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

[Chris Nahhas]

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

Okay, so, this is 4.5 with the offset.

I noticed the core temperatures were high so I googled it and it seems the cores are okay for up to 90C. It seems Speedfan only measures at the socket and doesn't show the actual processor temperature.

I downloaded CoreTemp to compare the values and it seems those are accurate temperatures.

What do you suggest doing next? The offset worked in altering the voltage, where adding to the multiplier and adjusting the load line setting seemed not to affect it.

 

[Drollic]

Okay, so, this is 4.5 with the offset.

I noticed the core temperatures were high so I googled it and it seems the cores are okay for up to 90C. It seems Speedfan only measures at the socket and doesn't show the actual processor temperature.

I downloaded CoreTemp to compare the values and it seems those are accurate temperatures.

What do you suggest doing next? The offset worked in altering the voltage, where adding to the multiplier and adjusting the load line setting seemed not to affect it.

So it depends if you want to air on the side of caution and if you want your system 100% stable. Personally looking at the above, unless you're really lucky with your chip, I doubt 1.22v under load at 4.5 would be stable and you're already at 83c on one core after only a very short time. 2-3 hours to get a much better idea on stability and you'd probably be at 85-88c at a guess. 4.5 'normally' takes over 1.25v for full stability - you won't have the headroom in temperature for that keeping things safe. I'd keep that offset and not go higher unless you upgrade your cooling and see how stable 44 is at 1.22v. Run prime for 4-5 hours if you can. Realbench is another one. Test a variety of games. Alternatively you could probably leave your offset at nothing at all, or a max of +0.015 and settle for 4.3 all core to leave things nice and cool. Less strain on the mobo as well. I'd say otherwise if you had better cooling and a better mobo.

Also, if you click start and type in 'event viewer' then click on 'windows logs' and 'system' look out for 'WHEA error' with a yellow sign next to them. They're a sign your cpu isn't stable normally even if you think it is. Raising voltage or lowering clock speed fixes. As I say, I wouldn't raise yours further.

If 44 at 1.22v is stable for you after testing fully, you could get away with raising voltage by +0.005 offset as it's normally good practice to add a fraction to future proof.

 

[Chris Nahhas]

So it depends if you want to air on the side of caution and if you want your system 100% stable. Personally looking at the above, unless you're really lucky with your chip, I doubt 1.22v under load at 4.5 would be stable and you're already at 83c on one core after only a very short time. 2-3 hours to get a much better idea on stability and you'd probably be at 85-88c at a guess. 4.5 'normally' takes over 1.25v for full stability - you won't have the headroom in temperature for that keeping things safe. I'd keep that offset and not go higher unless you upgrade your cooling and see how stable 44 is at 1.22v. Run prime for 4-5 hours if you can. Realbench is another one. Test a variety of games. Alternatively you could probably leave your offset at nothing at all, or a max of +0.015 and settle for 4.3 all core to leave things nice and cool. Less strain on the mobo as well. I'd say otherwise if you had better cooling and a better mobo.

Also, if you click start and type in 'event viewer' then click on 'windows logs' and 'system' look out for 'WHEA error' with a yellow sign next to them. They're a sign your cpu isn't stable normally even if you think it is. Raising voltage or lowering clock speed fixes. As I say, I wouldn't raise yours further.

Thanks so much for the help

I was actually looking at picking up an all in one for the CPU and a new motherboard, because I really want a separate gaming rig, so it's possible I might be looking to increase the overclock a little more if I can get that stuff in place, but yeah, I'll probably leave things as they are for the moment.

And yeah, probably going to remove the offset as things basically seem stable at idle; I'm not seeing any problems with respect to that.

I'm going to stick with 4.5 as I'm not planning on any really super intensive processes; I'm not doing any kind of encoding or video production, just really need it for gaming so I'm sure it should be okay.

EDIT: I checked the Event Log and I have a few driver load failures; would that be symptomatic of instability?

 

[Drollic]

Thanks so much for the help

I was actually looking at picking up an all in one for the CPU and a new motherboard, because I really want a separate gaming rig, so it's possible I might be looking to increase the overclock a little more if I can get that stuff in place, but yeah, I'll probably leave things as they are for the moment.

And yeah, probably going to remove the offset as things basically seem stable at idle; I'm not seeing any problems with respect to that.

I'm going to stick with 4.5 as I'm not planning on any really super intensive processes; I'm not doing any kind of encoding or video production, just really need it for gaming so I'm sure it should be okay.

EDIT: I checked the Event Log and I have a few driver load failures; would that be symptomatic of instability?

Let us know if 4.5 at 1.193v is stable, if so, you're very lucky It's not just about heavy tasks, it could crash whilst playing a 2d game for instance. See how you go.

 

[Chris Nahhas]

Let us know if 4.5 at 1.193v is stable, if so, you're very lucky It's not just about heavy tasks, it could crash whilst playing a 2d game for instance. See how you go.

Okay, will do. I'm probably going to try increasing it a bit more (whilst keeping a very close eye on fan speed and temperatures). I just set it to x46 and the voltage jumped to 1.326, but I also re-enabled automatic offset, so I'm going to turn that off and see if the voltage comes back down. If not, I'll clock it down a little to stay below the voltage spike.

And yeah, I think I got a good chip here. I'm pleased. It might be worth the new motherboard and aio cooler.

Thanks again

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

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?

LLC is there to combat vdroop- the voltage across the chip will drop under load, sometimes causing a bluescreen. LLC steps in to maintain the vcore under load. It doesn't actually 'raise' the vcore. It's basically the guy holding the bottom of the ladder stable... Never heard the 'don't use Extreme' thing. I always did with no issues.

I never got on with offset voltages. I used a fixed vcore of (iirc) 1.28 to start with, which I got down to 1.24 with LLC enabled. This was for a 4.5GHz all-day overclock.
It'd run 4.6 at 1.29, but no amount of tinkering could get it stable past that. 4.7 wouldn't play at all, 4.8 would get into Windows, but crash very shortly afterwards.

Just my two pennyworth...

EDIT I had a Z97 Pro Gamer. Really nice board. If you see one for a good price, I'd say it's worth it.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Oh, and I wouldn't bother with BCLK either. Just OC with the CPU multiplier.

 

[Chris Nahhas]

LLC is there to combat vdroop- the voltage across the chip will drop under load, sometimes causing a bluescreen. LLC steps in to maintain the vcore under load. It doesn't actually 'raise' the vcore. It's basically the guy holding the bottom of the ladder stable... Never heard the 'don't use Extreme' thing. I always did with no issues.

I never got on with offset voltages. I used a fixed vcore of (iirc) 1.28 to start with, which I got down to 1.24 with LLC enabled. This was for a 4.5GHz all-day overclock.
It'd run 4.6 at 1.29, but no amount of tinkering could get it stable past that. 4.7 wouldn't play at all, 4.8 would get into Windows, but crash very shortly afterwards.

Just my two pennyworth...

EDIT I had a Z97 Pro Gamer. Really nice board. If you see one for a good price, I'd say it's worth it.

Thanks, and yeah, I'm not going to touch the base clock. If there's any advantage in raising it alongside the multipliers I wouldn't know what it was.

Also, I'm not going to attempt to get it any higher on air. I've ordered an aio and I'm going to start testing again once it's fitted.

As for LLC, I found a video by a hardware reviewer that explained LLC and he basically says it increases voltage to compensate for the droop but then when the process finishes the extra voltage causes an extra large voltage spike that basically shocks the CPU.

According to him that's bad.

He went on to say that Asus boards are okay with LLC set to "High" but I set mine to that and it didn't seem to make any difference to the voltage. I don't know if that was because it was working properly and/or hadn't yet kicked in but whatever was going on the voltage didn't seem to change.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Essentially, base clock alteration will affect the PCI lanes, memory controller and other bits. My 4770K rig totally refused to boot on anything other than 100. I know some folks had managed 102-103 on the BCLK, but it was a no-go for me. It can introduce new problems with RAM and GPU.

With LLC again: If you- for example- got 4.5gig running with 1.19v and no LLC, got into Windows ok, there's every chance that as soon as you do anything it'll crash with a WHEA error or similar, as the vcore would then drop too low to keep the chip running. The next step (for me) would be to enable high or extreme LLC to try and maintain that 1.19v under load.
If it still crashes, more vcore. If it's fine, then the crashes were from the vdroop. I don't think I've ever run an overclock without LLC of some description, otherwise I'd have to compensate with a higher base vcore, ergo more heat and power usage at idle and low-load. That's my take on it anyway, based on my own experiences. Others may disagree...

I'm going to look into the things the reviewer said. Not heard that, so will do some looking.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Also just remembered something about PLL Overvoltage. Might be worth having a hunt for that in the BIOS. I think* I always had it enabled. This can help keep things stable when OCing, although it can cause a little more heat.

*Pretty sure the 4770K had it. Or it may have been my old 2500K. Brain fade...

 

[Chris Nahhas]

Also just remembered something about PLL Overvoltage. Might be worth having a hunt for that in the BIOS. I think* I always had it enabled. This can help keep things stable when OCing, although it can cause a little more heat.

*Pretty sure the 4770K had it. Or it may have been my old 2500K. Brain fade...

Yeah, I've got that. It's set to auto, so, I don't know if it's kicking in or not, or if it would if I needed it?

The video I found on LLC and why to avoid extreme LLC is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8nFdFpuVBg

I've no idea if he's correct or not but he seems to feel very strongly that setting LLC to extreme is definitely something to be avoided.