Basics for Overclocking Ivy Bridge (Gigabyte Z77/i5-3570K)

[vanwinkle]

I waited until Mountain Lion came out, and then built a new Ivy Bridge-based system with a Gigabyte Z77-UP5-TH motherboard and i5-3570K CPU.

The install: Did a fresh install using UniBeast and MultiBeast 5.0.2, installed the following:

DSDT-Free Installation
Realtek Without DSDT ALC898
3rd Party SATA
hnak's AppleIntelE1000e Ethernet drivers
iMac 12,2

Added GraphicsEnabler=No to BIOS, was able to boot off the HD4000 graphics without a hitch.

The hardware: For this install, I used the Corsair H100 self-contained water-cooling system and two Cougar Vortex fans (higher airflow and quieter than the stock Corsair fans).

OCing the system: One thing to be aware of is that Ivy Bridge runs hotter than Sandy Bridge at the same clock speeds. Lots of overclockers have tested this out, and it just seems to be the norm with these chips. However, despite running warm, they're still stable at high speeds, and overclocking is easy. With the Gigabyte UP5 motherboard, this is how easy it was to get to 4.4GHz:

1) Hit F1 in BIOS to turn off that annoying 3D BIOS thing and get a standard menu
2) Go into MIT -> Advanced Frequency Settings, and set all the Turbo Boost settings (1-core through 4-core) to 44
3) Go into MIT -> Advanced Voltage Settings, and set the CPU Vcore to 1.23V
4) Benchmark system with Prime95 for at least 6 hours; if stable, lower Vcore by 0.01V and try again

That's it, that's all you need to do. The chips are safe to run at 1.23V and should run stable at 4.4GHz at that speed. The only reason lowering Vcore matters is to reduce load temps and possibly extend the life of your chip. I brought my system down to 1.21V and it's now running stable here at 4.4GHz. Here's where my temps range, and under what circumstances:

60-65C: If I run Prime95 Torture Test -> SmallFFT (the most demanding CPU torture test I can find)
50-55C: Running Prime95 Torture Test -> Blend, Cinebench CPU, or anything else creating a high system load
30-35C: System at idle, able to throttle down to 1.6GHz

From there, you can stick with 4.4GHz, or you can start increasing the voltage and Turbo multiplier further, now that you have a baseline OC you know your system supports.

Software: Mountain Lion works OOB with Ivy Bridge. You do not need an SSDT, even when overclocking! The CPU will throttle back and forth automatically between 1.6GHz and your Turbo Core settings, based on your system load. To monitor your CPU speed and temperatures, I recommend installing the following from MultiBeast 5.0.2, which are all you need to verify your system is OCing properly:

FakeSMC
FakeSMC Plugins -> Motherboard Plugins
FakeSMC Plugins -> HWMonitor App

You can also install the Radeon or Nvidia plugin to go with your discrete GPU, if you have one.

Once you've done this and rebooted, you'll find a program called "HWMonitor.app" in your Applications folder. Run it, and it will give you a real-time readout that looks like the attachments below. (One screenshot is of the system under idle, the other is the system under load running Prime95 Torture Test -> Small FFT.) If you go to System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items, you can click the + to add an item to your Login Items list, then go to your Applications folder and choose HWMonitor.app. This will cause HWMonitor to load automatically every time you boot up.

 

[vanwinkle]

Disabling EIST: Since some people are discussing the effects of disabling EIST on their OC performance, I ran some quick tests. Scores are Geekbench 64-bit, using an i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz with 16GB RAM.

EIST enabled: 13045
EIST disabled: 13096

The gap here is within the margin of error; disabling EIST makes no practical difference in terms of performance. However, it does affect system performance in another crucial way: The system will no longer throttle down below 4.4GHz at idle. With EIST enabled, ML throttles the cores down to 1.6GHz automatically to save power when idle. This is confirmed using HWMonitor.app.

With the Gigabyte Z77 boards, at least, it's better to leave EIST "enabled".

 

[Nikki51]

Well, it's far better to let EIST enable on EVERY motherboard.

 

[lajos]

Please don't get me wrong, but I don't understand why you would get a water cooling tower, extra fans to overclock this processor for $150, when for $80 extra you could've gotten the i7 3770 that is faster than your overclocked system with twice as many logical cores?

 

[GabeDamien]

Please don't get me wrong, but I don't understand why you would get a water cooling tower, extra fans to overclock this processor for $150, when for $80 extra you could've gotten the i7 3770 that is faster than your overclocked system with twice as many logical cores?

The 3770K and 3570K have only four differences.
1. 3770K has hyperthreading (8 logical cores on 4 physical cores, vs. 4 logical cores on 4 physical cores).
2. 3770K has 8MB L3 cache (over 6MB).
3. 3770K is 100MHz faster at stock (3.5 vs 3.4 GHz).
4. 3770K is $100 more expensive (~$330 vs ~$230, depending where you buy it).

Now, here's the kicker:
1. Hyperthreading: only matters for certain rare programs, and for those programs, only confers an average of about 15% benefit. Programs that can use more than four cores include certain video software, 3D rendering software, compression software, and Photoshop CS6. Most games do not benefit at all. Most normal software does not benefit at all. Even those programs that are supposed to benefit don't, in fact, always benefit, or do so only slightly. Meanwhile, HT decreases stability and increases heat during overclocking. It can even *hurt* (by a tiny amount) performance in certain games, if that's your thing. If turning off HT allows a higher OC, then it may very well be that the low-threaded normal computing benefit from the higher OC significantly outweighs the rarer high-threaded performance benefit from HT. And keep in mind that heat = noise; if you're trying to keep to low fan speeds, HT doesn't offer very much performance benefit compared to the noise cost.

2. L3 Cache: the bigger cache is probably ONLY helpful for hyperthreading. In normal use cases, it simply makes no difference. This has been confirmed with an i7 with HT turned off vs an i5 processor, both at the same clock, running numerous benchmarks. We're talking about a <1% difference in performance. Keep in mind that the L2 and L1 cache sizes are still the same; in normal computing, the 6MB L3 cache of an i5 simply doesn't seem to bottleneck very much if at all.

3. Stock speeds: irrelevant if you plan to overclock. In fact, indications are that both are just as overclockable, and indeed the 3570K may very well overclock BETTER, even if HT is turned off on the 3770K. It's mostly luck of the draw though. There is an argument that 3570K dies are not binned as tightly as 3770K dies. That's only hearsay though, there is no evidence to that effect. Basically they should be treated as exactly the same.

4. Cost: this is the real issue. Are you willing to pay ~45% more for your processor, for a feature set that in the majority of cases is irrelevant, and even when it is relevant, only confers a marginal benefit? If you KNOW you will be performing tasks that can use more than four cores, then it makes slightly more sense, but it is still one of the absolute worse price-performance upgrades possible; spending that $100 on a better GPU may very well give SUBSTANTIALLY more benefit, or it can go to a bigger SSD, better display, etc.

The choice between a 3770K and 3570K is not a simple one. It's one that I myself am still struggling with, in fact. In any case, it is not simply a case of "3770K is better," not when the same $100 can be applied in ways that result in much more dramatic performance improvements.

 

[rheritahiana]

Thank you for that explanation GabeDamien

And thank you as well Vanwinkle, your guide is the only one that made
my 3570 OC 4.5Ghz recognized by Mountain Lion.

Now it's throttling at x16,x17, x18, x19, x20 and x45 (i don't know how to test all the states
but it's ok for me now).

 

[BRisher777]

Hello,

I have basically the same setup and have been running my new system as stock for the past week to make sure everything is working like it should.

I would like to overclock my i5 and was wondering if there were any additional options in the BIOS that you need to mess with for this overclock, aside from the voltage and cpu multiplier. I ask because I've been looking into overclocking quite a bit before I jump in, and have found that some people are enabling\disabling certain settings in their BIOS, but I haven't found a how-to for this specific mobo.

My setup is:

i5-3570k - 212 evo in push\pull
GIGABYTE

GA-Z77X-UP5-TH
(also, running dual-boot from a SSD for Windows 7, not sure if this would make a difference for BIOS settings)

Any help would really be appreciated. I don't want to bork something up by not fully understanding what I'm getting into.

Thank you! ​

 

[Jjjmovmm]

I've got same setup as this. After installing the FakeSMC Plugins -> Motherboard Plugins
FakeSMC Plugins -> HWMonitor App, I reboot and get a KP. Is this because I didn't select FakeSMC.kext before those two? The Non-DSDT install says that it is installed by selecting non-dsdt install - so i did not select the first, but did the other 2. I could not recover and had to reinstall from scratch the whole system. I am scared to try and install the HW monitoring tools again.

Also, I have a Hyper 212 Plus with one fan. If I add a second fan for push pull, can I at least get my i3570k to 4.5MHz or do I need the water cooler setup?

Thanks

I waited until Mountain Lion came out, and then built a new Ivy Bridge-based system with a Gigabyte Z77-UP5-TH motherboard and i5-3570K CPU.

The install: Did a fresh install using UniBeast and MultiBeast 5.0.2, installed the following:

DSDT-Free Installation
Realtek Without DSDT ALC898
3rd Party SATA
hnak's AppleIntelE1000e Ethernet drivers
iMac 12,2

Added GraphicsEnabler=No to BIOS, was able to boot off the HD4000 graphics without a hitch.

The hardware: For this install, I used the Corsair H100 self-contained water-cooling system and two Cougar Vortex fans (higher airflow and quieter than the stock Corsair fans).

OCing the system: One thing to be aware of is that Ivy Bridge runs hotter than Sandy Bridge at the same clock speeds. Lots of overclockers have tested this out, and it just seems to be the norm with these chips. However, despite running warm, they're still stable at high speeds, and overclocking is easy. With the Gigabyte UP5 motherboard, this is how easy it was to get to 4.4GHz:

1) Hit F1 in BIOS to turn off that annoying 3D BIOS thing and get a standard menu
2) Go into MIT -> Advanced Frequency Settings, and set all the Turbo Boost settings (1-core through 4-core) to 44
3) Go into MIT -> Advanced Voltage Settings, and set the CPU Vcore to 1.23V
4) Benchmark system with Prime95 for at least 6 hours; if stable, lower Vcore by 0.01V and try again

That's it, that's all you need to do. The chips are safe to run at 1.23V and should run stable at 4.4GHz at that speed. The only reason lowering Vcore matters is to reduce load temps and possibly extend the life of your chip. I brought my system down to 1.21V and it's now running stable here at 4.4GHz. Here's where my temps range, and under what circumstances:

60-65C: If I run Prime95 Torture Test -> SmallFFT (the most demanding CPU torture test I can find)
50-55C: Running Prime95 Torture Test -> Blend, Cinebench CPU, or anything else creating a high system load
30-35C: System at idle, able to throttle down to 1.6GHz

From there, you can stick with 4.4GHz, or you can start increasing the voltage and Turbo multiplier further, now that you have a baseline OC you know your system supports.

Software: Mountain Lion works OOB with Ivy Bridge. You do not need an SSDT, even when overclocking! The CPU will throttle back and forth automatically between 1.6GHz and your Turbo Core settings, based on your system load. To monitor your CPU speed and temperatures, I recommend installing the following from MultiBeast 5.0.2, which are all you need to verify your system is OCing properly:

FakeSMC
FakeSMC Plugins -> Motherboard Plugins
FakeSMC Plugins -> HWMonitor App

You can also install the Radeon or Nvidia plugin to go with your discrete GPU, if you have one.

Once you've done this and rebooted, you'll find a program called "HWMonitor.app" in your Applications folder. Run it, and it will give you a real-time readout that looks like the attachments below. (One screenshot is of the system under idle, the other is the system under load running Prime95 Torture Test -> Small FFT.) If you go to System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items, you can click the + to add an item to your Login Items list, then go to your Applications folder and choose HWMonitor.app. This will cause HWMonitor to load automatically every time you boot up.

 

[cnaught]

I have the GA-Z77-DS3H + i5-3570k CPU but get kernel panic on boot after installing:
FakeSMC
FakeSMC Plugins -> Motherboard Plugins
FakeSMC Plugins -> HWMonitor App

Is there any way to revert the changes from MB 5.0.2?

EDIT: Following advice from another thread, I had to boot into safe mode (-x) and remove the following kext:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/FakeSMC.kext/Contents/Plugins/OEMsmbios.kext
Re-ran Kext Utility to flush caches, permissions, etc.

Now HWMonitor works great on ML 10.8.2!

 

[MacBook11]

EDIT: Following advice from another thread, I had to boot into safe mode (-x) and remove the following kext:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/FakeSMC.kext/Contents/Plugins/OEMsmbios.kext
Re-ran Kext Utility to flush caches, permissions, etc.

Now HWMonitor works great on ML 10.8.2!

Thank you! Finally I can check my temps and get ready for OCing!