New'ish system Build

[ZenZimZaliben]

I just landed a working and lightly used i7 6700k, Gigabyte z170x-ud5 TH mobo, 32GB DDR4 3000MHZ. These components will be replacing my very aged but working still at 5GHZ - i7 2700k.

So my questions are:
Would you spend the money on a new motherboard z270? (I have read the z270 has better BCLK tuning)
Would you buy higher freq ram knowing that you will be overclocking this because it is supported by a pretty nice custom waterloop.

I will be purchasing a Samsung EVO 960 PRO 512GB m.2 sata.

What would you do?

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

I guess a board would be nice if you are looking to have fun with it. Maybe you can land a nice deal on one as the Coffee Lake parts roll out and some people move up to Z370

 

[ASOT]

Ryzen 1600/1700 B350 or X370 memory upon 3000 is great more is minimal impact ..

Sorry i miss that

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Ryzen 1600/1700 B350 or X370 memory upon 3000 is great more is minimal impact ..

Wut?

 

[sneekypeet]

Would you spend the money on a new motherboard z270? (I have read the z270 has better BCLK tuning)
Would you buy higher freq ram knowing that you will be overclocking this because it is supported by a pretty nice custom waterloop.

Try things as they are. Give that CPU the beans on the Z170 first. I can't see the CPU doing that much more on a 270 over the 170. You are going to find the near max OC on either board TBH.
As for the RAM, you do not say what it is, but I would say clock what you got if you "want" more speed. Just remember, 3000-3200 is the sweet spot. Unless running synthetic benches for the last point, more speed isn't going to help out that much to be worth the investment.

If things pan out poorly, or you find issues with something, then by all means throw money at it if you want, but I would go with what you have for now.

 

[Toothless]

Ryzen 1600/1700 B350 or X370 memory upon 3000 is great more is minimal impact ..

Dude, read, he already got the parts.

As for the board, I'd stay with the current one and try it out. Worst case sell it and get the 270.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Try things as they are. Give that CPU the beans on the Z170 first. I can't see the CPU doing that much more on a 270 over the 170. You are going to find the near max OC on either board TBH.
As for the RAM, you do not say what it is, but I would say clock what you got if you "want" more speed. Just remember, 3000-3200 is the sweet spot. Unless running synthetic benches for the last point, more speed isn't going to help out that much to be worth the investment.

If things pan out poorly, or you find issues with something, then by all means throw money at it if you want, but I would go with what you have for now.

I had tested the 6700k at 4.8ghz on air (Noctua ND14) with no problem and very little voltage increase so I'm very hopeful for 5ghz on water. Was only considering the z270 because BLCK is a direct way to increase memory without multiplier changes. I haven't really got into the DDR4 OC'ing yet so wasn't sure how much real-world improvement there was going from 3000Mhz to say 4000Mhz.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Not sure if you can expect the memory to really run much faster through pushing the BCLK... But I have no experience of OCing RAM...

 

[sneekypeet]

I haven't really got into the DDR4 OC'ing yet so wasn't sure how much real-world improvement there was going from 3000Mhz to say 4000Mhz.

Look at review charts. Most show minimal gains even in synthetics. Also I found that BLCK only gives very fine tuning. In my experience, you will get nearly to the max using RAM straps (IE 3200/3333/3400 and so on).

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Not sure if you can expect the memory to really run much faster through pushing the BCLK... But I have no experience of OCing RAM...

BCLK harkens back to the old days of overclocking where you adjusted FSB on mobo instead of integrated in CPU. BCLK is the Base Clock for nearly every component so if you adjust it 10mhz everything goes up (BCLK x Multiplier). It allows you extra ability to OC. 35x100 = 3500Mhz or 35x110 = 3850MHZ. So if you are trying to really dial in your OC that is a great method. Like say you can't jump to the next cpu multi with out tons of heat/volts/instability...lower to the previous multiplier and increase BCLK. Memory works the same way. Memory is at a ratio off BCLK.

 

[Toothless]

Every time I mess with the blck my desktop shows images of my ex's. Scares me enough that I don't mess with it.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

BCLK harkens back to the old days of overclocking where you adjusted FSB on mobo instead of integrated in CPU. BCLK is the Base Clock for nearly every component so if you adjust it 10mhz everything goes up (BCLK x Multiplier). It allows you extra ability to OC. 35x100 = 3500Mhz or 35x110 = 3850MHZ. So if you are trying to really dial in your OC that is a great method. Like say you can't jump to the next cpu multi with out tons of heat/volts/instability...lower to the previous multiplier and increase BCLK. Memory works the same way. Memory is at a ratio off BCLK.

You misunderstand, I do know how base and system bus clocks work. I meant that I doubt most memory kits will go far over their rated clocks through BCLK, but I haven't spent much effort OCing RAM so I am not shure whether that's true or not.

Now that you mention old hardware, I actually had to jump my memory multi down when I was OCing an E7200 to over 4GHz using the bus clock... But those were generic DDR2 kits, maybe you will have better luck with modern kits...

 

[Shambles1980]

generally you will be better off tightening the timings on ram than pushing the mhz up..
most (actually i think all_ memory profiles are just over clocks of a base ram standard any way..

but 200mhz with a latency of 2mhz is the same effective speed as 400mhz ram with a latency of 4ms
So tighten up the timings as much as you can is the best thing to do. If you can tighten up the timings and get a few extra mhz out of the ram then that's good too.

but a base clock. change can be effective at speeding up the entire system provided you can unlock the changes from things like pci-e.

if you raise your base clock, then change the ram ratio (if thats at all possible these days) so you end up with the same or slightly higer ram frequency with a higher bclk then tighten up the ram timings that can make a diference.you can even lower the cpu multi if needed to get the cpu overclocked and stable but with a faster base clock)

But what you gain with modern tech speeds well it really boils down to bench mark numbers probably not even noticeable in day to day use or even gaming..

you really need to go back to core 2 quads to get any significant improvements "that you dont need a bench mark to see the difference" from all the small tweaks you can make.

Still. one of the best parts about owning a pc is doing all those tweaks and getting the system 100% stable running at its absolute maximum ability. even if all you use it for after that is you tube.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

I am excited for the build. Very curious what a newer CPU is actually going to yield me in games. Will do some benches for comparison. I am betting even with the newer hardware, since I am still running my 980ti it will end up being maybe 10% - 15% faster than my current ancient system.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

About what I expected. The system is marginally faster than my old i7 2700k. I do like a lot of the new board features though. M.2 NVME Sata is pretty awesome sauce! I am very disappointed with the 6700k Thermals...looking into a delid. I can only hit 4.7Ghz on the OC at 4.8Ghz temps spike into the 80's. The chip has plenty more to give, I think, but thermals are holding it way back. I ran a few benchmarks and going from an i7 2700k @ 4.8 to 6700k @ 4.7Ghz is about 15% faster. I will say it is much smoother in game play, no stuttering or at least it seems much more fluid. A good upgrade for the price of nvme sata and ddr4. So I am either going to delid, shim it and run naked, or maybe look into replacing TIM and making sure all glue is removed to lower IHS mount.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Got my Liquid Metal Ultra today. Time to delid.

 

[phanbuey]

pics or it didn't happen

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

LOL this was so freaking easy. Game on your system for a while or benchmark it to get the chip nice and warm. Immediately take cpu out. It literally took me about 10 minutes to remove, clean glue, apply CLU, Silicon and back in the socket.

Now to start benching and pushing it. Currently sitting at 4.8Ghz @ 1.41v.

Also have to make sure IHS doesn't touch PCB anymore, which if you take the glue off all the way it won't.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Seeing around a 15C+ drop at 4.8Ghz in benching...what a huge difference. I wasn't even stable at 4.8 prior to delid now it is rock solid and Max temps maintained in the high 60's. Temps also seem to be way more balanced across all cores. I remember core #3 was always about 5C higher than the others, now they are within a few C of each other. I tried for 5Ghz but unfortunately I am at a voltage wall. 4.9Ghz is benchable but at 1.45V but when all 4 Cores are activated my voltage spikes to around 1.48 which I feel is to high for 24/7 clock.

I am pretty sure with more tweeking I can get 4.9 stable. Currently I am just throwing more Vcore at it and while that works there are other voltages I can adjust with a little more finesse and hopefully fix that. The Maximus VIII has a ton of voltage settings so that will be my weekend project.

Also all of my Overclocking has just been by raising the CPU Multi. I will need to start playing with the BCLK now.