CPU Overclock - Manual or Adaptive?

[DotoreN]

I am relatively new to CPU overclocking. I currently put my i7 4790k from stock 4k to 4.5k ghz

 

I put vcore voltage at 1.25v and cache 1.15 and it runs stable on manual.

 

Do I have to put it on adaptive if I wanna keep cstates/speedstep on or can I keep it on manual?

 

[Labeled]

you can do adaptive, but you'll have to take some time to find the right offset, as far as I know, you set an offset not a range. so you might set it higher than you need on accident.

[Hans Power]

Offset works fine for my i5 4690k. But the correct value isn't obvious because the stock VCore (or the offset) might show the wrong value in the BIOS. For me it said that the stock voltage was at 1.080v but I had to increase offset to +0.060v to get to 1.210v max voltage which obviously doesn't quite add up. It's 100% stable, tho, even for AVX workloads.

[DotoreN]

16 hours ago, Labeled said:

you can do adaptive, but you'll have to take some time to find the right offset, as far as I know, you set an offset not a range. so you might set it higher than you need on accident.

 

12 hours ago, Hans Power said:

Offset works fine for my i5 4690k. But the correct value isn't obvious because the stock VCore (or the offset) might show the wrong value in the BIOS. For me it said that the stock voltage was at 1.080v but I had to increase offset to +0.060v to get to 1.210v max voltage which obviously doesn't quite add up. It's 100% stable, tho, even for AVX workloads.

I'm currently running 4.5ghz on manual and put cstates/speedstep on, it's now changing in steps of 100mz depending on how much performance it needs, so I think i'll keep it at this. Just a quick question; I have 1333mhz and 1600mhz RAM sticks in my computer and it runs at the lowest ram (1333) because it matches the lowest performing one. Can I just set the DRAM frequency to 1600mhz without adjusting voltage or will this be bad for my 1333mhz stick?

[Hans Power]

On 2/23/2019 at 2:11 AM, DotoreN said:

 

I'm currently running 4.5ghz on manual and put cstates/speedstep on, it's now changing in steps of 100mz depending on how much performance it needs, so I think i'll keep it at this. Just a quick question; I have 1333mhz and 1600mhz RAM sticks in my computer and it runs at the lowest ram (1333) because it matches the lowest performing one. Can I just set the DRAM frequency to 1600mhz without adjusting voltage or will this be bad for my 1333mhz stick?

Well, that would mean you'd overclock the memory which means that it might crash with a bluescreen or other instabilities but without a voltage increase you won't damage your RAM permanently.

[Hans Power]

Just wanted to mention another thing I figured out while overclocking my i5 4690k - make sure to disable the C1E and C6/7 C-States (you can leave C3 on). With those on my system was stable under load but became unstable during long idle periods.

[DotoreN]

6 hours ago, Hans Power said:

Just wanted to mention another thing I figured out while overclocking my i5 4690k - make sure to disable the C1E and C6/7 C-States (you can leave C3 on). With those on my system was stable under load but became unstable during long idle periods.

Haven't yet noticed any problems with cstates on yet.

What exactly does disabling c1e and c6/7cstates do?

[Hans Power]

4 hours ago, DotoreN said:

Haven't yet noticed any problems with cstates on yet.

What exactly does disabling c1e and c6/7cstates do?

Those underclock and undervolt the CPU even further when the system sits on idle to save power. What I noticed was that when I left the system on over night and came back the next morning it was completely frozen - not even a bluescreen or an entry in the reliability report. I could leave the system on all day without it crashing, tho, while doing something with it - it had to be in idle state for over 2 hrs at least for that to happen. With those C-States disabled, tho, it didn't happen again.

Here's an overclocking guide for Haswell, btw, which I found pretty useful. https://community.hwbot.org/topic/103948-sins-ultimate-gigabyte-z97x-overclocking-guide/ The guy recommends disabling those c-states I mentioned but doesn't explain, why. Well, I guess now I know.