No longer able to hit turbo speeds with i7-8700

[m0k]

i7-8700
MSI B360i Gaming ITX
16gb Corsair LPX 2400mhz
GTX 1060
120gb SSD boot drive
Corsair RMx 550W (gold)
Win10 Pro

CPU under load (60-70c)
Good case airflow over VRMs as well

 

When i first built my pc everything was running great. I would open up my HWinfo64 monitor and notice that occasionally one of my cpu cores would hit the advertised 4.6ghz turbo boost speeds. and sometimes under a 2-3 core load some cores would hit 4.4-4.5ghz.

Since the first few days i have updated the MSI bios probably 2-3 times to whatever the current one is - and there have been a few big windows updates as well, i first started with Build 1803 and now im at 1809. 

 

However i did not monitor the fact that at some point during these updates my turboboost would no longer boost single core to 4.6ghz and would also no longer boost 2-3 core load to 4.4ghz-4.5ghz. 

And as it stands now I only see my cores achieve a max turbo speed of 4.3ghz across all 6 cores - REGARDLESS of how many cores are in use. So even if im playing games, or rendering raw files or editing and exporting in premiere, web browsing etc...i would only see a max speed of 4.3ghz.

 

I have never changed any settings in my bios. and i have even done a fresh reinstallation of windows 10 with a new CD Key to see if i could achieve the advertised turbo speeds. Changing power profiles in windows to high performance and ultimate performance dont fix the issue either.

 

Can anyone advise me on why im no longer able to EVER achieve anyhing higher than 4.3ghz? or some other trouble shooting steps that I can try?

[Arttu89]

The most likely thing to mess with the turbo clocks would be the bios. If possible I'd try to revert to the original bios version you had when you started using your motherboard just for the purpose of testing and comparing the bios settings. MSI has all the diffrent bios versions available on the support site for that motherboard. 

 

If an older bios fixes it then write down all the settings, install the newer version and check it's all set the same.

[m0k]

Just now, Arttu89 said:

The most likely thing to mess with the turbo clocks would be the bios. If possible I'd try to revert to the original bios version you had when you started using your motherboard just for the purpose of testing and comparing the bios settings. MSI has all the diffrent bios versions available on the support site for that motherboard. 

 

If an older bios fixes it then write down all the settings, install the newer version and check it's all set the same.

do motherboards allow for older bios to be installed? just worried im going to brick it.

[Froody129]

2 minutes ago, mok said:

do motherboards allow for older bios to be installed? just worried im going to brick it.

Yes they do. Most people don't bother updating BIOS unless they have a problem or there is a significant security update available. BIOS flashing is high risk and installing a new one when you don't have problems might give you new problems. 

 

 

[Arttu89]

9 minutes ago, mok said:

do motherboards allow for older bios to be installed? just worried im going to brick it.

It should install whatever you tell it to install, might just prompt you that you're trying to install an older version and ask if you're sure.

 

With regards to bricking, the chances for that are the same regardless of whether you're doing an upgrade or a downgrade, given you said you did 2-3 bios updates so far and didn't mention having problems doing them I believe you'll manage just fine, but the risk is always there.

 

Also if the older version works fine, you might just want to stick with instead of trying to make the new version work.

[m0k]

4 hours ago, Froody129 said:

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Arttu89 said:

 

so i guess thats where im a little conflicted, the bios updates i did were mostly because of the descriptions provided " Update Intel Micro code for security vulnerabilities"

 

[m0k]

Alright so i have gone back and re-installed three of the previous BIOS version and played with every possible setting related to turbo boost and boost behavior and multipliers. even though every monitoring app reports 46x multiplier as being the highest for my chip. it doesnt seem like i will ever be able to reach 4.6ghz again.

 

Even Intel XTU no longer allows me to change multipliers even though i used to be able to when i first put my system together...i can only conclude that there was some sort of microcode update to the CPU or motherboard  that no longer allows for these changes to be made.

 

TLDR: i'm SOL