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

[scotslad]

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

 

[scotslad]

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..

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 (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 ?

 

[scotslad]

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

 

[scotslad]

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

 

[scotslad]

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

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.

 

[scotslad]

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

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.

 

[scotslad]

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 ??