TORTURE TEST
You need to check your current cooling has enough headroom,
sofireup Prime95, select the smallest FFTs torture test, disable all AVX
options at the bottomandclickrun.Thisworst-casescenariowillloadall
cores and threadssimultaneously,andgeneratea lotofheat.Gameswon’t
create this much load,butit’simportanttocheckforextremecasestoo.
After ten minutes,you’llneedyourCPUtositbelow75°CforAMDRyzen
and ThreadripperCPUs,andIntelHEDTCPUswhileIntel’smainstream
CPUs can be pushedto80°C.If you’rehittingtemperatureshigherthan
that, you need to improvingyourcooling.Onceyou’redoneoverclocking,
it’s important to useyourusualprogramsinadditiontoPrime95tostability-
test your PC.
BEWAREOFDIMINISHINGRETURNS
It’s usuallythecasethatyou’llneedtorampupthevcorealmost
exponentially to achievehigheroverclocksandeventuallytheincreases
you’ll have to makewon’tbeworththeaddedheat.Thisworksbothways,
though, so once you’vefoundyourmaximumstableoverclock,trydropping
the frequency backa bitmoreandseeingwhattheloweststablevcoreis.
Your ultimate goalis togetyourCPUrunningascoolaspossible,soif you
can shave 5°C off theloadtemperaturebydropping25MHzandlowering
the vcore, then it’sdefinitelyworthit.
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WATCH OUT FOR VDROOP
When your CPU is under load and overclocked, the vcore can fall
onsome motherboards. This is perfectly normal, but it can cause instability.
You might enter 1.35V, but if you look in CPU-Z, this can fall significantly,
which could be enough to crash your system. This is known as vdroop,
but you can counteract it with loadline calibration. This applies a slightly
higher voltage when the CPU is under load to prevent it from falling too far.
Applying a loadline of three or four should be enough to solve issues with
the kind of overclocks we’re dealing with here.STABILITY ISSUES AND BSODS ARE
PERFECTLY NORMAL
Whenyou’re finding the limits with overclocking, your PC will respond by
throwing various indicators that you’ve pushed things too far or not applied
enough vcore. Your PC may reboot, you might see a blue screen or two,
or Windows may freeze, but it’s important to realise that this is perfectly
normal when overclocking and is an important part of the process. You’re
not damaging your hardware, but simply asking too much of it, so you’ll
need to either apply more voltage or rein in your frequency.TOOLSYOU’LLNEED
Prime95 (mersenne.org)
UsedtoloadyourCPUforheatandstabilitytesting
CPU-Z (cpuid.com)
Usedtoseea realtimereadoutofyourCPUfrequency
Ryzen Master - AMD CPUs (amd.com)
UsedtomonitorAMDCPUfrequencyandtemperature
Core Temp - Intel CPUs (alcpu.com)
Used to monitor Intel CPU temperature5
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