Help with overclocking an I7

[ronpaul]

And another thing.. Are there any program or such that can test my core in 100% load? Since I'm pretty sure games don't go that far mostly..

Yes, in the BIOS. AI Tweaker, Overclocking settings, etc., they're all different depending on the brand of your mobo.

Pew mentioned the program people use to test CPU load and it's called Prime95. It throws complicated calculations at your processor(s) until they achieve max load. It's used in a process called "burning-in" when you first buy a new CPU, and it will test temperatures during full load for long periods of time which will give you the best indication of stability.

 

[dbee]

68c is the max recommended thermal spec for the i7. While stressing you will see higher temps more than likely. I will stress for stability and temps, but base the safety of cpu temps by actual daily usage such as playing TF2 which is very CPU intensive. With HT off, i have been seeing temps around 60c @ 4.2 ghz with only 1.328 vcore. It could run much cooler but i have my QPI voltage pretty high to keep my RAM OC stable.

And yes, every chip will perform differently.

 

[Death]

To get in BIOS press Del (most likely bottom right of keyboard by enter and 0) and once in there, go to Ai Tweaker, under that is the vcore, bclk, etc.