It been a while for me with Intel

i5 4690K
NZXT Kraken X31
Gigabyte Gaming 3 Z97 Rev1.1
Hyper-X Savage 2400Mhz

I'm just installing the system now, i'm used to AMD, Sandy Bridge and Bloomfield overclocking, I have never messed about with Haswell / Devils Canyon.

So I would like to know safe Volts, Safe Temps, the ballpark volts for overclocking and what I should expect 'ish....

And anything you think I should know.

Thanks < oh crimbo smileys.

Temp wise, as theese can get quite hot when stress testing. Try to stay below 85c, dont use programs like prime95, intel burn test. You can quite easily hit throttle limits at stock under theese types of programs. Asus real bench is a good test for haswell/devils canyon. Max reccomended voltage for air/aio cooling is 1.35v, from my own experience with several 4790k's, ball park oc is 4.7ghz on 1.300v, you might get lucky and need less or vice versa. Another important voltage to look at is the cpu input voltage, gigabyte call this VRIN, generally this should be 0.5v higher than the vcore you set for any given oc. Ie 1.300 vcore = 1.900v input. XMP should take care of your ram voltage, timings etc. Often too a touch more on cache voltage, aka VRING can help stabilise a cpu oc. The cache or uncore clock can be oc'd too once you have a stable cpu oc. Raising the VRING voltage helps with this. In an ideal situation you want a 1-1 cache and cpu ratio, but for better stability it's advised to run say 3 multis lower on cache than cpu, ie 47 on cpu, 43 on cache.

setter said:

Temp wise, as theese can get quite hot when stress testing. Try to stay below 85c, dont use programs like prime95, intel burn test. You can quite easily hit throttle limits at stock under theese types of programs. Asus real bench is a good test for haswell/devils canyon. Max reccomended voltage for air/aio cooling is 1.35v, from my own experience with several 4790k's, ball park oc is 4.7ghz on 1.300v, you might get lucky and need less or vice versa. Another important voltage to look at is the cpu input voltage, gigabyte call this VRIN, generally this should be 0.5v higher than the vcore you set for any given oc. Ie 1.300 vcore = 1.900v input. XMP should take care of your ram voltage, timings etc. Often too a touch more on cache voltage, aka VRING can help stabilise a cpu oc. The cache or uncore clock can be oc'd too once you have a stable cpu oc. Raising the VRING voltage helps with this. In an ideal situation you want a 1-1 cache and cpu ratio, but for better stability it's advised to run say 3 multis lower on cache than cpu, ie 47 on cpu, 43 on cache.

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Thats good info, thanks mate

I don't get this BIOS.

Somehow i managed to get it to run a 3.9Ghz, don't ask how i don't know, so in CPU-Z we have 39x 3.9Ghz.

So, In the middle there is "CPU Clock Ratio" i turn that up to 40, under that it goes to 4Ghz, on the left in "CPU status" its still 3.9Ghz, on its own between the multi dropdown and CPU status it says 35.

Save and exit, still 3.9Ghz, back to the BIOS...

The only thing that does change is the VCore, the CPU multi doesn't seem to do anything.

There is a button "On-Off" i turn it on, now in CPU status it says 4Ghz, save and reset again and its still at 3.9Ghz

NEEDS CONFIRMING FIRST!!!

Off the top of my head as its been a while since I did my 4670k (not done my 4790k so this thread might help me get round to it)

CPU Clock Ratio > that can probably go to 43 (click the 'switch' to off)

CPU VCORE >Increase to 1.200 (click the 'switch' to off)

Save and Exit
Run tests
If crash, increase VCORE to 1.21 and repeat
Alternatively, if you are happy with 4.3ghz, you can reduce the volts until it crashes instead

Bios might need updating too as you have an older version

Bickaxe said:

NEEDS CONFIRMING FIRST!!!

Off the top of my head as its been a while since I did my 4670k (not done my 4790k so this thread might help me get round to it)

CPU Clock Ratio > that can probably go to 43 (click the 'switch' to off)

CPU VCORE >Increase to 1.200 (click the 'switch' to off)

Save and Exit
Run tests
If crash, increase VCORE to 1.21 and repeat

Bios might need updating too as you have an older version

Click to expand...

Thanks

BIOS was F5, i updated to F7.

I'm going to have another go at it tomorrow, what is that on - off switch? and why only to 43x?

43 would be pretty safe, some chips might not go past that but you won't know til you try. Go for 42 and work from there if you like but read up some more as I wouldn't want you to damage anything because of my advice


The on/off switch is like an auto mode I think. Pretty sure it sets it to a default if its on (but it has been a while)

ok thanks for that.

setter said:

Try to stay below 85c, dont use programs like prime95, intel burn test.

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i dont think telling people not to use prime95 to test an overclock is a good idea. yes it will push the cpu hard, its meant to. if it BSODs its unstable.

zipp0r said:

i dont think telling people not to use prime95 to test an overclock is a good idea. yes it will push the cpu hard, its meant to. if it BSODs its unstable.

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Its a very good idea as certain versions of prime will lead to extremely high temps at stock let alone overclocked. Ver 28.5 being an example. On both 4790k's I've owned, at stock they hit 95c and started to throttle.

I would agree Prime95 puts too much tress on the CPU.
I had the 9590 running at 4.8Ghz and used it for encoding and rendering all the time for hours at a time without the system ever complaining, rendering and encoding is about the most stressful thing the CPU will ever do, the CPU would reach 65 - 67c after 2 or 3 solid hours of it, in Prime95 is would hit 75c in 15 minutes and start to throttle, if its throttling down its not running at the clocks you want it too.

CPU stability is a matter of context, no CPU is stable at any clock if you push it hard enough and Prime95 is unrealistic.

Anyway... something strange going on, it seems no matter what i do it will not go past 3.9Ghz. after setting 4Ghz in the BIOS it boots into Windows at 3.9Ghz, go back into the BIOS its set for 4Ghz but running at 3.9, i even tried by setting 1.27v, it still wouldn't do it.

So i went into the desktop Easy Tune thing, set it to 4Ghz and it worked, tress tested in Real Bench for 15m @ 1.22v, temps reached 49 to 52c.

I saved it and set to keep the overclock on reboot, once rebooted it had gone back to 3.9Ghz again, in Easy Tune core 1 had turned yellow like it does when you adjust the multi, it was set at 39x, strangely the other 3 had remained red and at 40x.

I don't know what is going on, so far i'm unimpressed by this Motherboard, i have only ever bought Asus boards for the past 10 years or more because they just work, this thing (Gigabyte Gaming 3) seems to be fighting against me, like its trying to impose and overclock limit on me, i think the fancy BIOS UI is way over designed and fussy, with about 5 different ways in telling you what you did in there its very unclear what's actually going on.

Right, i got sick of trying to figure out how to get it to save the overclock on boot/reboot, after a lot more messing about its now stuck on 4.1Ghz.

I turned the volts up to 1.24v, the multi to 45x in Easy Tune and it appears to be stable, temps are ok, low to mid 70's, looks like there is a bit more in it but i'm going to leave it at 4.5Ghz - 1.24v for a couple of days, see how she roles like that. (will have to set it like that in Easy tune everytime I boot/reboot)

So, if i was to review this Gigabyte Gaming 3 Motherboard i would say it looks very nice with the Black and Red theme, the red LED Tracers on the back of the board are really nice.
It has a 6+2 Phase VRM set which is at least 2 more than most other £100 Boards.
A Killer LAN
Sound Blaster XFi-3 audio amplifier which does sound really good, most other board with standard Realtek on board chips are poor sound quality with a lot of sound distortion with high Bass / Treble / Volume... none of that with this, just good loud sound, of course you need good speakers / head-set to take advantage.

What lets it down is the usability, particularly the BIOS UI is style over substance, looks nice but is far too busy. my old Sabertooth also has a UEFI BIOS but that managed to look nice and be ergonomic by keeping it simple.

The Opt-Fan header for some reason like all other fan headers is PWM adjustable, not a good idea as thats normal used for the pump, it wouldn't be so bad but its not reading my pump speed and with all these settings for it i do not know if its running at full speed or not, which brings me to the rest of the headers, on the Sabertooth you could set the header to monitor the case, PCIe or CPU temps and set it in percentage terms to ramp up with the temperature of that component.

So for example i would have to intake fan set to monitor the CPU temp and set as a maximum value of 55c, and then set that intake fan to run at 100% when the CPU reached that temperature, with a minimum value of 60% at 40c, so it would run at 60% at 40c and ramp up the fan speed in increments until at 100% once the CPU was at 55C.

This has no setting on what to monitor, what temp to react to and instead of percentage terms it instead uses a PWM 1.25x, PWM 1.5x........ which is completely meaningless, and sure enough my 900 RPM 200mm intake fan is around 500 RPM when the system is idle and 500 RPM when the CPU is a 70c +, no matter what PWM setting i use, utter junk IMO...

So, a nice looking board, good features and lots of them... ruined by a confusing BIOS and flawed cooling customisation.

Looking good, humbug, you need to master offset voltage and the bios and you'll be well away.
I disagree with it being over complicated in the bios, I would say that's due to your lack of knowledge with intels and the bios in general. The settings are there for a reason.

I think you'll scale to 4.6-4.7 at round 1.31-1.35v. And maybe with a delid some silver and a better cooler you could see 4.8ghz.

Davedree said:

Looking good, humbug, you need to master offset voltage and the bios and you'll be well away.
I disagree with it being over complicated in the bios, I would say that's due to your lack of knowledge with intels and the bios in general. The settings are there for a reason.

I think you'll scale to 4.6-4.7 at round 1.31-1.35v. And maybe with a delid some silver and a better cooler you could see 4.8ghz.

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Interestingly if i turn Intel Speed Step ON the overclock sticks from the BIOS. is that normal?

Coming a bit late to this, but I have the 1.0 revision of that board and I don't much like the "Smart Tweak" BIOS mode (or whatever it's called) either.

However, I haven't had any problems at all when I switch to "Classic Mode". It looks like an old school BIOS and all I had to do to get to 4.5GHz was set the multiplier to 45.

Davedree said:

Looking good, humbug, you need to master offset voltage and the bios and you'll be well away.
I disagree with it being over complicated in the bios, I would say that's due to your lack of knowledge with intels and the bios in general. The settings are there for a reason.

I think you'll scale to 4.6-4.7 at round 1.31-1.35v. And maybe with a delid some silver and a better cooler you could see 4.8ghz.

Click to expand...

Yup, that's what I would do, offset!

I've got my 4790k sat at -0.02 offset and overclocked to 4.6ghz. Will do 4.8ghz at +0.01

Personally. I find the gigabyte bios confusing, on haswell I used a high end Asus z87 formula. Now on an msi X99 board, bit similair to Asus but not just as good.

RatmanGB said:

Coming a bit late to this, but I have the 1.0 revision of that board and I don't much like the "Smart Tweak" BIOS mode (or whatever it's called) either.

However, I haven't had any problems at all when I switch to "Classic Mode". It looks like an old school BIOS and all I had to do to get to 4.5GHz was set the multiplier to 45.

Click to expand...

that's what i'd do too. good advice.

humbug said:

Interestingly if i turn Intel Speed Step ON the overclock sticks from the BIOS. is that normal?

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Speedstep is the same as cool and quiet and shouldn't be influencing your overclock settings. It just allows the cpu to drop the clocks and voltage to the lowest p-state, it won't work if windows power settings aren't set to balanced, also the voltage won't drop if the voltage is set manually.

If you switch to classic mode in the bios you can then disable the intel turbo boost and setup the overclock much better that way.

Not that it really matters much imho but the Gigabyte Gaming 3 has 4+0/4+0 analog/hybrid Vrm's.
Classic mode (F2) i find i lot easier tho.