Very first build, NEED HELP!

[Dragonslayer1]

If you do overclock its gonna be a long process. You can overclock 2 ways first in the bios or second in the os via overclocking software like rivatuner. Myself personally I like software overclocking because if you mess up just restart in safe mode and change it back easily. In riva tuner you would move your core clock and shader clock up by 10 and then save it and benchmark and repeat until you see artifacts during the benchmark then move it back down by 2-3 until it is as high as it can be while still being stable. Or since you have an intel based motherboard and cpu you can try the intel desktop controll center which does it automatically. Although I havnt used it myself, ive heard alot of positive reviews about it. You can download that here: Intel® Desktop Control Center

 

[Triciablo]

Haha 1more thing, if you do overclock it you're going to need some serious cooling equipment, here's my advice, check your CPU on other sites to see how well they did with overclocking and what cooling they used for it!

YES GET A GOOD COOLING HEATSINK

I have seen a lot of overclocked i5-2500Ks to around 4.5GHz with the same heat sink that I have chosen running at idle 36-40C and load 65-70C. I don't plan to push past 4.0GHz, so I don't think it will be a problem, but I will definitely look into it. I have also considered the Noctua NH-D14 as a possible upgrade in the future if needed.

EDIT: Thank you for the link DragonSlayer. Yeah, I don't think I'm read to go into the BIOS and start messing with voltages etc to overclock it. I would probably start off using TriXX and Smart Doctor or some CPU software overclocker, like the one you have given me. Just to be safe you know?

 

[Dragonslayer1]

Haha 1more thing, if you do overclock it you're going to need some serious cooling equipment, here's my advice, check your CPU on other sites to see how well they did with overclocking and what cooling they used for it!

YES GET A GOOD COOLING HEATSINK

And route your case fans on a push/pull system where the fans on the bottom pull air in and the top fans push it out.

 

[Triciablo]

And route your case fans on a push/pull system where the fans on the bottom pull air in and the top fans push it out.

I plan on doing that. I didn't add it to the cost, but I will be looking into some extra case fans (my case has like 7 mounts for them) to add in order to draw away some of that heat from the GPUs.

 

[IAntDemo]

I've always overclocked threw bios, personally I prefer it, hate software overclocking.. the tweaks are made in bios for voltage aswell.. you get more out of it

 

[Triciablo]

Haha well the BIOS is something I will have to read up on, but to stay safe, I will start off with software overclocking if I need it.

 

[Dragonslayer1]

Ya its true that you get more out of it but you can also seriously screw up your pc if you dont know what your doing. For me ive never really needed to overclock my computer to the extreme so software overclocking more than does the job.

 

[Triciablo]

Ya its true that you get more out of it but you can also seriously screw up your pc if you dont know what your doing. For me ive never really needed to overclock my computer to the extreme so software overclocking more than does the job.

And if I did overclock, it wouldn't be extreme. There is no way you are going to do 5.0Ghz OCed CPU to run your system and max out the output of your 6970s or 580s just to play today's games lol. A mild overclock would be good enough.

 

[Dragonslayer1]

I once got my 3.2 ghz p4 overclocked to 4.9 with a beefy aftermarket cooler. It was great for the 5 minutes or so that it worked ^_^

 

[Triciablo]

Yeah that is my thing too. If I do overclock, I don't want to go extreme and make the system unstable.