New system arrived today/overclocked correctly?

hey man I actually had the same question regarding this mine arrived yesterday and I am new to this also. So how exactly does the overclock work mines is stage one like yours. How do you know if your cpu is overclocking ?

Originally posted by bprat22 The overclock kicks in under load, like in gaming for example. Download and run CPUZ , leave it open, run a game and the overclock will show in the lower left corner of CPUZ in mhz, so a stage 1 overclock might read4100mhz for a 4.1 ghz overclock. The lower reads are the CPU at idle .    Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. I was just confused because, as I mentioned, my previous rig DOES list the overclock speed on the System screen and under Task Manager even while the CPU is idle, while the new PC lists 3.3GHz as the "maximum" clock speed, even though that is lower than the factory default clock speed of 3.6GHz for the 6850K.

I see what you mean about CPU-Z, but that seems to show the current clock speed at the time rather than what the maximum is, which Windows is showing as 3.3GHz.

Edited by Atrus00 - 15 Dec 2016 at 10:56am

So the Intel Core i7 6850k has a base clock speed of 3.6Ghz with a max Turbo boost of 3.8Ghz.

As bprat said, you'll want to run CPU Z on like a second monitor then run either a game or download a program like Cinebench (which is a CPU benchmarking program). A game might not push it to it's new max overclocked setting (depending on the game). Cinebench will.

What I like to do on my personal CPU is the following:

Go to Power Options - Click Change Plan Settings next to the power option that is selected.

Change Advanced Power Settings

Processor Power Management > Minimum Processor State > Set to 5%

Maximum Processor State > Set to 100%

What this will do for you is at complete Idle, your cpu will drop as low as 5% of it's max speed/power. Then under load it'll go as high as 100% (which is what your overclock is set to... so if your OC is 4.4Ghz, then 100% means it's allowed to hit 4.4ghz).

I only bring this up because it'll keep your cpu power draw down, keep it cooler under low loads, but it will also be reporting as running at like 1Ghz or less when you're literally doing nothing. I just don't want you to fear something is wrong when you see it sitting at such a low clock speed.

This will also extend the life of your CPU. Now DS may have already done this for you, I'm not sure.. but it's what I'd do.

So recap:

Download CPU-Z

Run CPU-Z while you have a game loaded or while you run Cinebench to verify it's hitting it's OC.

Go into Power options and adjust your min and max settings (usually max will always be 100%, but sometimes min is 100%).

WHich, before I forget... I don't know why I didn't think of this before. If you go straight to your power settings and set your min to 100% also... it'll go to whatever it's overclocked too and stay there. Which is another way to verify the current OC clock speed without running multiple programs (a nice easy way to verify if you only have one monitor).


Sorry, I ramble. Enjoy!

There's always a lot of posts of recent customers not sure if DS overclocked and wish to check.    Double checking others work is always a good thing, but in my years here, I can't remember one time DS forgot the ocerclock.   It can reset in Bios, however, for numerous reasons, but DS does store it in Bios for reloading.

Jut an FYI.   

Originally posted by pharmx Is there not a simple way to check what the system is overclocked to in Windows?

No reliable way that I know.   CPUZ is a simple check and recommended by pretty much everyone, tech sites and all.