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Hello Everyone,
I am very curious if anyone has moved from a P67 or Z68 to a Z77 motherboard with a sandybridge 2500/2550K or 2600/2700k series CPU and noticed if it overclocks better on the newer chipset compared to the older chipset you moved from with the same CPU. I have been pondering this for a long time if a Z77 motherboard will overclock your CPU Higher, perhaps getting the same OC with lower voltage or any other benefits of the newer Z77 chipset with the older Sandy Bridge K series CPU's.

If anyone has seen any articles on migrating a SB 2500/2600/2700k cpu from a P67/Z68 board to the newer Z77 board it would be greatly appreciated if you could supply links to any articles you could find. Also as i stated earlier If you yourself has moved from a p67/z68 to a z77 with a sandy K series CPU your personal experience doing so would be a great help.

I am thinking about pulling my 2600k CPU and video card's out of my p67 motherboard and replacing it with a g530 celeron i have sitting around and converting it to a file server and just another HTPC since i have a HD 6450 just lying around also. Then i will be putting my 2600k and video cards in a newer z77 or z68 MB etc.
Thanks ahead of time.

The biggest thing you get performance-wise on a newer chipset (Z68 or Z77) is that you can run Smart Response.

I'm a little confused about this. Are you looking to be a competition overclocker? (LN2)
Overclocking has the most to do with:
1) Your processor. Some CPUs overclock better than others.
2) VRM/phases on your mobo. Pretty much a non-issue except for the extremes of low-end garbage and $200+ OC boards.
The motherboard chipset is more about peripheral features (what's left on the mobo chipset anyway).

I was just curious if my 2600k that will hit 5ghz on air but with a little more voltage then i feel safe using. I have been thinking about a z77 formula board from asrock. It seems to be a great OC board along with lots of extras. Plus it is the most reasonably priced Overclockers board. Or i just might get a nice Asus z68 board.

But the main thing i was curious about was if anyone has moved there sandy k series cpu from a older p67 to a z68 or z77 and have gotten a better overclock or even the same overclock with less voltage. That was my main Question. I was hoping some people here might have had personal exp doing this that might have some feedback.

vargis14 wrote:

But the main thing i was curious about was if anyone has moved there sandy k series cpu from a older p67 to a z68 or z77 and have gotten a better overclock or even the same overclock with less voltage. That was my main Question. I was hoping some people here might have had personal exp doing this that might have some feedback.

If you want a higher OC and your current P67 is halfway decent, you're better off spending your money on a better CPU cooler...assuming you're not already on liquid cooling. (See here for liquid vs air cooling temp differences) The newer Z77 chipset alone WILL NOT improve your OC. Some motherboards overclock better than others, but the difference is typically 200MHz or less. For example, using the same i7-3770K CPU (main difference being liquid cooled vs air respectively) this $120 board got to 4.6GHz while this $400 OC board got to 4.9GHz. Keeping in mind that real world performance does not scale linearly with frequency increases, the difference doesnt justify the >3x price unless you're using it to win overclocking competitions.