Overclocking The Core i5 2500K With Maximus IV GENE-Z To An Easy 4.4GHz

3. Adjusting Voltages

• Extreme Tweaker – Scroll down to the voltages:
• CPU Voltage – Manual
• CPU Manual Voltage – Type in the value 1.250 or use the + symbol on your keyboard until you see the value 1.250 in the active pane.
• DRAM Voltage – Set the voltage to the recommended voltage as specified on your DDR3 set of ram.

• There is no need to change any other values at this time.
• Press F10 and select yes and enter.
• Allow the motherboard to boot into Operating System. The board might reboot itself a few times; that is normal and nothing to worry about.

Applications

• AI Suite II (available from the product pages): This includes hardware monitor, CPU frequency checking, temperature status and fan monitor.

• Download and install CPU-Z.
• HWMonitor – this is a handy tool that is very useful for monitoring your temperatures.
• CoreTemp – exactly what the name says, this application will monitor your temperature of the motherboard.

Tip: Never have two temperature monitoring applications active at the same time. This will likely result in one or both readings being incorrect and just confuse the issue. Use only one.

4. Stress Testing

Download a stress test of your choice, there are many different variations and each one has their own strengths and weaknesses. I use Prime95 but any one of the following will be suitable such as IntelBurnTest, LinX or OCCT to name a few.

Now that we have overclocked our system a little, currently we are at 4GHz it is important to constantly monitor stability and temperature.

• Open Prime95 and when asked if you wish to use the program as it was originally intended or the stress testing, select the stress testing.
• Now select test from the navigation bar at the top, and run the Torture test.
• You have 4 options I suggest you choose Blend as it stress every aspect of your overclocked system.
• Select 8 threads if you are using a 2600K or 2700K processor or 4 threads if you are using the 2500K processor.
• Open your temperature monitoring application and note the idle temperature. I suggest writing this number down.
• Start Prime95 and let the application run for an hour.

If your system crashes or is unstable you can tell by the following:

• Errors in Prime95 will result in the green icon turning red and stating a thread has been terminated.
• Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD)
• Screen lock-ups
• System Restarts

How to fix instability or crashing:

• Go back into the BIOS and navigate back to the Extreme Tweaker tab
• CPU Manual Voltage –   use the + symbol on your keyboard,  increase the voltage up one or two notches. You should not need more than 1.3V.
• F10 to save your new settings, then repeat the stress test.

During the test you will need to monitor the temperature of your processor.  Depending on your cooling, at 4GHz your CPU should not exceed 55ºC when at 100% load. Typically using a Cooler Master 212+ (mid-range cooler) @ 4.4GHz the maximum temperature is around 60ºC depending on your ambient air temperature (those who live in hotter and humid countries will see a higher temperature).