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*** The Official Alder Lake owners thread ***

mrk said:
BIOS installed, nothing of note so far but I simply restored the saved settings lol so not flicked to XMP and still using manually set RAM settings. If it still doesn't work I cba with opening the case up to clear CMOS.

I will just leave the RAM manually configured to XMP I think.
Click to expand...

I have never been able to restore settings on a Gigabyte board after a BIOS flash, much to my annoyance. It would always inform me that due to the settings being from a previous BIOS they can't be restored. I would prefer to enter them back in, but at times, especially with so many overclock settings, it was a pain. I used to save screenshots on my phone to guide me through the settings...!
I didn't know that it would hard lock for you in that way, if you tried to use the XMP settings. When my Z390 Master board would not use the correct setting for XMP Profile 1 it would just use a default 2133Mhz setting, with the wrong timings and voltage.
Hopefully Gigabyte will resolve the DDR4 issues in time, other manufacturers are also having issues in that respect.

At least it flashed for you ok.
 
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Vimes said:
I have never been able to restore settings on a Gigabyte board after a BIOS flash, much to my annoyance. It would always inform me that due to the settings being from a previous BIOS they can't be restored. I would prefer to enter them back in, but at times, especially with so many overclock settings, it was a pain. I used to save screenshots on my phone to guide me through the settings...!
I didn't know that it would hard lock for you in that way, if you tried to use the XMP settings. When my Z390 Master board would not use the correct setting for XMP Profile 1 it would just use a default 2133Mhz setting, with the wrong timings and voltage.
Hopefully Gigabyte will resolve the DDR4 issues in time, other manufacturers are also having issues in that respect.

At least it flashed for you ok.
Click to expand...

Did you try restoring from a saved settings file on a USB stick? That's what I just did and that worked perfect for both Fan profiles and BIOS settings! From now on I am saving any BIOS changes to USB and restoring from that.
 
mrk said:
Did you try restoring from a saved settings file on a USB stick? That's what I just did and that worked perfect for both Fan profiles and BIOS settings! From now on I am saving any BIOS changes to USB and restoring from that.
Click to expand...


I have just built up my 12700k using a gigabyte motherboard. Flashed it to the latest BIOS and, thankfully, it picked up my Corsair Sticks fine with their XMP profile, including timings and voltage of 1.35v.



I have saved my BIOS settings and Fan profile to a stick

Do you use system fans in your PC and a AIO...? If so what is the noise like until Windows boots...?
 
Vimes said:
I have just built up my 12700k using a gigabyte motherboard. Flashed it to the latest BIOS and, thankfully, it picked up my Corsair Sticks fine with their XMP profile, including timings and voltage of 1.35v.


I have saved my BIOS settings and Fan profile to a stick

Do you use system fans in your PC and a AIO...? If so what is the noise like until Windows boots...?
Click to expand...

I do yes, on my build there are 2x exhaust fans, 120mm and a 140mm Arctic PST PWM pair. The intake fans are basically the AIO (Freezer II 280mm) with the default Arctic PST fans it comes with. but in pull configuration through the radiator. Both fans are decoupled from the radiator pump header and instead plugged into a CPU_FAN header via a PWM fan splitter so both fans go into the one header on the mobo and the rad's pump header is plugged into the AIO PUMP header (basically a glorified SYS_FAN header from all I can tell.

All fan profiles in the BIOS are manually set and look like this:


At startup before Windows logon starts the fans are at what sounds like the default normal profile from the BIOS, soon as Windows logon screen loads the speeds go to whatever profile settings you have for the fans. In my case it's just slightly audible during POST, then as next to totally silent during and after logon as the speeds are sub 700rpm with these fans.

Also, your board may well make the coil whine noise if your fans are silent so you can actually hear it. To remove the whine go into CPU advanced settings and set C-State control to enabled then in the sub section turn off C1E. Makes no difference to idle power state or frequency as Windows Balanced power profile handles that and will still throttle down to like 500MHz etc when needed so you don't actually compromise anything and lose the whine which is great.
 
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@mrk Thanks for that :)

I did not realise that adjusting all the fan profiles, three PWM system groups and the the Arctic Freezer II AIO the system needed to be shutdown and then restarted and that means start up is fine, no sounding like a helicopter.

I read read in the Cinebench thread of you enabling MCE and then disabling it after throttling and heat was an issue. I have seen, typically in my experience with a Gigabyte board, that this gigabyte behaves the same. It will over volt the CPU on the vcore when under full load. That is manageable but unless it is done then the likes of Cinebench R23 will throttle. MCE is right to use but the high vcore by default is an issue. I have dropped mine under full load to around 1.32v for a 5.1Ghz P Core and a 4Ghz E Core.....

Cinebench-Gigabyte.png




I know it can go lower but one of the first indicators of an issue with that, for me, is not full load stuff but when, for example, waking up from Sleep. I could change that as at the moment my adaptive is running in legacy mode.

Take a look at those temps on the P and E cores, that's at the overclock setting whilst running.

Thanks again for that video, useful to see :)
 
Ah does that mean you have MCE turned on but with a manual vcore set? Be interesting to play around with that as technically not OCing but UVing right but letting the cores hit and stay at max boost without the temp issues of the overvolting the board would do by default.
 
At the moment, literally just finished taking my MSI system apart and building with this Gigabyte board so things to do as yet, I have enabled vcore to be "Normal" you have to do that if you are using an offset voltage and so in the firsts you can see "Normal" is selected for Internal CPU vcore. You have to select Normal for the offset to be applied.



and LLC is at Medium



perhaps the most elegant way of doing it, no time as yet, is to not go for legacy but to use "Selection" for when the offset is applied.



Note the offset is a negative value due to the vcore being given too much.

The above are my initial settings, the board is only just up and going.
Somewhat new to AL and this board :)
 
Very cool, I will have a play around with that in time, as you have the same board will await your thoughts and then copy your settings for that side of things if you don't mind :D

I'm all for a small performance bump without resorting to actual OCing!
 
Tiggerlator said:
Gorgeous. i would have hacksawed the bottom off the GPU support bar that came with the case though. I have same case and will get the front dist plate myself at some point.
Click to expand...

That was the plan, however the card is SO heavy now with a normal block and the active backplate I applied some plastic washers to the back of the gpu support and decided to leave it as extra leverage / support.

In the meantime.

Top radiator in with lian-li unifans as they have matching black and silver contrasts.

Glass tubing because why not.

IMG-20211212-150102.jpg
 
@mrk I watched a video about a roundup of motherboards for the Z690 and, I suppose, it was accurate. But if you are aware of some boards simply overvolting by default then it is easy enough to change and this graph......



does make some look worse than others, when that isn't necessarily the case.. I understand other factors can be involved. But by default my Gigabyte board was putting through around 1.4v or so when Cinebench was first ran, albeit LLC on medium and overclocked settings.

If you do not wish to overclock that's fine but by default, IIRC, the CPU / board will boost to a safe limit but, imo, the board itself tends to overvolt for that, well at least mine does.

EDIT: I *think* that you have the Gaming X - well I went for the Aorus Elite DDR4 board....

Z690 AORUS ELITE DDR4 (rev. 1.0) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

very similar settings, if not the same.
 
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Tiggerlator said:
Does the front glass panel still go on with the dist plate there?

I have my eye on one for my case :D

Can't wait to see it finished.
Click to expand...

It does as long as you don't put the drain port on the front. Some went with 3 radiators and had to put the drain port on the front.
 
Vimes said:
@mrk I watched a video about a roundup of motherboards for the Z690 and, I suppose, it was accurate. But if you are aware of some boards simply overvolting by default then it is easy enough to change and this graph......



does make some look worse than others, when that isn't necessarily the case.. I understand other factors can be involved. But by default my Gigabyte board was putting through around 1.4v or so when Cinebench was first ran, albeit LLC on medium and overclocked settings.

If you do not wish to overclock that's fine but by default, IIRC, the CPU / board will boost to a safe limit but, imo, the board itself tends to overvolt for that, well at least mine does.

EDIT: I *think* that you have the Gaming X - well I went for the Aorus Elite DDR4 board....

Z690 AORUS ELITE DDR4 (rev. 1.0) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

very similar settings, if not the same.
Click to expand...


Ah yes I do have the Gaming X, I guess if the BIOS version is the same then the settings and parameters used are going to be the same as well.
 
kindai said:
Currently mulling a 3rd rad option tbh.
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How thick are you going for the bottom radiator? 60mm is going to be hella tight to get your hand in there to have the drain port on the inside. Plus it wont be good getting the flow to drain out and over the thick radiator.

There might even be space at the bottom back pulling the side radiator up. It'll be tight on the hand no doubt. Though you already have the pipes in place instead of that route.
 
Still pending here too.

Quick question for those using the Asus Strix D4 board, I've installed two NVMe drives ( one in the first slot below gpu, and another in the bottom slot of the board) I was just wondering if it makes any difference to speed or performance where I put them.
 
@uksoldierboy Can't you read you manual to see what slots affect what..?

When I had my MSI 690 Pro I could use all four with, apparently, no implications.

With my new Gigabyte board I can use the first three, which I have, and then the forth will disable two SATA ports if used with a NVME type drive.

The slots themselves are all rated the same in terms of performance.
 
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