Do you want more hash rate? How about overclocking?
Disclaimer: Methods described below may be proven harmful to your PC if you’re not fully aware of your actions. Any action you take upon the information on this piece is strictly at your own risk.
Overclocking is setting any characteristics of your hardware higher than that intended by the manufacturers. This can help you to improve performance in almost all tasks.
What parts you can overclock?
- CPU
- GPU
- RAM (no sense for mining purposes)
Main principles of overclocking.
The first thing you need to know before overclocking is a multiplier and warranty options (depends on your manufacturer). Talking about graphics cards, almost all of them have unlocked multipliers, but you can check your model and vendor on the web. Warranty options are must-have to be checked because some manufacturers don’t allow overclocking.
In order to overclock anything, you need to download special software. The most popular one for GPU overclocking is a free product called Afterburner and written by MSI. It allows you to control every needed parameter just in one window.
Let’s see how to overclock your GPU.
Most important of them are: Core Voltage (mV); Power Limit (%); Temp Limit (%); Core Clock (Mhz); Memory Clock (Mhz); Fan Speed (%).
We don’t recommend to randomly change anything, because problems may occur. Instead, it’s beneficial to do a research on better settings for your particular model of GPU manufactured by your vendor (MSI, Asus, Palit, etc.). Here’re some basic points on how to change these parameters:
- Core Voltage. Better to just leave it without changes because shifts can easily cause instability and overheat. However, you can find your card limit and reach it by steadily adjusting your card for stubility.
- Power limit. You can set it between 75% and 100% or even higher, but you have to monitor temperatures carefully.
- Temp limit. The gentle setting is about 70° and this temperature is safe for any GPU. Do not set it higher than 85° because prolonged operating with these temperatures can cause chip degradation.
- Core Clock. Gradually increase it until your system is stable. +50–80 will suit almost all GPUs.
- Memory Clock. The most important setting for mining. Increase by 100 and try mining for about 10 minutes. Repeat until you find any instability.
- Fan Speed. Leave it in automatic mode. If you set it too high, your fans will be loud; whereas if it’s too low, the temperature will be high.
The second option is to overclock your CPU.
There is not much sense in overclocking your CPU in mining purposes but some algorithms are designed for CPU mining (recent RandomX integrated to Monero), so you can try.
In order to overclock your processor, you also have to check the multiplier to be unlocked and to have a motherboard that supports overclocking (naming depends on generation). For example, CPUs from Intel which support overclocking have “k” in the model (e.g. Intel i5 9600K).
You don’t need any soft for overclocking CPU, because everything is done from BIOS. BIOS settings depend on the model of your motherboard so get the necessary details (key combination to open BIOS) from the manual.
If you want to keep it simple and have Intel CPU, then you can just enable Turbo Boost so you can have +200 MHz in 1 click.
Want to go further?
To put it briefly, to overclock CPU from BIOS you need to find an optimal combination of voltage and multiplier. For better results, you can upgrade BIOS to the latest version. Some motherboards have manufacturers presets that can be used.
To overclock your PC, gradually increase your multiplier, and almost any BIOS interface shows estimated MHz. Increase it by 100–200 MHz and run any stress tests (e.g. AIDA 64) or difficult tasks like CPU mining or recent PC game. When you find that you can’t increase multiplier anymore without losing stability, then try increasing voltage and repeat tests.
NOTICE: monitor your temperatures and don’t let it go higher than 75–80°, because it can be harmful. If you increase voltage, your electricity consumption and CPU heat will grow.
Manufacturing of processors is really complicated, so overclocking result may vary from sample to sample. You can optimize your result by purchasing a more effective cooling system, but there is no sense in doing this for mining purposes.
Download our xFast miner here and try experimenting with these settings to get more hash rate.
