QUOTE(owikh84 @ Aug 3 2013, 09:14 AM)
It's all about draw of luck and lottery of silicone so just pick any batch will do.
The non-Z board overclocking will be disabled by BIOS/windows update. If you can afford a K CPU, you should be able to afford a Z board as well. I know can save some bucks, but why choose to have the limitation.
Intel Cracks Down on Motherboard Vendors Offering Overclocking on non-Z ChipsetHi all sifu, this is my first oc on 4570K and Asus Z87M-Plus and I've read many guides.
One of the guide on first post
[OCers] 3 Step Guide to Overclock Your i7 / i5 Haswell Platform caught my attention on how to check whether the chip I have is on the upper end or the lower end of the Haswell bell curve. Quote from the author:-
QUOTE
Now, I’ll share a secret imparted by the folks at ASUS who gave several reviewers some tips on overclocking the retail stepping Haswell chips: Set Vcore to 1.20 V. Set all cores to 46x (which would be a 4.6 GHz overclock), save & reboot. If the system boots past the UEFI and either begins to load or, ideally, makes it into the OS and is stable, you have a 50th percentile or greater chip on the Haswell overclocking-ability bell curve. If it won’t at least boot there and make it into the UEFI, you probably have less than a 50th percentile chip. You can expect chips in the lower 50th percentile to top out in the 4.4-4.5 GHz range at 1.25 V.
If your chip will boot at 4.6 GHz and 1.25 V, that’s very good. It means you have at least an average chip. If it will boot at 4.6 GHz and is stable there, then you may have an above average chip. The best chips will be able to do 4.8 GHz stable at 1.25 V. Our sample did 4.8 GHz, but at 1.3 V and on a custom water loop. Using 1.3 V will likely put a chip out of the air cooling / AIO water cooling thermal envelope. Temperatures in all of these scenarios, from the dog 4.3 GHz chips up to the good 4.8 GHz chips, will always be in the ~90°C range. That’s just the nature of Haswell. With the VRM on-die, think of Haswell as Ivy Bridge plus 10° C.
My Haswell cant boot past 4.3GHz on 1.25V manual. Heck it cant even boot past 4.2GHz when I set the voltage setting to adaptive or offset. My questions are:-
1) Does high performance RAM increase the oc capability of the CPU? I am using normal RAM only.
2) Does good cooler increase the oc capability of the CPU? I am using stock cooler.
Stick to 4.0GHz for now with stock cooler, 90C on full load. Well, for normal gaming my CPU just 60-70C so I might not want to invest on new cooler if my CPU cant go beyond 4.3GHz.
Thanks in advance for your advice.