Corsair Blog - Overclocking

Towards the end of May this year we launched our Dominator® GT CMGTX7 DDR3 memory upgrade kit. This kit consists of two 4GB memory modules for a total of 8GB of memory. They are rated at 2400MHz 9-11-10-30, which make it the fastest 8GB production DDR3 memory kit available. The last time I overclocked high density modules was when I was testing the 16GB Vengeance kit, which overclocked to 1921.8MHz. You can read more about my earlier Vengeance overclocking run on the Corsair Blog. Since I love pushing components to their limits I wanted to see what the new Dominator GT kit could do.

I recently did some testing with our new Hydro Series™ H60 high performance liquid CPU cooler. The H60 comes with a stock fan rated at 1700 RPM, which is designed to deliver good static pressure against the radiator without excessively high RPMs, and the accompanying noise levels. Of course, like any enthusiast I decided to test the H60's performance.

My current test system consists of an EVGA® 759 Classified motherboard, an Intel® Core™ i7 920 D0 stepping CPU, and Corsair Dominator® GT 2000C7 DDR3 memory. I did a bit of quick tweaking and managed a stable overclock of 189 x 20 on the CPU for a CPU frequency of 3.770GHz. The memory clocked in at 942MHz, 7-8-7-24 1T timings. The actual voltages under load, measured with a DMM, varied a bit from what was set in the BIOS. Measured, the CPU Vcore was 1.33v, Vdimm was 1.65v, and CPU VTT was 1.41v. The CPU did not respond well to voltage increases after this point and this was the maximum stable overclock using Prime95 over 24 hours.

If you have ever looked at the top 3DMark® scores or know a little about extreme overclocking, you've probably seen the name Vince “K|ngP|n” Lucido. Recently Vince teamed up with fellow overclocker and mad scientist Illya “TiN” Tsemenko to break some world records.

Four highly modified NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580 with K|ngP|n cooling Tek 9 LN2 pots installed

The new 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processor family, aka Sandy Bridge, architecture has changed the way you overclock your processor. With the first ceneration of Core processors you were able to raise the base clock to overclock. If you had one of the Extreme or K series CPUs with the unlocked multipliers, you could also raise the multiple to overclock. This meant that unless your motherboard did not support overclocking, you would be able to overclock your processor.

Although you can still overclock the 2^nd generation Intel Core processors by raising the base clock you will only be able to adjust the base clock by 7-8%. This means in order to overclock the 2^nd generation Intel Core processors to their limit, you need to have a processor with an unlocked multiplier. The unlocked processors are denoted by the K at the end of the processor model, such as the Intel Core i7-2600K. If you do not have a K series CPU you will be limited as to how far you can overclock. With the Core i5 and Core i7 non K series CPUs you will only be able to raise the multiplier by 4 and the base clock by 7-8%.

Round two of the ASUS® ROG Experience Overclocking contest was held during Blizzcon 2010 at Anaheim Convention Center. Two teams battled it out on October 22nd and 23^rd during Blizzcon at the ASUS booth. Along with the overclocking contest, all of the attendees were able to attend an overclocking workshop on the other side of the booth.

The guys over at Xtreme Systems are all about pushing the limits of what hardware can do. Not only getting hardware to go faster, but getting it colder. Case in point....

The end result? Their 2000C7 Dominator™ GT DDR3 overclocked to a mind-numbing 2600MHz! Click here to see the CPU-Z screenshots and more.

Since late 2003 and the announcement of the Intel® Pentium® 4 EE, having an unlocked processor multiplier used to mean shelling out almost $1,000 USD. While Intel previously launched an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E6500K processor that was unlocked it was not widely available. However, the new Intel Core™ i5 655K and Intel Core i7 875K processors, will be widely available as part of the “K” series of unlocked processor. Two benefits of having an unlocked multiplier include the fine tuning frequencies and higher overclock potential, which can really be seen when using extreme cooling.

Romanian overclocker Matei Mihatoiu, aka “matose” of the Lab501 overclocking and review website has reached some incredible memory frequencies using the Corsair Dominator GTX1 DDR3 memory. In his initial testing using only air cooling on the CPU and memory controller, matose was able to achieve benchmark stability at an impressive 2666MHz, which he validated at the CPU-Z website. This is far above the normal rated speed for these modules of 2400MHz.

Apparently, 2666MHz was not fast enough for matose. Not satisfied with mere air cooling, matose then escalated his efforts for speed and used dry ice, or DICE, in his cooling effort to take his CPU and memory controller temperatures far below the freezing point. The result was an astounding benchmark stable and CPU-Z validated 2906MHz.

In April of 2010, we posted here on the Corsair blog that Romanian overclocker “matose” aka Matei Mihatoiu had achieved a very special memory frequency using our Dominator® GT CMGGTX1 modules. See that blog post here: Romanian Overclocker “matose” Pushes Corsair Dominator® GT CMGTX1 DDR3 Memory Modules to Extreme Speeds.

We also predicted that matose and his cohorts at Lab501 would continue to strive for even higher memory frequencies and they did not disappoint! Recently they used our latest and greatest Dominator GT memory, the CMGTX6, and broke the 3GHz barrier in dual channel at the extraordinary low latencies of 8-11-8-31. And, as in the previous post, it was no suicide run and he was able to run the operating system and record the results pictured below.

According to our research of the available posted benchmark records, this is the highest dual channel frequency ever recorded at CAS8. This is an incredible accomplishment for matose and you can follow his continued exploits at the Xtreme Systems forums. We will certainly be following along and we applaud matose for his efforts and this achievement.

The Corsair Dominator GT CMGTX6 modules are specially screened, single sided memory tailored specifically for this type of overclocking. As you can see, matose has the skills and equipment to push it far beyond our specifications as he explores the extreme outer limits of his hardware. If he is able to continue to push the BClock on his CPU, there is no telling just how far he can go with the Dominator GT CMGTX6, and we can't wait to find out! Stay tuned...

Sorta slow week last week but if you’re looking for more 800D coverage, there’s plenty!

The guys at com.puter.tv have a product preview on the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D full tower case in this video:

AtomicPC is an enthusiast site based in Sydney, Australia and they’ve got a photo gallery up on their site showing some of the finer details of the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D here. They had the following to say when they gave their impression:

“Called the 800D, their first case slots into their Obsidian Series which as far as can be determined just seems to mean “more black than batman at night”, with similar amounts of badass seeping out of every sharp angular line and smooth curve.”

And finally, as most of you know, we’re all over enthusiasts forums getting your excellent feedback and we’ll be posting some of the cool stuff we find on here for you guys to check out. This week, we found a pretty extreme example of what people are doing with our Dominator GT DDR3 memory modules at XtremeSystems.org