Hi, and welcome
All-in-one water cooling should work great with SB-E and their soldered lids. I could even get to 4.6GHz with a 3960X on air cooling. I normally boot the 3960X under water to 5.0GHz
Here is one technique:
Start with everything set to AUTO - clear CMOS is a great way to get there. In BIOS, set core multiplier to 40 and try to boot. The BIOS should make good selections for the various voltages. Vccsa and Vtt are important. Use a monitor program like Aida64 to read them and take notes. Step the core multiplier up - manually in BIOS - let the board boot again and note the voltages. See what automatic voltages work. Mine went all the way up to 5.0GHz, booting with more volts at each step. The voltages you note make great starting points for small adjustments - higher if the CPU needs more stability or lower to get a more power efficient OC.
Look in the Guides section of the ROG site. There are a few guides on overclocking SandyBridges with the R4E. Those guides can fill in points about other voltages and BIOS settings.
BIOS 4901 is oriented to Ivy Bridge - the latest and greatest in Extreme Edition CPU that can be used with the R4E. Some have suggested using BIOS numbered in the 3xxx range, before BIOS was updated for IB-E. I use 4901.
I have found the SB-E to be as limited in DRAM speed as the lore has said. 1600 and 1866 are good speeds and you should be able to overclock the cores with either of those DRAM speeds.
What is a safe voltage? Here are some of the settings that my AUTO sequence produced: 4.4GHz at 1.38Vcore, 4.6 at 1.42Vcore, 4.8 at 1.47Vcore and 5.0GHz at 1.53Vcore. All of those needed some manual adjustment. I had to raise Vcore to 1.58V to get good stability in benchmarks at 5GHz.
That said, I have noticed some degradation with Vcore that high. The extra Vcore needed for stability has increased over time. If you're after a relatively long CPU life, I would suggest keeping Vcore below 1.5 and keeping temperatures below 70C. Really watch those temperatures.
Jeff
All-in-one water cooling should work great with SB-E and their soldered lids. I could even get to 4.6GHz with a 3960X on air cooling. I normally boot the 3960X under water to 5.0GHz
Here is one technique:
Start with everything set to AUTO - clear CMOS is a great way to get there. In BIOS, set core multiplier to 40 and try to boot. The BIOS should make good selections for the various voltages. Vccsa and Vtt are important. Use a monitor program like Aida64 to read them and take notes. Step the core multiplier up - manually in BIOS - let the board boot again and note the voltages. See what automatic voltages work. Mine went all the way up to 5.0GHz, booting with more volts at each step. The voltages you note make great starting points for small adjustments - higher if the CPU needs more stability or lower to get a more power efficient OC.
Look in the Guides section of the ROG site. There are a few guides on overclocking SandyBridges with the R4E. Those guides can fill in points about other voltages and BIOS settings.
BIOS 4901 is oriented to Ivy Bridge - the latest and greatest in Extreme Edition CPU that can be used with the R4E. Some have suggested using BIOS numbered in the 3xxx range, before BIOS was updated for IB-E. I use 4901.
I have found the SB-E to be as limited in DRAM speed as the lore has said. 1600 and 1866 are good speeds and you should be able to overclock the cores with either of those DRAM speeds.
What is a safe voltage? Here are some of the settings that my AUTO sequence produced: 4.4GHz at 1.38Vcore, 4.6 at 1.42Vcore, 4.8 at 1.47Vcore and 5.0GHz at 1.53Vcore. All of those needed some manual adjustment. I had to raise Vcore to 1.58V to get good stability in benchmarks at 5GHz.
That said, I have noticed some degradation with Vcore that high. The extra Vcore needed for stability has increased over time. If you're after a relatively long CPU life, I would suggest keeping Vcore below 1.5 and keeping temperatures below 70C. Really watch those temperatures.
Jeff
