I picked up a Sandy Bridge 2500K cheap from a mate a while back and it's been plodding along nicely at stock settings on a H61 motherboard, I would like to move this over to become my main machine with a nice healthy overclock. I've looked through various guides but most of them are using the P67 which isnt listed on most retail websites now. Whats the best current chipset on a budget board that will allow me to bump up the multiplyers?
Pick up a Z68 motherboard, most will clock great with a sandy. They tend to be cheaper 2nd hand than the Z77 stuff and they clock just as well.
My Asus P8Z68V-GEN3 has proven to be a good board. Stable at 4.9ghz with my i5 2500k. http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68VGEN3/
I have used an Asrock Pro3 mobo, an Asus P8P67 and a Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 with my 2500k and 2600k. Virtually no differences between them all in what clocks could be achieved when you are trying for a high-but-stable daily clock. All managed 4.7-4.8Ghz without issue. The only difference I have seen so far is when attempting stupid clocks, the P8P67 would ramp the 2500k up to 5.7Ghz on air, the rest would only manage 5Ghz. If all you need is a nice wee boost that is 24x7 stable, pretty much any board will do.
Really anything from Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and most of ASRock's stuff is good. Gone are the days with massive differences in performance between mobos, now it's about what features you want/need.
Stable, very high voltage, unsafe temperature, using a Copper T.R.U.E with a pair of AFC1212DE coolers going full tilt. I have got very very lucky with this chip. It may hit as high as 6.3 if I wanted to go exotic with the cooling, but sadly no experience in doing this.
I'm the opposite. I ALWAYS end up with average processors. I can't get stable at 5ghz with my 2500k so I'm stuck at a pathetic 4.9ghz
It is just down to luck mostly, I only bought one processor and it was a good one. Had some spare time in winter and nothing else to do so why not blow up a processor. Also helps that the ambient air temp was -10 at the time, and that the fans push almost 200cfm of air through a solid copper cooler.
-10c air is the best. I have to stop leaving my fan-assisted freezer door open though. I think my mobo was doing 4.2ghz on auto. My 2500k isn't a low voltage overclocker either. It has to go high-ish for 4.9 but I use offset so it drops low at idle. I could try 5ghz again since the bios has been improved now but I suspect it's the processor limit at 4.9.
I'll try OC'ing with the Maximus IV Extreme-Z i'll be getting back soon. I'll probably hit about 4.6 hopefully. 4.4Ghz at 1.28v on offset on a paltry AsRock board though isn't too bad.
