6700k OC - Stuck @ 4.5

Smffy · 13 Mar 2017 at 21:55

Not sure if there is really so much worth posting this but why not try, you never know when you've missed something that might save the day...

HELP MEEEEEE.

I've got a 6700k, i've had it about a year and a bit now and its currently delidded in a custom loop. My base hardware is:

6700k, delid and CLU under the freshly lapped IHS
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 3000mhz DDR4 x 4 (32GB total)
Mobo: Asus Z170 Deluxe, modified but only cosmetically
2 x EVGA 1080 FTW
Corsair H1200i PSU

In terms of cooling, hear is not a problem and everything is in a custom loop with more cooling that sensible. To head off any questions its currently cooled by 4 radiators all HWL Black Ice (60mm thick), 240mm x 2, 360mm x 1, 480mm x 1 cooled by far too many Corsair mag levs (17 to be precise). Anyway... So temps are fine, nothing ever gets over 45-48 in tests with the 4.5 OC working fine about 1.28v. GPUs will not exceed about 33c even when running quite well overclocked.

What the issue is that I literally can't do any more, now you might say well its just a crap chip - BUT originally in my old build it ran happily at 4.8, 24/7 I ran 4.7. I've tried as much as I can think of, but here's a rough list - no matter what it blue screens almost immediately with the WATCHDOG_CLOCK error when any test starts. I can run the 'stress cpu' in CPUz no worries but anything like x264 or Cinebench is an instant fail.

Voltage, obviously but i've tried up to 1.45v - temps absolutely fine again the cooling is quite something
BIOS Update, no different
RAM: XMP or Stock (2133), no difference
Various power management settings in the Asus BIOS, setting things to extreme, disabling anything that should be for 'overclocking' - can't see anything which might be causing it
Power Control set to 130% to allow greater tolerance of the voltage (as far as I understand)
LLC: few different ones, set to 5, no difference over auto

Its difficult to see where to go really, the hardware is essentially the same but no matter what its ANYTHING over 4.5 and instant WATCHDOG error. Feels like something is killing the system before it really gives it a chance...

Any ideas of things to check before I just give in and live with 4.5 until I replace it?

Cheers!

mjallan123 · 14 Mar 2017 at 01:07

I've heard of chips losing their overclock over time. It's happened to me also with my 6700k.

I was able to get 4.6 no problem for months, then one day it would not boot. I reset the bios and I never managed to get it over 4.5 again.

That's when I decided that the potential instability with overclocking is not worth the hassle for me for such little gain.

Set my 6700k back to stock speed and undervolted it. Now runs at no more than 50c at full load.

Doug2507 · 14 Mar 2017 at 12:27

1.45v is high for daily. If it's 4.5ghz stable at 1.28v there's no way it'll run 4.8 stable even at 1.45v unless it's got insanely magic scaling.

Llc5 vs auto is a massive difference. Make sure your vcore reading is correct. Hope you weren't running 1.45v bios with auto llc!

Temp might be fine but people seem to forget that even if temp is good you can still kill a chip with vcore.

Smffy · 14 Mar 2017 at 13:01

Thanks for the response, going to do some more testing for sure especially around LLC but to be clear I'm never going to run it 24/7 at 1.45v that was just as far as I was prepared to push and just see if the chip responded to more voltage and literally a few mins at most.

It used to run 4.8 fine around 1.38 so clearly it will, and I've seen tables of hundreds of clock stats with the average at 1.4v so more than safe/possible. I would most likely settle at 4.6-7 it's more an annoyance that it's not able to do anything over 4.5 regardless.