Intel Devil's Canyon & Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition Overclocking Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,649 words · ~13 min read
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there no place there no moment
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welcome to my Devil's Canyon and Pentium anniversary edition overclocking guide
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now the drawbacks of overclocking your CPU are many overclockable Hardware is
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more expensive if it's done incorrectly it can cause your computer to blue screen or otherwise be unstable it makes
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your PC consume more power and output more heat it can make your processor not
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last as long it avoids the warranty on many components and finally doing it
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right can be down right time consuming so why do we do it because we want to go
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fast
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H now before we get into this guide when it comes to running things beyond their
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specifications I don't think I have to spell out that nothing is guaranteed so
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with that out of the way let's get into the parts we're using for our guide
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today for the CPU we actually have two
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different choices the first is a 4790k
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which is a quad core with hyperthread and clock do a little faster than the
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older 4770k from our last overclocking guide at 4 GHz base and up to 4.4 4 GHz
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boost it features an upgraded thermal solution for cooler temperatures versus
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its older brother and due to refinements in Intel's chip selection process
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promises more consistent overclocking results a fine Choice oh and like its
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predecessor it's a ker skew which means it's unlocked and overclocking ready
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which leads us into our second CPU the Pentium
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g3258 anniversary edition this chip is
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truly remarkable it's not the fanciest thing in the world with no
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hyperthreading only two processing cores and a mere 3.2 GHz stock clock speed but
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it's unlocked which means maybe a
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massive overclocking potential for cooling we're using a Corsair h100
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liquid cooler I recommend a good Tower air cooler or a dual fan all-in-one
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liquid cooler for the best overclocking results for our power supply we've gone
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with the Corsair ax850 we could have gone Overkill with the latest ax1 1500i
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but getting a gr overclock is not about having a high wattage power supply as
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much as it's about having a good quality one with stable rails and very little
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Ripple so this one will be okay the ax500 I would have been better but this
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one will be fine speaking of Overkill we've gone slightly overkill on the
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motherboard with a z97 WS from ASUS both Luke and I are very fond of WS series
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boards they're just so dependable and easy to work with they offer great
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compatibility with other components amazing build quality and while they lack some of the fancy extras that Ro or
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tough series boards might have they've got it where it counts and they'll
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overclock with the best of them these days the motherboard actually doesn't
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affect overclocking results much unless you're pushing things to the limits with
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exotic cooling anyway so as long as you pick an Aus motherboard you should be
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able to follow along with our guide exactly with other brand motherboards
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having similar options with just a little bit more digging required on your
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part to match up the stuff we're changing to how what it looks like on the other board finally for memory we're
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using an 8 gig kit of 2400 MHz gskill memory high-speed memory isn't a huge
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deal these days but with how much less expensive it's gotten lately compared to
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standard 1600 MHz stuff and how easy it
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is to dial in at high frequencies with XMP profiles we figured what the hate
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it's optional but we'll show it to you anyway okay lonus enough Preamble how do
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I overclock step one don't overclock start
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by updating your BIOS and drivers running a stress test for an hour or two
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doing at least a couple passes of mest 86 and playing games for a couple of
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hours to ensure that things are functioning correctly out of the box
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after all you wouldn't take a new car to the track and Tred to go 200 km an hour
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in it until you made sure it can stay in a straight line going 60 clicks right
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step two gather your software toolkit while I mentioned mest 86 already you're
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going to want a couple of other things in your bag of tricks for stress testing
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CPUs Z lets you see how your processor is running so you can verify your
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settings and Cort temp lets you monitor your CPU's temperatures in real time to
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see if they're getting out of hand if you want an all-in-one utility and a
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nice userfriendly package I to 6 4 gets a solid recommendation from us it's what
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we use and it includes monitoring stress testing and diagnostic stuff but it does
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cost money everything else I mentioned is free step three set aside the time to
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do it properly be prepared to have your system not be usable for a day or two if
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you want to correctly dial in an overclock I'm not saying it will take
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that long I'm just saying it can take that long especially if you're a real
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stickler about validation I've seen stress testing programs fail after even
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a full day of Burnin and my personal standard is that if it's not 100% stable
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I'd rather turn it down a little rather than risk losing valuable work and data
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so I typically validate for 24 hours or more step four the tour of the UEFI BIOS
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on most motherboards pressing delete will land you in the ufi BIOS if you're
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not sure about your motherboard consult the menual a Seuss drops you into a
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simplified ufi by default that gives you all the basic info you need like
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temperatures and lets you adjust your fan speeds change boot order and enable
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your memories XMP profiles but doesn't really allow for any serious tuning
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press F7 to get to advanced mode most
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modern motherboard bioses have a ton of features that we didn't have in the old
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days you can navigate through the menus manually or you can create your own
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favorites menu with the settings that you use most frequently you can make
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quick notes as you progress through your overclock and review them later you can
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save profiles for known good settings so it's easy to revert to something that
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works when you're done experimenting and you can even have the motherboard take
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care of overclocking for you on its own we're going to experiment with that
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feature later on to see how close it can get to the performance of our manual
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overclock now if you want a bit of a deeper rundown of every setting things
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actually haven't changed a lot since our last Haswell overclocking guide in this
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guide we're going to leave most of the dials on auto and explain only the ones
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that we're changing as we go let's jump into the AI tweaker heading where most
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of this stuff is found now most Enthusiast grade memory these days has
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an XMP profile and if you set this setting to XMP it will dial in into its
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optimal settings you can push memory past its rated speeds but because of how
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difficult memory instability is to diagnose I really don't recommend doing
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it unless you have a lot of patience moving on down the CPU core ratio is
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where most of the magic happens this ratio times the base clock locked at 100
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MHz for all intents and purposes is how the processor's final frequency is
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derived as for the settings here sync all cores
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is faster and easier to dial in because it runs every core at the same speed
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which is easy to stress test but setting up different maximum turbos depending on
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how many cores are active could yield slightly better results in dual or
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single threaded applications we're going to stick with sync all cores next up is
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the CPU core voltage increasing core voltage improve CPU stability at higher
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clock speeds but higher voltages are also the main reason that overclocking
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causes higher temperatures and a shorter lifespan for your processor now there
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are actually several ways to set CPU voltage we're going to use manual
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voltage the generally regarded as pretty safe voltage being 1.3 Volts for Haswell
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based CPUs to find our Max over clock then to save power we're going to switch
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to Adaptive later on adaptive gives us
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better power consumption characteristics when the computer is not working hard
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and ramps up whenever the CPU needs more juice but it's not good for stress test
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when you're actually validating the overclock because certain stability
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testing applications can cause voltage spikes that can hurt your CPU in
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adaptive mode so now that we're familiar with the settings that we'll be running
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it's time to overclock we're going to start by leaving our CPU at stock
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voltage so 1.25 volts this is different from Auto which will actually scale
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voltage as you increase your frequencies thanks to the same BIOS Wizardry that
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will automatically be handling all the other settings in here that we didn't cover then we're going to turn all of
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our cores multiplier up a little bit let's say to 44 which would give us a
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speed of 4.4 GHz actually equal to what turbo boost will do on its own but let's
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just see if it can do it all the time so now we press F10 to save our settings
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boot into Windows and do some stability testing if the CPU passes a short let's
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say 5 to 10 minute stress test and temperatures are within your comfort
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zone remember higher tempts equals shorter CPU lifespan then we boot back
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into the BIOS and push it some more if it fails then we add a bit more voltage
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and see if that makes it stable it's important to go through this process to
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find out where you're needing to crank up the voltage a lot for a very small
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CPU frequency return that's the way to find the balance between the longevity
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of your chip and the extra performance that you crave another thing to consider
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is the conditions in which you're overclocking is it optimal is it the
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worst case scenario an overclock that you set up in the winter might not work
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correctly in the summer so leave yourself some buffer room or save a
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couple of other profiles that work in case you need to grab one of them when
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the weather heats up another thing to consider if you're working on other more
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advanced settings within the BIOS let's say you want to do some tuning to the
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RAM timings is to throw another step into the routine not everything you
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tweak will have a positive result so run a short Benchmark rather than just a
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stability test to see if what you're doing is actually helping or hindering
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performance once you've dialed in your overclock using manual voltage switch
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over to Adaptive then use a real world stress test like cinebench to validate
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your load voltage I found that just doing the math and keying in the same
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number actually didn't work so I used AI Suite to make sure the voltages were
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right and even though the software voltage readouts are typically not very
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accurate the system was stable and my load temps were similar once I turned
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things up a little bit more so it seemed to work a digital multimeter would
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actually be preferable if your board has voltage checkpoints though that's a
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great feature for overclockers unfortunately not found on WS
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boards so following this methodology we
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we achieved a 4.8 GHz on our 4790k at 1.3 Vols with a load CPU temperature of
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around 65° and Rock Solid stability and
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4.7 GHz on our g3258 at 1365 volts with
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a load CPU temperature of 49 Dees I gave
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the Pentium about 065 volts more than
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the typical best practice setting for Haswell for a couple of reasons number
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one is that temperatures were still great since it's a dual core and doesn't
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output much and number two is that as a $75 chip I'm a little bit more willing
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to live on the wild side with it both of these results are going to turn into
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some significant real world performance improvements but by now you might be
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sitting there kind of going well lonus this is all fine and good but ain't
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nobody got time for that is there another way well actually there are two
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other ways that I alluded to before to overclock on an isus motherboard number
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one is to Simply navigate to the easy tuning wizard in the BIOS answer a short
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questions about your setup then let the board apply one of the pre-done profiles
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that asusa Engineers have cooked up this resulted in lower more conservative
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overclocks at higher temperatures for both of our chips temps were still
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reasonable at only a couple of more degrees on both CPUs but it's just plain
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not as good as a manual overclock the second alternative way is to use ausus
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AI Suite softwares five-way optimization
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feature to have the board overclock itself it actually goes through much the
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same increase speed until unstable then increase voltage until stable rinse and
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repeat process that we did except it does it completely on its own and it
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actually works reasonably well the automated system ended up 100 MHz slower
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on my 4790k and 100 MHz faster on my
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g3258 with the only issue being that in both cases it was applying More Voltage
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than I was really comfortable with and since I'd already tested the system and
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found it to be stable with less voltage it seems like as was overdoing it a bit
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in both cases not a huge deal if you
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just want a quick and dirty overclock since it can dial it in in about 10
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minutes and you don't even need to touch it and they were both stable it's just
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not the proper way to do things either
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and that pretty much wraps it up thanks for checking out this overclocking guide
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if this answered your questions then Happy overclocking if it didn't and you
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still want some one-on-one help try the CPU section of the Linus Tech tips Forum
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our community is full of helpful individuals and I'm sure one of our knowledgeable members would be happy to
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help you and I think that's pretty much it thanks to Intel for sponsoring this
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overclocking guide thanks to you for watching like the video if you liked it
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