Want to squeeze more power out of your PC, you’ll need a decent overclockable CPU. Aaron looks at some of the best
It’s often painted as the most advanced, and in turn, daunting PC tweaking you can indulge in, but overclocking has become far more accessible over the years. Whilst it was once undeniably something for only the technical elite to play around with, pushing hardware past its out of the box specification has been handed to the masses with a range of increasingly overclock-friendly products being released.
Options that used to require physical modification (such as well-known the lead-pencil trick for AMD chips) are now a thing of the past, and built-in software has replaced hardware manufacturers’ previous reluctance to let people tinker. Now, most hardware that can be overclocked comes ready and willing, with dedicated functions for people to play around with should they wish to. Even a new computer user now has access to relatively easy to use tools, so there’s little excuse not to get some extra performance out of your hardware.
Still, even with the abundance of options now available, not all hardware is created equal. There are better models than others when it comes to overclocking – and this includes the CPU. Some CPUs are more suited to overclocking than others, whilst there are other options that simply don’t handle people pushing them past their established norms. Therefore, it’s important to know what kind of CPU to go for if you’re considering some overclocking and want to push your system a little harder.
We’re going to take a look at this fact, as we delve into CPU market to pick out some of the best current overclockable CPUs you can get your hands on. These are chips that’ll let you get the most out of your purchase; some are so good in this regard, they’ve even broken world records. There are also a couple of highly specialised, very expensive models that will only suit hardcore benchmarkers.
First, though, let’s cover some overclocking basics, just in case you’re new to the subject, and need a little introduction.
No Limits
By now, most readers should be fully aware of overclocking but, just in case you’re new to the term, it simply means tuning a piece of hardware to speed it up past its out-of-the-box factory specification. Just like tuning a car’s engine to perform that little bit better, you can tweak various settings of some PC hardware, including CPUs, to run faster and perform better than they normally would. This includes ramping up clock speeds and voltages, amongst other things, in order to get a higher level of performance. The benefits can be great, but there are also downsides that add a whole extra range of concerns to the mix.
The most pressing concern for any overclocker is power and heat. Overclocked hardware will usually use more power, and in turn it’ll generate more heat. This can obviously lead to damage, and to counter it, a good understanding of cooling is required. Often an overclocked PC will require a new, better cooling system, including advanced options like water cooling. However, this is often only needed for extreme overclocking, and small tweaks will usually be safe enough (but not always, overclocking is always an at your own risk experiment).
Most casual overclocking is handled with BIOS/UEFI tweaks built into motherboard firmware, and software tools, many of which are also part of motherboard toolsets. These programs can manipulate such things as the clock multiplier and CPU Vcore, two of the most basic tweaks of any CPU overclock. In fact, it’s a good idea to understand the basic terms beforehand if you plan to get involved. Here are a couple.
Base Clock: Abbreviated as BCKL, as you may guess, this is the base speed of the device that governs the basic clock speed. It’s this that gets multiplied in order to produce the figure for overall clock speed.
CPU multiplier: This is used to multiply the basic clock speed of a device to produce the final clock frequency, and it often the main target for simple overclocking. For example, a CPU with a base clock of 100MHz with a multiplier of 30 would translate to a CPU with a 3.0GHz frequency.
CPU Vcore: This is the voltage supplied to the CPU. This often needs to be adjusted to provide more power to the chip when overclocking, as faster speeds require more power.
There’s a lot more to overclocking, including the processes and many more terms to learn about, but we’re looking at some of the best CPUs for overclocking, not the actual practice here, and these fundamental terms are enough to get you started.
Why?
You may be wondering why you’d even want to overclock, especially if you’ve not tried it yourself before. The simple, most basic reason to do so is to push your CPU harder than normal. All CPUs are released with factory default settings, and run as the manufacturer intended, but this level of performance isn’t set in stone, and most CPUs are capable of running faster than their out of the box speed.
As we mentioned before, this used to be something hardware manufacturers looked upon with disdain, and was a warrantybreaking practice. Over the years, however, manufacturers have grown to adopt overclocking as a viable selling point, and few CPUs now ship without some form of overclocking ability. There are even competitions and world records for the best overclocking results, and a sub-section of the computer industry has grown up around the activity, with specialised hardware and supplies made available to those who want to indulge in their own crusade to get more power from their hardware.
Getting more power out of a CPU is not only beneficial to your PC use, but also your wallet. You can actually save money by buying a slower CPU and overclocking it to run almost, if not just as fast as a more expensive model. It’s also one way to extend the life of an older system, putting off that expensive upgrade for a little longer. For some, overclocking is a simple hobby, and just succeeding in bettering your last benchmark score is the goal.
Whatever the reason, one thing is all-important, and that’s the CPU you’ll use. To get the best results you’ll need not only the skill and know-how, but the right hardware. So, let’s have a look at some of the best CPUs out there for the budding overclocker.
Down The Chippy
There’s no real, uniform way to judge what the best overclockable CPU is, as results vary as wildly as the CPUs out there. Some would argue benchmark scores are the bottom line, whilst others routinely use FPS measurements or the clock frequency. We’ll look at CPUs that have earned their stripes in various ways here, but be aware that overclocking results do vary, so your experience may not be exactly the same. For a simple guideline we’re going to use Passmark’s PC Mark scores to give you a good idea of how these CPUs stack up.
AMD FX-6120 Six-core
Our cheapest entry is the AMD FX-6120. Although probably hard to get hold of now, as it’s an older CPU, it’s still a good basic model that you can find online for a modest price, and, it’s especially useful for beginners to play around on and learn the craft, as it doesn’t hold your hand as much as many new chips, so you need to really learn the basics.
Far from the most powerful chip around, it still commands a decent benchmark score of 6,728 in PassMark’s CPU Mark test, making it a good CPU choice for day-to-day use, and a possible way to beef up an older model system.
Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1GHz
Found online for around £130, this lower-end Core i5 Intel chip can still hit benchmark scores of 6,901, and as it’s an i series CPU, it’s as solid as they come. Its out of the box speed of 3.1GHz is augmented by a turbo speed of 3.3GHz, and it has plenty of overclocking potential.
As with the AMD FX-6120, we’d recommend this, and many other lower-end chips as good practise models to use whilst you’re getting to grips with the overall overclocking process. Or, if you’re simply looking to save money, this is also a good choice, as you can push it enough to really get some good value.
AMD FX-9370 Eight-core
AMD’s FX-9370 eight-core CPU steps up the overclocking score results considerably, coming it at around a 10,429 high, with an average PassMark score of 9,558. The clock speed out of the box for this model is 4.4GHz, and its turbo speed is 4.7GHz.
As it’s around the same price as the Intel Core i5-3350P, there’s no reason to settle for the slower chip when you can have this one, unless your motherboard is Intel, of course – or you simply prefer to use Intel tech in your system. If this isn’t the case, this is a cheap and promising AMD option that overclocking can improve greatly.
Intel Core i7-4790K 4GHz
Returning to the Intel stable, we come now to the Core i7-4790K, which is a much more powerful model – and one of Intel’s hugely popular i7 line of CPUs. With an impressive 12,174 high benchmark score, averaging at around 11,239, it’s a bit of a worker when pushed, and is a great overclocking CPU choice.
It has a basic speed of 4.0GHz, which ramps up to 4.4GHz turbo speed. It has a lot of potential for overclocking, and should only set you back around £230 if you shop around to find the right deal. This means you’ll get a lot of overclockable power for the price, and a chip that’s at home on most decent motherboards.
Intel Core i7-5960X @ 3.00GHzIntel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz
We’ve got two Core i7 chips next that are great examples of Intel’s high end i7 series, and the main reason why this is such a popular option. First we have the £400 i7-5930K; with a starting speed of 3.5GHz and a turbo speed of 3.7GHz, it’s a serious contender, and one that’s managed to hit a high of 15,745 in benchmark tests, along with an average score of 13,687.
The Intel Core i7-5960X, however, is even more powerful. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful CPUs around, certainly in the home PC market. It’s basic speed of 3.0GHz amps up to a turbo of 3.5GHz, but the overclocked benchmark scores really do speak for themselves. The average of this unit racks up an impressive 16,029, whilst the highest mark currently on PassMark’s records is a whopping 19,025.
True, the 5960X costs around twice that of the 5930K, coming in at around £800, but if you’re looking for a good Intel chip to overclock, there simply aren’t many other options, unless you go to the Xeon range...
Intel Xeon E5-2699 v3 2.30GHzIntel Xeon E5-2698 v3 2.30GHzIntel Xeon E5-2697 v3 2.60GHz
Now, whilst these CPUs are obviously more at home in a corporate server room environment, hardcore overclockers are known to play around with these powerful chips nonetheless. When it comes to raw power, and high benchmark scores, they’re pretty much unmatched, as is the amount they cost.
We’ve got three examples here, with the cheapest (relatively speaking) being around £2,110. This is the E5-2697 v3. This 2.6GHz (3.6Ghz turbo) 14-core server CPU averages benchmark scores of around 22,058, which dwarfs the best previous records already. The high score, however, hits 22,449, which is impressive, but is still bettered by the E5-2698 v3. This manages an average of 22,309, and has hit a high of 23,517. This chip itself is a 2.3GHz (3.6GHz turbo), 16-core model.
The winner, however, is undoubtedly the Xeon E5-2699 v3. This 18-core, £3,350 monster weighs in with similar clock speeds, but manages to average benchmark score of 23,808, and holds a record overclocking score of 24,461. That’s some serious computational power. This isn’t simply achieved by normal means, though. Many extremely advanced methods were used here, including the use of liquid nitrogen for cooling, not something your average user really wants to be playing around with.
Of course, these scores (and averages) are based on a global user base, which doesn’t always reflect the highest possible score. Sometimes you have to go that little further and more specialised, such as the team of overclockers used by hardware vendor G.Skill.
Record Breaking
At the fourth annual OC World Record stage at Computex 2015 a team of professional overclockers worked to set various world records using some of the CPUs we’ve mentioned here. It actually pushed the Intel Core i7-5960X to an unbelievable score of 117,700 in 3DMark’s Vantage (Performance) and an 18x Geekbench3 score of 44,156. That event also saw a Xeon E5 2699 clock a Geekbench3 score of 48,209.
Other hardware was also used, and mentioned in thanks by the team, including one of the most important aspects of overclocking, the motherboard. Although we’re focusing on CPUs here, motherboards are also very important, and the right motherboard and firmware can determine your results greatly. As with CPUs, not all motherboards are created equal in this regard, and some are far better than others.
One of them most popular, and downright brilliant motherboards used for overclocking is the Asus Rampage V Extreme, as used by the G.Skill team for many of its records, along with Gigabyte’s X99-SOC Champion. MSI’s X99A Godlike Gaming and X99Xpower AC were also used, along with an EVGA X99 FTW.
A lot of motherboards make good overclocking foundations, with Asus models arguably being amongst the most popular, followed by Gigabyte and MSI. So, along with your new, to-be-overclocked CPU, you should ensure you have a decent motherboard to go with it.
Now, benchmarks aren’t the only scores, as we’ve already mentioned, and clock speeds (or frequencies) are just as important to many. Some concentrate of pushing CPU clock speeds further and further, and there are many records held, which vary depending on the software used to measure the results. A popular source of information here is the utility, CPUZ. Some example world records coming from this measurement include a record 8,794MHz using AMD’s FX-8350, 7,181MHz with an Intel Core i7-4770K. For some, pushing even older chips that to achieve records is how they judge their skills, like a recent result of 8,329MHz using an Intel Core 2 Duo E6550. You can see these records, and more, at bit.ly/1MjmYbP.
More recent records have also been set, as can be seen using the website HWBot (hwbot.org). The current number one here is an 8,722.78MHz AMD FX-8370. This was achieved using liquid nitrogen as a cooler and an Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard. The AMD FX series holds quite a lot of records here, dominating the top 20. Surprisingly, at the time of writing, the top 20 only had two entries, and both of these were for Celeron CPUs (the 352 and 356), not the Core ix series.
Another impressive performer is the record held by Intel’s Xeon E5-2699 v3 on the site. This currently sits at a Geekbench3 score of 70,480. Now, the observant amongst you will then wonder why the aforementioned G.Skill world record with the same CPU and benchmark was only 48,209. That’s because G.Skill used a single E5-2699, whilst the record holder on HWBot (Dhenzjhen) used two CPUs to achieve the score.
Even with the various means and methods used, you can see that a lot of the CPUs used to set records are familiar models, and we included them in our round up here for just that reason. So if you’re thinking of having a go at some serious overclocking, and want to find the perfect CPU for you, now you’ve got a good place to start.