Poor overclocking i5-9600K on Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro

[Prodigy6]

I've been running it all at stock for a few weeks without a hitch now so decided it was time to try some overclocking. I had a good read around about what I might expect to get from the CPU and expected 4.8-5GHz with a vcore around 1.35v. First I tried the "easy" option using the Gigabyte EasyTune application (based on past experience of my Asus Z97 Pro Gamer which the Asus AI suite was lovely on). Needless to say this was not a good place to start, the software prompted for a restart, came back up, counted down from 30 then froze, nothing, had to hard reset to get it back.

So I thought I'd find me some guide on doing it all from the bios and found Gigabyte have published their own guide for the Z390 boards and this cpu, win! https://www.gigabyte.com/FileUpload/Global/multimedia/2/file/525/946.pdf

So I followed this guide to the letter, trying for 4.8GHz to start as that seemed reasonable, but to no avail. So yesterday I started at the bottom and worked my way up, I could only get my system to boot at 4.3GHz with vcore in auto so @ 1.2V. Anything higher than 4.3GHz wouldn't POST even at 1.4V. All using the XMP profile for the RAM.

As far as I can see 4.3 isn't really an overclock as the Intel Turbo Boost runs up to that as standard.

Any hints and tips would be much appreciated as I'm currently really disappointed with this board and I'm wondering if it's faulty or I'm just being an idiot?!

Systems spec in sig.

 

[pastymuncher]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

I would say that you either have a truly abysmal cpu (not that likely) or you are doing something wrong.

I have the same cpu and board and went straight in at 5Ghz with 1.35v vcore, LLC set to the middle level and it worked first time. Don't think I changed anything else. Memory on the other hand I spent days tweaking to find the sweet spot. Unfortunately my cpu won't do 5Ghz with any lower voltage and won't clock any higher with more voltage so I found it's limit purely by chance on the first go, which is just as well because the bios compared to the Asus boards that I am used to is just terrible.

 

[Prodigy6]

Thanks for the feedback, I think it's possible I have a dodgy board. I agree the Asus bios was much nicer to work with.

 

[Prodigy6]

If you've got a very similar setup could you let me know exactly what settings worked for you? Since playing with LLC (now in high) I've now got it to boot at 4.8GHz 1.35v. I didn't touck LLC before so you've already got me looking in the right place in this god awful bios!