Please help overclocking on Z97-E/USB3.1

[Bycote]

Hail! I recently purchased this ASUS motherboard and a Pentium G3258 and I would obviously like to overclock this CPU to the upper 3 GHz range (~3.7-3.8) as well as overclock my RAM to DDR3 1600 speeds.

I thought this would be extremely simple as I've been overclocking since the Pentium D 805, but I just can't figure out how to do it with this motherboard.

In the BIOS, I'm in Advanced mode, Ai Tweaker section. I've turned the Ai Overclock Tuner to Manual mode, but the BCLCK Frequency setting remains locked! The CPU Core Ratio Limit setting remains locked! In other words, the Manual setting appears to have absolutely NO manual settings for overclocking. What's up with this?

Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to update my BIOS? Do I need to return this motherboard and buy a new one?

Thank you for any help.

[Bycote]

I found the answer on another forum here:

https://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20140622021046559&board_id=1&model=Z97-DELUXE&page=1&SLangua...

[Nate152]

Hello Bycote welcome to the ROG forum.

The G3258 is an unlocked cpu.

Try resetting the bios to defaults (F5), then set the ai overclock tuner to manual again and sync all cores. That's all you should need to do to change the cpu core ratio.

If it's not letting you change the cpu core ratio try updating the bios.

[Bycote]

OK, so I would like to know if I am doing this correctly. 🙂

Following guides like that I previously linked to, I am doing the following:

Ai Overclock Tuner -> XMP
CPU Core Ratio -> Sync all cores
CPU Core Ratio Limit -> 40
Save and exit BIOS

When I boot into Windows and open CPU-Z, it shows the following for my CPU:



It also shows that my DDR3 1600 RAM is running at 800 MHz. I expected to see my RAM speed at 1600 MHz and CPU at 4.0 GHz.

Under load, CPU-Z does show my CPU frequency increase up to 4.0 GHz, but the RAM speed remains at 800 MHz. What's up with that?

Can anyone please explain this to me?

[Nate152]

Hello Bycote

Yes you're doing it right, are you setting the cpu core voltage manually or do you have it on auto? It's best to set it manually and find the lowest voltage. With the cpu core voltage set to auto your cpu is getting over volted some.

What are your temps at 4.0GHz?

Your ram is running at 1600MHz, DDR is double data rate so double what cpu-z is showing and you have 1600MHz.

Looking good !