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How To Overclock Your CPU: Intel Haswell & Haswell-Refresh CPU Overclocking Guide (4670K, 4770K, 4690K, 4790K, 5820K, 5930K, 5960X)

Intel Haswell & Haswell-Refresh CPU Overclocking Guide

Click HERE For The Printer Friendly Version (Google Docs)

 

Prepared by @BigDay

Credit goes to my overclocking mentor, @ProKoN

ProKoN's Guide: Intel Haswell 4670k + 4770K Overclocking guide

Last Updated: February 8, 2016

 

My Overclocked 4670K:

4.6 GHz Core @ 1.32 Vcore

4.5 GHz Cache @ 1.32 Vring

 

My Other Guides:

NVIDIA & AMD Graphics Card Overclocking Guide

Noctua vs Corsair Fan Guide

 

**For the most up to date version of this guide, please refer to the printer friendly version (link above)**

 

**Since the LTT forums have changed styles and removed spoilers, the entire guide will only be available on Google Docs. Click the link above**

Edited by BigDay

BigDay

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Set text color to automatic please for night theme users. 

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You might want to change the color of the text, this kinda doesn't work with dark theme ;)

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Did you seriously just recommend finding the right VCore manual voltage for your overclock, then at the last step change VCore back to adaptive?

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Did you seriously just recommend finding the right VCore manual voltage for your overclock, then at the last step change VCore back to adaptive?

 

yes. once you enable the other haswell power saving features, the core frequency and vcore will both downclock during periods of low use. you brought this issue up before, but i am perplexed as to why you think this is a bad idea. this has been recommended countless times and is even mentioned in prokon's guide. i don't appreciate your tone.

BigDay

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yes. once you enable the other haswell power saving features, the core frequency and vcore will both downclock during periods of low use. you brought this issue up before, but i am perplexed as to why you think this is a bad idea. this has been recommended countless times and is even mentioned in prokon's guide. i don't appreciate your tone.

I'm pointing it out because it's just wrong. I don't appreciate you having a guide that gets wrong a basic step and could lead to potential problems and even damage if anyone follows your guide. Adaptive voltage might be fine for a mild overclock if you don't stress it, but clearly going by your guide that's not what your target is. I mean, why bother figuring out the minimum voltage necessary for your overclock if you're just going to run on adaptive anyway? It makes no sense. Adaptive not only allows, but is purposely for voltage spikes during loads, which unfortunately can lead to more heat than you tested for, which means thermal throttling, not to mention the potential reduced CPU lifespan due to higher voltage. If you tested stable at 1.3V 4.8GHz and were in safe temps on a program that doesn't cause the most heat, like Aida64, then turn on adaptive and do some real-world crunching like rendering, there's a high likelihood of temperature spiking due to overvolting and then thermal throttling. I would have thought this would be obvious.

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I'm pointing it out because it's just wrong. I don't appreciate you having a guide that gets wrong a basic step. Adaptive voltage might be fine for a mild overclock if you don't stress it, but clearly going by your guide that's not what your target is. I mean, why bother figuring out the minimum voltage necessary for your overclock if you're just going to run on adaptive anyway? It makes no sense. Adaptive not only allows, put is purposely for voltage spikes during loads, which unfortunately can lead to more heat than you tested for, which means thermal throttling, not to mention the potential reduced CPU lifespan due to higher voltage. If you tested stable at 1.3V 4.8GHz and were in safe temps on a program that doesn't cause the most heat, like Aida64, then turn on adaptive and do some real-world crunching like rendering, there's a high likelihood of temperature spiking due to overvolting and then thermal throttling. I would have thought this would be obvious.

 

in my experience, as long as you set your Vcore to a certain value and set it's mode to adaptive, it will not venture too far away from the specific voltage value. i have never heard of the issue that you brought up. even linus says to put voltage back to adaptive once you're done overclocking and so do many other overclockers whom i've interacted with. i'm willing to accept your position, but only if i see proof. maybe @ProKoN can chime in here.

BigDay

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in my experience, as long as you set your Vcore to a certain value and set it's mode to adaptive, it will not venture too far away from the specific voltage value. i have never heard of the issue that you brought up. even linus says to put voltage back to adaptive once you're done overclocking and so do many other overclockers whom i've interacted with. i'm willing to accept your position, but only if i see proof. maybe @ProKoN can chime in here.

Linus' video in question specifically warns of what I was just talking about and is a guide for only mild overclocks.  He also specifically says that if you keep adaptive on you have to stay away from certain programs that stress your CPU in certain ways (like Prime95 does, remember Prime95 isn't magic, it's just a program running on your computer) because voltage and heat will spike and lead to problems. Most people will never encounter a full load across all cores because they only game or do other light work, but for those of us who do, adaptive voltage is a big no-no. Besides, the only benefit is savings on your electrical bill when your PC isn't in use, so it's not really something gamers care about anyway. I personally wouldn't take the risk. I'd much rather decide what voltage is safe rather than let my motherboard do it for me because I can stress test and check voltages, and my motherboard just has to guess and err on the side of caution. If a mode existed that you could set a voltage curve by CPU speed like you can currently do with a fan curve by CPU temps, then I'd be all for that mode, but I haven't heard of one yet.

 

edit: I suppose if you really wanted to save power, you could put a lower manual CPU Vcore in and then add in an offset to get to your final VCore, but that doesn't give you the option to control any kind of voltage curve. I'd still take this option over adaptive though.

Edited by Lotus
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Linus' video in question specifically warns of what I was just talking about and is a guide for only mild overclocks.  He also specifically says that if you keep adaptive on you have to stay away from certain programs that stress your CPU in certain ways (like Prime95 does, remember Prime95 isn't magic, it's just a program running on your computer) because voltage and heat will spike and lead to problems. Most people will never encounter a full load across all cores because they only game or do other light work, but for those of us who do, adaptive voltage is a big no-no. Besides, the only benefit is savings on your electrical bill when your PC isn't in use, so it's not really something gamers care about anyway. I personally wouldn't take the risk. I'd much rather decide what voltage is safe rather than let my motherboard do it for me because I can stress test and check voltages, and my motherboard just has to guess and err on the side of caution. If a mode existed that you could set a voltage curve by CPU speed like you can currently do with a fan curve by CPU temps, then I'd be all for that mode, but I haven't heard of one yet.

 

edit: I suppose if you really wanted to save power, you could put a lower manual CPU Vcore in and then add in an offset to get to your final VCore, but that doesn't give you the option to control any kind of voltage curve. I'd still take this option over adaptive though.

 

in my guide, i tell users to only stress test using static voltages for this reason. i also tell them not to use any other stress testing program besides xtu because almost everything else will overvolt your cpu.

 

i understand your concern regarding rendering loads and programs that aren't stress tests that may induce a high cpu load, but this is something i've never had an issue with personally. i will test this out for myself and monitor any potentially unsafe voltage spikes.

 

i believe that the load induced by stress testing programs is different than real world loads induced by software programs that require a high level of cpu usage. synthetic stress tests create significantly more heat and some of them use avx instructions which are very demanding.

BigDay

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in my guide, i tell users to only stress test using static voltages for this reason. i also tell them not to use any other stress testing program besides xtu because almost everything else will overvolt your cpu.

 

i understand your concern regarding rendering loads and programs that aren't stress tests that may induce a high cpu load, but this is something i've never had an issue with personally. i will test this out for myself and monitor any potentially unsafe voltage spikes.

 

i believe that the load induced by stress testing programs is different than real world loads induced by software programs that require a high level of cpu usage. synthetic stress tests create significantly more heat and some of them use avx instructions which are very demanding.

Encoding based on FFmpeg is the most common AVX instruction set you'll see, but so will any program that was compiled with newer intel compilers which is admittedly rare, but you do see them. Basically people have been shying away from Prime95 for this reason even though you do encounter it in the "wild" too. I believe folding at home and other kinds of loads like that (distributed computing, mining, etc) also support AVX instructions, but don't hold me to that as I'm not sure.

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nice refresh! skimmed through it quickly. 9.3.1 ASUS adptive mode needs revision. The info you provided is wrong. will post a screenie or video for asus later.

 

I obviously recommend users run adaptive voltage only after they have found stability stress testing with a static voltage. since all the stress testing programs overvolt on adaptive voltage with only 2 exceptions to the rule. xtu stress test asus real beanch

 

i have not come across any real world program (avx avx2 or fma enabled) that overvolts when using adaptive voltage. if anyone knows of a real world  game or program that overvolts when using adaptive voltage please point it out.

 

haswell is a modern \ efficient design. 99.0% of people want to use the low power features when their PC is idle or doing very little  work.  while i agree that power consumption or cpu degradation is not an issue if using a manual voltage for daily operation, I still appreciate modern\ efficient designs.

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nice refresh! skimmed through it quickly. 9.3.1 ASUS adptive mode needs revision. The info you provided is wrong. will post a screenie or video for asus later.

 

I obviously recommend users run adaptive voltage only after they have found stability stress testing with a static voltage. since all the stress testing programs overvolt on adaptive voltage with only 2 exceptions to the rule. xtu stress test asus real beanch

 

i have not come across any real world program (avx avx2 or fma enabled) that overvolts when using adaptive voltage. if anyone knows of a real world  game or program that overvolts when using adaptive voltage please point it out.

 

haswell is a modern \ efficient design. 99.0% of people want to use the low power features when their PC is idle or doing very little  work.  while i agree that power consumption or cpu degradation is not an issue if using a manual voltage for daily operation, I still appreciate modern\ efficient designs.

 

thanks for the support and your take on adaptive voltage prokon. i'll change the asus uefi/bios information as soon as i get the screenshot from you.

BigDay

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here are the adaptive settings for asus.

 

 

Fully manual mode - Disabled

 

 

CPU core voltage- Adaptive mode

 

Additional turbo mode cpu core voltage - input your core voltage here. in my example I use 1.3V

 

CPU cache voltage - Adaptive mode

 

Additional turbo mode cache voltage- input your cache voltage here. in my example I use 1.3V

 

ka42zn.jpg

 

 

Mainboard Asrock Z170 OCF CPU 6700k RAM Tridentz 3600 HDD Intel 730 240gb GPU GTX 780ti sc acx PSU Silverstone Strider 1200W  Case Antec 900 Laptop Lenovo Thinkpad T520 build log-   http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/35809-antec-900-the-re-birth-of-a-legend/ Check out the Tech Center https://www.youtube.com/user/prokon24/videos LTT's Unicore King

 

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July 21, 2015:

  • Updated the "9.3.1. Setting Adaptive Voltages on ASUS Motherboards" section on both the thread and google document to reflect the most recent UEFI/BIOS update for Asus motherboards. This section now clearly shows the correct way to set adaptive voltages. Thanks for the information @ProKoN

BigDay

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July 27, 2015:

 

Added the following section to the guide:

 

Setting A Quick, Dirty, & Effective Overclock

BigDay

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Update: August 3, 2015:

 

Added a new section with photos to the "9. Enabling Haswell Power Saving Features" section

 

9.3.2. Setting Adaptive Voltages on ASRock Motherboards

To enable adaptive core (Vcore) and cache (Vring) voltages on your ASRock motherboard:

  • Boot into your UEFI/BIOS

  • Select the “OC Tweaker” tab at the top of the screen and adjust the following settings under the “FIVR Configuration” heading:

    • CPU Voltage Mode

    • CPU Adaptive Voltage

    • CPU Cache Voltage Mode

    • CPU Cache Adaptive Voltage

BigDay

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  • 2 months later...

Would you say this guide applies fairly well to Skylake as well?

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Would you say this guide applies fairly well to Skylake as well?

 

i'm not sure. i haven't had the chance to overclock skylake. i would think some of it would apply...

BigDay

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Thanks for the reply..I will probably just stick with the Skylake guide on OCN. The guide just isn't very detailed over there and yours is.

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Thanks for the reply..I will probably just stick with the Skylake guide on OCN. The guide just isn't very detailed over there and yours is.

 

please go over your bios options and see if any of the material in my guide can be applied. i would assume that a higher core clock would require a higher vcore even in skylake. at the same time, i would also assume that a higher cache ratio (if that exists in skylake) would require a higher vring.

 

let me know

 

thanks

BigDay

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Greetings, BigDay!  First and foremost thank you so much for putting this together. I'm going to be doing an overclock on my 4790K and ASUS Maximus VII Formula and this guide is very clear and precise in its instructions and I appreciate that to no end. 

 

I do have one question...other guides I have read instruct me to "Sync All Cores" under "CPU Core Ratio" (this of course using the ASUS BIOS UEFI) but I see no specific mention of this in your guide, is something that is covered when I set the optimized defaults?

 

Thank you again.

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Greetings, BigDay!  First and foremost thank you so much for putting this together. I'm going to be doing an overclock on my 4790K and ASUS Maximus VII Formula and this guide is very clear and precise in its instructions and I appreciate that to no end. 

 

I do have one question...other guides I have read instruct me to "Sync All Cores" under "CPU Core Ratio" (this of course using the ASUS BIOS UEFI) but I see no specific mention of this in your guide, is something that is covered when I set the optimized defaults?

 

Thank you again.

 

thanks for reading the guide and thanks for the comments!

 

sync all cores is fine if you'd like to enable it. you want all the cores to be the same anyways. use whatever settings optimized defaults sets in place.

BigDay

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Thanks for the response, I've found a stable Core ratio of 48 at 1.35V for my 4790K and am starting to work on finding Cache and Vring. I do have another question, when I'm setting Cache ratio in ASUS UEFI do I input the same number into both min and max settings or just max?

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