A8-5600K vs. Pentium G2120 CPU Review

Overclocking

The A8-5600K is an unlocked CPU, meaning that you can change its clock multiplier. We could increase its clock multiplier to 37 from its default of 36. We were also able to increase its base clock from 100 MHz to 107 MHz. Above that, our system would crash. This overclocking made our A8-5600K run at 3,959 MHz, a 10% increase over its default clock rate of 3.6 GHz.

The above result was achieved using AMD’s stock cooler. By replacing the cooler with AMD’s liquid cooling solution, we were able to increase the clock multiplier to 38 and the base clock to 109 MHz, making our A8-5600K run at 4,142 MHz, a 15% increase over its default clock rate.

In order to achieve these numbers, we had to increase the CPU voltage to 1.5 V (from the default of 1.25 V) and the CPU-NB voltage to 1.4 V.

With time and patience, you may be able to achieve better results.