Intel i7-2600 ES overclocking?

[dexvx]

So I bought a local PC for cheap. Guy took a BIOS pic and it clearly showed an i7-2600 (non-K); I figured for the price of the system it was a good deal, so I picked it up.

I disassembled the PC, cleaned the heatsink, and low and behind, it's a i7-2600 ES, Q1HK. Am wondering is it worth keeping? E.g., does it use multiplier O/C? It came with a Intel DH67BL board, so I currently can't O/C.

 

[vick1000]

If there is no K after the 2600, it's locked and thus no OC possible. ES is Engineering Sample.

 

[dexvx]

Well that seems kind of lame. I remember the old ES's having unlocked multipliers.

 

[mda]

H67 won't OC anyway. An OC board can do up to 4 bins higher, so you can probably do 3.8GHz on a P67/Z68/Z77 board.

 

[vick1000]

Well that seems kind of lame. I remember the old ES's having unlocked multipliers.

Before the K series, most were unlocked. Bieng an ES though, anything is possible.

 

[dexvx]

Well, I finally got a Z77 board.

I set the multiplier to 36x (from 34x default). Booted it into Windows, and CPU-Z is showing 3.6 GHz. So I'm assuming this i7-2600 ES is multiplier unlocked.