New to Overclocking. Is this a good overclock? Should I try and increase it?

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 11:33

Drollic said:
You need to take the screen shot when it's under load 100% at 43. Use hwinfo for readings so you can see the load and temps. In your screenshot above, the CPU isn't under load hence 3997mhz and 1.064v. CPU will fluctuate regularly between base clock and max clock when not under load, this isn't the same thing. You want to get an idea of what voltage your mobo is giving the CPU at an easy overclock to better understand offset required as you push the overclock providing temps are under control. Take the screenshot whilst running Prime after 10-15 minutes.

Hang on I don't understand, that is a shot of of CPU-Z and Speedfan while running Prime 95. If that's not stressing the CPU enough I could use a different stress test?

EDIT: Hang on, I get you. I'll do that now. Thanks.

Drollic · 1 Sep 2018 at 11:47

Chris Nahhas said:
Hang on I don't understand, that is a shot of of CPU-Z and Speedfan while running Prime 95. If that's not stressing the CPU enough I could use a different stress test?

EDIT: Hang on, I get you. I'll do that now. Thanks.

Use hwinfo and download from somewhere like guru3d. Upload it to Virustotal.com to check the file for any nasty stuff as ideally you always should. You may have to do 2 screenshots to show all temps/details.

DoneADougalOnSofa · 1 Sep 2018 at 11:52

Personally, I ran my 4770K (very similar chip for OC purposes) at 4.5GHz on 1.28V, with extreme LLC and power phases. No issues at all. Your 4790K will do similar.

One big piece of advice- uninstall AI Suite, and do your OC in the BIOS.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 12:10

Drollic said:
Use hwinfo and download from somewhere like guru3d. Upload it to Virustotal.com to check the file for any nasty stuff as ideally you always should. You may have to do 2 screenshots to show all temps/details.

I downloaded hwinfo from the main site. It's telling me there's a newer version but when I click through to update it it just takes me to the same download page.

hwinfo's teling me my multiplier's only set to x40 (?) so I'm going to go into BIOS after posting this and see what the settings actually are.

DoneADougalOnSofa said:
Personally, I ran my 4770K (very similar chip for OC purposes) at 4.5GHz on 1.28V, with extreme LLC and power phases. No issues at all. Your 4790K will do similar.

One big piece of advice- uninstall AI Suite, and do your OC in the BIOS.

Yeah, I'm thinking of doing that; AI Suite is getting me familiarised with the options I'm going to need to be looking for. If I can find everything in BIOS that AI Suite is referencing I guess I'm good to go, although I think AI Suite might give me a greater level of control over the offset than by BIOS does? I'm not sure that my BIOS is that fully features when it comes to overclocking. For instance I'm pretty sure I don't have access to LLC. I'm going to have to take another look at things in BIOS once I get this posted.

EDIT: Hang on it seems my cores are at 4000MHz instead of 4.3, I'll take a look at BIOS, and run the stress test again.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:01

Okay, so...I looked at the BIOS and AI Suite hadn't set the cores correctly, so I've set the ratios to 4.3 and am running the stress test again.

I've set the "AI Overclock Tuner" to Manual in BIOS.

That gave me these extra options:

CPU Strap, PLL Selection and Filter PLL (all of which I've left set to Auto because I've not touched the base clock).

I've set "ASUS Multiplier Enhancement" to Disabled, so that it doesn't interfere with the manual overclock.

I set the CPU Core Ration to Synch All Cores and set the core ratio limit to 4.3MHz

The following I haven't touched:

Min & Max CPU Cash Ratio (set to Auto)

Internal PLL Overvoltage (set to Auto)

BCLK Frequency : DRAM Frequency Ratio (set to Auto)

DRAM Frequency (set to Auto)

And I've not touched the Base Clock.

CPU Core Voltage Mode I've set to Offset, but I've not entered a value, it's set to Auto.

Likewise: CPU Core Voltage Offset, CPU System Agent Voltage, CPU Analog I/O, CPU Digital I/O (all are still set to auto)

SVID Support it says needs to be set to Disabled while overclocking, so I've done so. It says it stops the CPU communicating with the external voltage regulator.

The following I've not touched and are all set to Auto:

CPU Input Voltage (VCCIN)
DRAM Voltage
PCH VLX Voltage
PCH Core Voltage.

Those are the primary options it's showing me. There are more options under a couple of menus that open when I click on certain headings. I don't think I have an option to calibrate load lines, unless it's named something different in my BIOS

I'll get the screenshots of the readout for the stress test done and post them. Thanks so much.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:13

Okay, so, here are the readouts running Prime for over 15 minutes:

So what do I mainly need to be concerned with moving forward?

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:24

DoneADougalOnSofa said:
Personally, I ran my 4770K (very similar chip for OC purposes) at 4.5GHz on 1.28V, with extreme LLC and power phases. No issues at all. Your 4790K will do similar.

One big piece of advice- uninstall AI Suite, and do your OC in the BIOS.

Also, I don't have an option for LLC. Or at least I don't think I do. I'm going to check in the BIOS again, bump my ratios and look at the secondary menus.

wellibob · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:33

My old 4790k did. 4.5ghz @1.12volts on all cores with DH15 . Just set multi to 45,ram xmp and punched in cpu volts. Touched nothing else Ran great for 2 years

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:46

wellibob said:
My old 4790k did. 4.5ghz @1.12volts on all cores with DH15 . Just set multi to 45,ram xmp and punched in cpu volts. Touched nothing else Ran great for 2 years

Sounds cool, I just bumped my multiplier to 4.4MHz and about to run Cinebench & Prime.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:57

Drollic said:
Use hwinfo and download from somewhere like guru3d...

DoneADougalOnSofa said:
Personally, I ran my 4770K (very similar chip for OC purposes) at 4.5GHz on 1.28V, with extreme LLC and power phases...

wellibob said:
My old 4790k did. 4.5ghz @1.12volts on all cores with DH15 . Just set multi to 45,ram xmp and punched in cpu volts. Touched nothing else Ran great for 2 years

Okay, so, I've found options for both Offsets and LLC in my BIOS.

What's the rule of thumb for moving forward?

Should I just set LLC to it's maximum before starting to bump the multiplier, or is there an order and sequence I need to do it in?

What increments should I increase the Offsets by, and when should I increases them?

Also, @Drollic I've just run Cinebench and am running Prime95 at 4.4MHz. Voltage is 1.193 at full load. Should I post screenshots?

Not sure if I should continue bumping the multipliers?

EDIT: I'm assuming the CPU is drawing what it needs for the load? ...and that if I manually set the voltage lower than what it's drawing it would crash? Is that correct? And so, can I use offsets and LLC to get the voltage down and still leave it stable?

Drollic · 1 Sep 2018 at 14:24

Chris Nahhas said:
Okay, so, I've found options for both Offsets and LLC in my BIOS.

What's the rule of thumb for moving forward?

Should I just set LLC to it's maximum before starting to bump the multiplier, or is there an order and sequence I need to do it in?

What increments should I increase the Offsets by, and when should I increases them?

Also, @Drollic I've just run Cinebench and am running Prime95 at 4.4MHz. Voltage is 1.193 at full load. Should I post screenshots?

Not sure if I should continue bumping the multipliers?

EDIT: I'm assuming the CPU is drawing what it needs for the load? ...and that if I manually set the voltage lower than what it's drawing it would crash? Is that correct? And so, can I use offsets and LLC to get the voltage down and still leave it stable?

So that voltage is pretty low for 4.4 all core. Try LLC at the lowest possible level above off and see how that changes the voltage. It's the motherboard determining the voltage, not the cpu hence you can overvolt or undervolt. If you want to try and get 4.4 fully stable, try aiming for 1.24 ish under 100% load. I'd be surprised if your PC is stable 100% at 1.193v. I'd expect a crash in Prime after a few hours or another stress test along with some system instability. It is however a good sign you can boot up and even run prime for 10-15 minutes at that voltage. You may be fully stable at say 1.22-1.23. To determine stability you should ideally run a range of tests including prime for 3-5 hours +. Try a range of games etc.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 14:37

Drollic said:
So that voltage is pretty low for 4.4 all core. Try LLC at the lowest possible level above off and see how that changes the voltage. It's the motherboard determining the voltage, not the cpu hence you can overvolt or undervolt. If you want to try and get 4.4 fully stable, try aiming for 1.24 ish under 100% load. I'd be surprised if your PC is stable 100% at 1.193v. I'd expect a crash in Prime after a few hours or another stress test along with some system instability. It is however a good sign you can boot up and even run prime for 10-15 minutes at that voltage. You may be fully stable at say 1.22-1.23. To determine stability you should ideally run a range of tests including prime for 3-5 hours +. Try a range of games etc.

Thanks

What speed do you think I should aim for? Also, should I try adjusting the base clock, or is that just unnecessary?

And is there a sequence for pushing it as high as it'll go? I thought I'd try and get it to run as fast as I could get it but I'm not sure of the steps I need to go through to do that.

Also, I've just been watching a video on Load Line Calibration and voltage spikes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XGhpKHWYAg) is it the high voltage spikes that I should be trying to avoid?

Drollic · 1 Sep 2018 at 14:49

Chris Nahhas said:
Thanks

What speed do you think I should aim for? Also, should I try adjusting the base clock, or is that just unnecessary?

And is there a sequence for pushing it as high as it'll go? I thought I'd try and get it to run as fast as I could get it but I'm not sure of the steps I need to go through to do that.

Also, I've just been watching a video on Load Line Calibration and voltage spikes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XGhpKHWYAg) is it the high voltage spikes that I should be trying to avoid?

You use voltage and temperatures to tell you how high you can go safely. Start low, work up.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:01

Drollic said:
You use voltage and temperatures to tell you how high you can go safely. Start low, work up.

Thanks

And all of the other options? Will they come into play or would the gains be relatively negligible?

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:14

Drollic said:
You use voltage and temperatures to tell you how high you can go safely. Start low, work up.

I found a systems reviewer who tests load line calibration and states you should never ever use the "Extreme" setting for load line calibration but he said that Asus boards (I have an Asus) are good for High settings on load line calibration, so I set it to high but it's made no difference to the voltage.

Is it worth trying to use offsets, to see if it'll make any kind of difference?

Drollic · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:21

Chris Nahhas said:
I found a systems reviewer who tests load line calibration and states you should never ever use the "Extreme" setting for load line calibration but he said that Asus boards (I have an Asus) are good for High settings on load line calibration, so I set it to high but it's made no difference to the voltage.

Is it worth trying to use offsets, to see if it'll make any kind of difference?

If you're not finding it makes much difference I'd leave it on the lowest setting and see how you go. Keep your CPU at 44 and try an offset of +0.030. Let us know the voltage and temperature under 100% load after 10+ minutes of prime. It should be around 1.230v

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:24

Drollic said:
If you're not finding it makes much difference I'd leave it on the lowest setting and see how you go. Keep your CPU at 44 and try an offset of +0.030. Let us know the voltage and temperature under 100% load after 10+ minutes of prime. It should be around 1.230v

Okay, sure thing. Should I do that for all of the modules (CPU System Agent Voltage, CPU Analog I/O and CPU Digital I/O?) or just the CPU Core Voltage Offset?

Edit: It's currently been running for 15 minutes plus with a multiplier of 45 on all cores and still no change to the voltage.

I got a screen grab of the readouts.

I'll apply the offset and see how it affects things.

Drollic · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:55

Whats the CPU temperature on each of the cores after 15 minutes at that speed and voltage? Screenshot if you can.

Chris Nahhas · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:56

Drollic said:
Whats the CPU temperature on each of the cores after 15 minutes at that speed and voltage? Screenshot if you can.

Sure thing, I just rebooted and added the 0.030 offset.

I'll run the test now.

Drollic · 1 Sep 2018 at 15:58

Chris Nahhas said:
Sure thing, I just rebooted and added the 0.030 offset.

I'll run the test now.

Show same CPUz screen as above with that offset plus temps in hwinfo by scrolling down. Leave the other settings you mentioned at default.