i7 6700k Owners Club

ZXSpectrum · 4 Sep 2015 at 13:48

Is anyone else having issues with weird voltages? I am having a play with a 6700K with a Asus Z170-K and 32Gb DDR3 2667Mhz. The issue is that I have manually set the voltage to 1.25v in the bios but in the OS under CPUz Its showing 1.35-1.37v. I have the LLC set to LVL4 and the Thermal Current to 140% but have tried reducing them both to the lowest but the voltage still shows in the mid 1.3v range. Don't get me wrong, it seems to be running fine at 4.6Ghz and the temps under Aida are superb on Air with a Bequiet Slim I am just a little concerned...

I will add it is an Engineering Sample from Intel but i cant see that making much of a difference.

Daytrader · 4 Sep 2015 at 14:45

uscool said:
guess it booted again, i dont do anything with Ai overclock,

i just change multiplayer for cpu to overclock it to 4.5ghz and manually set speed / volt and timings for RAM,

i just updated bios to 0603 , it restarted like 4 times, saying updating bios then me updating

and it reset all my bios settings/ cpu/ram etc, had to redo all my fan controls, lucky i took a picture of each

weird thing is when i was setting ram up, the cpu voltage was like 1.40, as soon i restart and went back in its back at 1.28v now

actually now its showing as 1.392 in bios and aint budging, in cpuz its 1.408v, i can see the speed reducing but not voltage, updating bios always seems to cause new issues

as soon i have multiplayer at auto so no overclock, its at 1.248 now, but its not dropping down when idle like before, would drop down to 0.700v, , and know when i increase multiplayer , cpu voltage without touching it goes to 1.40v ,

before with older bios i had it at 4.5ghz and would be around 1.32v and it would drop when in idle, and was stable , played quite a few games past few weeks no issues .guess the board bios update caused this

Well when i put it to manual it goes down to 1.248, as soon as i put it on auto goes back to 1.392, but on another massive skylake 6700k forum, they say 1.392 is fine, go figure.

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 15:00

this is annoying , i flashed back older bios which worked fine before , idle , drop voltage to 0.700,

same bios now stays stuck on 1.284. even in idle, speed drops to 800mhz, i reset cmos, everything on auto,

in windows in cpu power management, i have no CPU option now ?

wished i didnt flash the latest bios now

ZXSpectrum · 4 Sep 2015 at 15:29

Daytrader said:
Well when i put it to manual it goes down to 1.248, as soon as i put it on auto goes back to 1.392, but on another massive skylake 6700k forum, they say 1.392 is fine, go figure.

uscool said:
this is annoying , i flashed back older bios which worked fine before , idle , drop voltage to 0.700,

same bios now stays stuck on 1.284. even in idle, speed drops to 800mhz, i reset cmos, everything on auto, in windows in cpu power management, i have no CPU option now ?

wished i didnt flash the latest bios now

I am getting some strange happenings as well with voltages. Just tried 4.8Ghz at 1.325v but for some reason in CPUz it showed 1.237v??? lol... I don't know if this is related to llc but its now annoying me.. Did get a run at 5Ghz tho..

I recon I could get it stable at that if I had water and ran 1.5v through it.

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 16:59

can anyone help me whats happening here

i got Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO board, had it on bios 0401, had it overclocked at 4.5ghz , voltage was auto , which left it at around 1.280-1300 and run super stable,

when idle it would drop to 800mhz and around 0.750v voltage which was great, as i do leave it on for long and being idle

so i updated bios to 0603, and all the settings were reset so did all the same as before, now as i set it multiplier to 45 so get 4.5ghz, it sets cpu voltage to 1.42 which is high and it doesnt lower voltage when idle, all rest settings are auto

so i flashed back bios 0401 bios settings reset, now it doesnt lower the voltage or lower speed in idle, and CPU processor in power management is gone ?

its like even i flashed back old bios it wont behave the same now,

so i flashed back bios 0603 which is latest, everything reset and it downclocks and lowers cpu power and i can now see the CPU processor in power management

now seems like i have to stick with the newer bios, if there a way i can get the overclock to 4.5 which aint big, and also have it reduce cpu voltage on idle ?

Thanks

ZXSpectrum · 4 Sep 2015 at 17:13

Something REALLY Quirky is going on with these CPUs and Asus boards.

I can run Realbench at 4.6Ghz and even thought I have set the vcore to 1.25v it shows mid-high 1.3v when I start up CPUz. While Realbench is running the stress test it drops to around the 1.25v mark but fluctuating constantly. When I stop it, the voltage returns to the previous voltage. Weird....

mikeo · 4 Sep 2015 at 17:38

ZXSpectrum said:
Something REALLY Quirky is going on with these CPUs and Asus boards.

I can run Realbench at 4.6Ghz and even thought I have set the vcore to 1.25v it shows mid-high 1.3v when I start up CPUz. While Realbench is running the stress test it drops to around the 1.25v mark but fluctuating constantly. When I stop it, the voltage returns to the previous voltage. Weird....

Sounds like you have dynamic voltage control enabled somehow to me.

Daytrader · 4 Sep 2015 at 17:42

mikeo said:
Sounds like you have dynamic voltage control enabled somehow to me.

What voltage should it be on AUTO ? not overclocking at the moment.

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 18:04

Daytrader said:
What voltage should it be on AUTO ? not overclocking at the moment.

mine stays around 1.264 - 1.294 in the bios on auto, wish i never flashed the updated bios, now when i change multiplier to 45 for 4.5ghz its giving 1.42v , wasnt like this on older bios,

before just left on auto would be 1.280-1.310 and it would drop in idle to 0.768v , now doesn't, now when i flash back older bios it just doesnt bring the cpu speed down or voltage even when using exact same settings as before

will adaptive voltage do this ?

as my pc is left on idle for long periods of time would love the voltage to drop to save power

mikeo · 4 Sep 2015 at 18:32

Daytrader said:
What voltage should it be on AUTO ? not overclocking at the moment.

If you are talking stock. Depends on the batch the CPU came from, they can get a different VID.

At stock. Mine in the BIOS is 1.288v, I have seen lower in some reviews etc. Again it depends on what batch your CPU came from.

In Windows the idle Vcore is around .8v. But depending on what you are running and how demanding it is. I find the Vcore can go any where as high as 1.355 to 1.4v (I am talkting Prime95 / IBT sort of programs). Normal stuff (IE. games) probably around 1.3v

That's dynamic voltage control for you, it pretty much always errs on the side of caution (IE. gives it more than it needs to).

One of the Anandtech articles on Skylake highlighted this (IE. running pretty high on dynamic voltage control). I've seen it mentioned in other test reviews etc. as well.

But.... My chip overclocked to 4.6v by my motherboard of all things set a static voltage of 1.28v and boots and runs just fine. So the chip definitely does not need all the voltage that it's getting given in dynamic mode.

As a side issue. The auto overclocking on the latest MSI Z170A seems pretty good and that's a first for me with these sorts of motherboard based OCing tools. I've gone through what the board sets for 4.6 and it's pretty much what I would have worked my way round to if I did it manually. Top marks to MSI for this.

Hope this helps.

PS. Here's a quote from Anandtech

Another point to mention is stock voltage. On the samples we tested at least, the stock voltage of the processor under load seemed astronomical, varying from 1.320 volts to 1.416 volts. Having a ~0.100 volt variation between silicon is not fun for stock use, even with the retail sample being at 1.360 volts. That being said, all the processors happily combined an overclock to 4.3 GHz with a nice underclock to 1.200 volts, which might be the best thing to do when owning the chip.

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 18:43

mikeo said:
If you are talking stock. Depends on the batch the CPU came from, they can get a different VID.

At stock. Mine in the BIOS is 1.288v, I have seen lower in some reviews etc. Again it depends on what batch your CPU came from.

In Windows the idle Vcore is around .8v. But depending on what you are running and how demanding it is. I find the Vcore can go any where as high as 1.355 to 1.4v (I am talkting Prime95 / IBT sort of programs). Normal stuff (IE. games) probably around 1.3v

That's dynamic voltage control for you, it pretty much always errs on the side of caution (IE. gives it more than it needs to).

One of the Anandtech articles on Skylake highlighted this (IE. running pretty high on dynamic voltage control). I've seen it mentioned in other test reviews etc. as well.

But.... My chip overclocked to 4.6v by my motherboard of all things set a static voltage of 1.28v and boots and runs just fine. So the chip definitely does not need all the voltage that it's getting given in dynamic mode.

As a side issue. The auto overclocking on the latest MSI Z170A seems pretty good and that's a first for me with these sorts of motherboard based OCing tools. I've gone through what the board sets for 4.6 and it's pretty much what I would have worked my way round to if I did it manually. Top mars to MSI for this.

Hope this helps.

im having a nightmare since i updated bios on mine

with everything on auto my cpu is 1.248v , and its not dropping when in idle was before 0.764v , but the speed drops to 800mhz

with yours you got it set when in idle to drop speed and voltage ?

before bios update i had it at 4.5ghz, auto volts which were around 1.36 and idle 0.764v was more then happy not cant get anywhere, and flashing back older bios aint giving me what i had before , its like the newer bios updated something even flashing older bios aint the same as before

Thanks

Dave2150 · 4 Sep 2015 at 19:08

uscool said:
im having a nightmare since i updated bios on mine

with everything on auto my cpu is 1.248v , and its not dropping when in idle was before 0.764v , but the speed drops to 800mhz

with yours you got it set when in idle to drop speed and voltage ?

before bios update i had it at 4.5ghz, auto volts which were around 1.36 and idle 0.764v was more then happy not cant get anywhere, and flashing back older bios aint giving me what i had before , its like the newer bios updated something even flashing older bios aint the same as before

Thanks

I'm using the same motherboard, I set mine manually to 1.28v with adaptive voltage of +0.05v as I remember (the lowest increase possible) and mine reduces voltage at idle etc. Worth a go.

Daytrader · 4 Sep 2015 at 19:29

I been having so many problems with bios today, scared of updating it anymore, and volts still at 1.392 with no over clock.

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 19:48

Dave2150 said:
I'm using the same motherboard, I set mine manually to 1.28v with adaptive voltage of +0.05v as I remember (the lowest increase possible) and mine reduces voltage at idle etc. Worth a go.

Thanks

, finally its working how i want it , just wondering yours overclocked ?

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 19:53

Daytrader said:
I been having so many problems with bios today, scared of updating it anymore, and volts still at 1.392 with no over clock.

i been going back and forth between bios, must have flashed about 10 times,

with latest bios , if i just clear cmos and leave everything on auto , i get 1.248v

just flash the latest bios 0603 and see, clear cmos , leave all auto

i just had issue overclocking and lowering when idle , which finally figured out,

Daytrader · 4 Sep 2015 at 20:10

for your ram did you just set xmp in bios to give you 3000mhz, mine still at 2133 i think

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 20:36

Daytrader said:
for your ram did you just set xmp in bios to give you 3000mhz, mine still at 2133 i think

no manually set ram speed/ voltage and timings,

i noticed when i set using xmp, it messes with the cpu clock, as well

Daytrader · 4 Sep 2015 at 20:54

Ah ok, i guess if i use the auto overclock settings that will also mess the ram settings up, guess its best to do it all manually, better go read up on all that stuff, cheers

mikeo · 4 Sep 2015 at 21:09

uscool said:
i...
with yours you got it set when in idle to drop speed and voltage ?
...
Thanks

Yes.. my board is currently set fully on optimal settings. Except for XMP on the memory, custom cpu fan profile/s and set it to UEFI only (as combined UEFI/Legacy support doesn't seem to work properly ... yet).

Had a play with both the Motherboard auto OC (works pretty well on the MSI boards) and a bit of messing around manually to see what it can do. But for now I'm leaving it on auto. Going to wait for the BIOS to mature a bit more before OCing it seriously.

uscool · 4 Sep 2015 at 21:25

mikeo said:
Yes.. my board is currently set fully on optimal settings. Except for XMP on the memory, custom cpu fan profile/s and set it to UEFI only (as combined UEFI/Legacy support doesn't seem to work properly ... yet).

Had a play with both the Motherboard auto OC (works pretty well on the MSI boards) and a bit of messing around manually to see what it can do. But for now I'm leaving it on auto. Going to wait for the BIOS to mature a bit more before OCing it seriously.

so you dont have any overclock on it now ?

just testing mine at 1.30v at 4.5ghz