My quest to 5GHz on i7 2600K, should I continue?

I would be surprised if the H100 was able to keep it at those voltages. What are ur temps?

If you're not going to run it 24/7 i would do it (my opinion ofcourse)

I tried it with my Venomous-X cooler and it was fun to do. Tough i needed to put it on 1.52 vcore and it still failed within an hour of testing. 1.52 is alot tough and i wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

Do it.

I've been running 1.48v for quite some time without problems.

With the h100 however I was getting 85c-87c in Prime95 so I returned it and reinstalled my Trusty D-14 (80-82c), seems to handle high voltage better on my chip. Make sure to drop CPU PLL to about 1.7v (+/- 0.5v) as in SOME cases this makes for lower vcore required for stability and/or slightly cooler temps. My 2500k likes 1.6v CPU PLL and allows me to run vcore 1.476v as opposed to 1.488v.

With the H100 U can optimize it for better temps, have it suck air from outside the case and the fans in push mode (there was a review showing 3c difference in push vs pull). Don't worry about having too much positive pressure, just run that during the stress test as everyday temps will be rouughly 15c to 20c lower so u can switch back after. Just keep temps as low as possible during prime95 cause heat + high volts degrades your CPU much faster. I should know, my GF turned on my PC for 5 minutes without a heatsink (she didn't know) as I used to be 5Ghz stable with 1.45v for 8 months, and after the INCIDENT I need 1.48v. LOL Prime95 blend goes to 82c for me, everyday temps 65c during long gaming sessions.

I have an h100 I got the other day running off an external power supply back at home, trying to see if the pump noise goes away before I install it in any system. Gonna try the diode to reduce pump voltage tonight. I've tried 3x h100's so far and returned them all the next day for pump grinding noise, all bought months apart so it's definitely not the same batch.
Edited by Scorpion667 - 5/11/12 at 9:11am

My Ven-X managed to cool upto 1.5vcore (It was running hot but still manageable) so i don't see why his H100 wouldn't be able to.

I see you are running 16gigs of ram, IF that is 4 sticks it might hold back your overclock. If you run out of options remove 2 sticks as it's a much lighter load on the internal memory controller which gets stressed in prime95 blend.

I couldn't get 5Ghz stable with 4 sticks even with 1.15v on the IMC

Oh, Fraps doesn't need a lot of ram I record 1080 @ 90FPS smoothly and i only have 4 gigs of ram you just need a secondary HDD. It will record choppy if you are trying to record on the same HDD that your os is on. For SSD however you can record Fraps on the same OS drive no problem. I suspect it's the 4 sticks that is holding you back, if you run out of options take out sticks 1 and 3, to retain dual channel.

As far as the h100 placement I meant to run that config temporarily IF you need en extra cooling boost during prime95 to keep temps under 85c. You could switch back after. It's not optimal for 24/7 as you will have warm air blowing in however because it's pushing fresh air from outside the case into the rad, CPU temps will imrpove for the duration of the stress test.
Edited by Scorpion667 - 5/11/12 at 9:55am