no effect or at least not much of a impact. BIOS ver was factory default 10.6 and as I´ve learnt updating makes things only worse. So I let it be.

By some tutorials I disabled: Turbo boost, EIST, speedprotection, C-states(EUP2013 is disabled by default), power management.

and Enabled: PLL overvoltage, Vdroop offset control on 100% and set manually CPU ratios and Vcore voltage. In the end it came out that only things you ever need to change are Vcore and CPU ratio. Other things are done by MSI bios automatically: with setting CPU ratio over 3.6Ghz it enables PLL overvoltage, disables C-states, sets Power management new limits etc. With disabling Turbo boost and EIST I didn´t manage to even get the CPU overclocking, trying all kind of combinations of C-states and Vdroop etc. In the other hand I haven´t yet been able to get CPU to downlclock while idle on OC CPU. Though C1Enhanced state cuts power consumption in idle rouglhly 2 times on OC-ed CPU all cores running at max frequency.

What I learnt is that with MSI its quite easy and simple to OC with mobo still being cool and it was OC-ed in automatically as promised in reviews. Not worth to try to set manually many things. Only thing to check is that OCP is at default(over current protection.) You can see setting descriptions by clicking on HELP button on BIOS with right mouse button.

I ended setting Vdroop 100%(not sure if it helps any way, but as I it set at the beginning I let it be, also tried at 4.2ghz Digital Compensation with high setting, but I doubt it did anything either), set CPU ratio to: 40 and by trial and error method I figured out that by raising Vcore by 0.0250V for every raise for CPU ratio increment over 3.6GHz( Vcore @ 0.980V) I set Vcore to 1.075V(I figure I lowered it some more but 0.025v is good guess to strart with). Later added Dram to 1600Mhz and with  9-9-9-24 and some more auto settings and DRAM voltage 5.13V(though mobo runs it by BIOS at 5.3V.  But with auto voltage it raised it somethere 1.67V range which is insane.) and got it running as cool as with default turbo boost settings and with less voltage on Vcore (3.8ghz turbo boost takes 1.44V).

Also tried to turn Enhanced turbo on and set under CPU features turbo settings for all cores to 4.0Ghz and let the Vcore voltage to be set automatically but again it ran in higher voltage (Vcore at 1.16V range) and hotter versus my settings at 4.2Ghz with Vcore at 1.1550V.

So for conclusion I want to say let MSI do the OC for you, only maybe you need to disable Speed protection in BIOS and set manually:

Vcore and CPU ratio. Also while overclocking RAM, set dram voltage manually at 1.5V range or mobo will fry ur RAM with auto settings with voltage over 1.65V- which is absolute maximum for safe RAM voltage. Also I noticed that AUTO means in MSI BIOS default settings as much as for automatically configuring settings for voltages(RAM 1.67V with DRAM voltage setting on auto!) etc and the interpretation is quite rough.

 

The trickiest part was to change Vcore and CPU ratio values with ENTER key which is defualt way to change BIOS settings. It didn´t work. After some digging I found out somewhere that + and – changed the values.

 

Ended overclocking at 4.2 Ghz which is pretty good result going from 3.4Ghz default as temps started to skyrocket with my not so good cooling solution and in Crysis 3 I didn´t notice any real difference in performance.

I let Prime95 run in blend settings for about 15 min and the temps were as follows:

 

 

4.0ghz 1.075v 55C, 60C with RAM@1600mhz

4.1ghz 1.1v 60Celsius degrees

4.2 ghz 1.155v 65-70C, 75C with RAM@1600mhz

 

Also what I discovered is that when buying RAM try to choose parts without heat spreaders as they will get in your CPU heatsinks way. My Arctic 7 pro fan frame touches the RAM heatspreaders and with more bigger\powerful CPU coolers I´m pretty sure the RAMs wouldn´t fit in.

 

In the end MSI isn´t that bad for everyday use and for gaming. It boots up to OS with SSD in 20 secs on full readiness and runs pretty cool- about 30 at idle, 40 max at load. And for simple OC its also good when you know the tricks. For overclocking enthusiasts who try to reach 5Ghz I don´t know if its the best. Neither I have tried other brands for OC so I let the reader to decide and search in forums for more.

 

I wonder has anybody else experience with MSI latest mobos and OC-ing with them? And if you happened to have i5 3570k which OC-s did you reach?