Best, CPU Fixed/Locked voltage or off-set or Adaptive?

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As the Title says.

On an overclocked (from Bios) system, what is best, to over-ride and lock the bios or to set an off-set voltage ?

Without going into too much detail for now, I have an MAXIMUS VIII IMPACT motherboard with an intel i7 6700K CPU.

I have it steady on a 4.6 overclock (also have LLC at level 5), I used to always set the voltage to 'off-set' so that the voltage would drop like a stone to about 0.9v when idling and of course the cpu speed would drop way down too.

I have read and watched quite a few things on "adaptive mode" for the voltage but I remember trying that mega months ago and I am sure it just sent my voltages and temps all over the place, is that correct ? (then I would return it to an off-set voltage setting).

Anyways, what in anyones opinion is best to do, over-ride/lock the cpu voltage, off-set it or adaptive mode.

I am very much interested in hearing peoples opinions on this.
Thank you ;)
 
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i don't like to waste power so i use adaptive, goes down to practically 0 volts at idle. for pure stability i presume fixed would be better, but only on the extreme end and only slightly.

edit:

actually lol, i just checked and im using fixed voltage, but the c states ensure it doesn't stay there at idle..

Capture.png

Thanks mate, so I guess your another +1 for fixed cpu voltage then really

Be interesting to see what others think as I too found problems with adaptive mode, off-set setting is what I always used for years, more recently though I hear people telling me just to run it constantly locked into the 1.344 cpu voltage and they also said it will not degrade the lifespan of the cpu which I am slightly sceptical about, hmmm :confused: (also have LLC at level 5).

P.S, @ james_2k, as far as I was always aware, your meant to have C states disabled when overclocking mate, how come you have them on ?
 
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Well i think the idea behind that is that when it transitions between states, overclocking can cause crashes. but i always leave them off for testing and setting an overclock, then put them on after. no desire to have my cpu at max volts all the time.

Thanks guys ;)

So please tell,

If I have what I think is a steady overclock of 4.6 on this i7 6700K with cpu voltage locked to 1.344 and C states disabled/off and LLC level 5, if I was to now enable C states again would my voltage drop again when system isn't under load ?

Also, is it even safe enough to hope for a long life of such a cpu with voltage constantly at 1.344 ?

Oh, and I might as well ask too, lets say a cpu and motherboard are set to stock voltages and cpu speeds, should the C states then be enabled or disabled ?

I just dont like the voltage running at the locked in speed constantly, but I cant see a way round it and that Adaptive mode only seems to cause problems, has anyone noticed that ? only thing so far I have found that will drop the voltage when idle like I said earlier is an offset setting, but then it sometimes over shoots the voltages when under load, seems we cant win man :(
 
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aye man, get 'em turned on no worries on my pc or the one before! worst case may need a tiny bump in vcore.
regarding voltage mines been on 1.415 for a few years now, no problems. but its kept quite cool.
and yes c states do the same whether stock or overclocked.

Thanks man ;)

So just to confirm one more time, C states switched "ON" will drop the cpu voltages when the system is idling etc, yes ? (Even though the cpu voltage is locked ?).

Sorry if I sound like a pure nob, lol, but if this is right enough then it sound excellent tae me man :)
 
;) cheers man @james_2k mate,

I still don't see any drop in cpu voltage with C states enabled OR disabled mate when the system is just idling and I am looking at latest versions of aida64, HWmonitor and cpuz too, defo no change mate, hmmm, I wonder if something else could possibly be stopping them from dropping :confused:

Anyways, apart from that, for the past couple of hours I have sat here enabling and disabling CPU C states.

I know we have different cpu's and motherboards but as usual I was willing to try things :)

I am using the latest edition of asus realbench (benchmark) which is version 2.44 and each time I changed things I ran like 6 x benchmark tests using that program which I think is a fair chance to see whats what.

The benchmark scores where always about 8 to 12 thousand points higher with C states disabled than what they were with them enabled, so I dunno, maybe just the difference in our hardware as I mentioned and I know benchmark scores don't mean zip if your not into that kind of thing which I am not but when testing hardware I guess its a good guide.

I also kept an eye on the cpu core temps and to be honest there wasn't really that much of a difference, so again I dunno whats what, all I do know for a fact is that with the C states Disabled on mines I was benching much better scores, but anyways, just saying man and overall, I don't have a clue what the full difference would be to the system in real time running everyday tasks, I don't even game for example man, lol.

Have you tried the benchmark and C states enabled and disabled using asus realbench 2.44 (benchmark) by any chance ? if not then if you have time give it a go, but try the benching maybe up to 6 times on each setting, just keep blasting it man and then just wait on the scores to see what you get and see if there is a difference like I said, just for fun really if you can be bothered and have time, doesn't take that long to be honest, up to you though.

Mostly I found better results when the cpu and computer was warmer which looked strange to me but maybe makes perfect sense to some people, maybe the cpu is like a car engine, cold is not good to hammer it but when hot then yes its ok, lol.
 
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I am listening and reading what you guys are saying ;)

I just tried it again this time on my old system that has the i7 3700K cpu and asus p8z77-V Deluxe board, C states on and off I didnt see a difference at all really in the voltage dropping on idle, if anything I might say it was a very tiny bit better when disabled and the temps appeared a bit better too, so I left it disabled, had it on auto.

So thats another head scratcher, lol, I can't think of anything else that would drop it apart from off-setting the voltage, and maybe the user pastymuncher is right enough eh, but really strange how some people it appears to work for, hmmm :confused:

P.S, power settings are set on Balanced too, plus I dont have that intel rapid storage software I dont think, I dont do raid and dont have intel drives etc either if thats what thats all about.
 
;) so overall, i7 6700K voltage locked to 1.344 (no drop in voltage when idling) and clocked to 4.6, (with pretty decent temps) is that fine and ok for giving the cpu quite a long life (with decent cooling), I don't mean will it last forever but at least the usual 5+ years etc ??
 
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