i7 9700k running at max speeds constantly

[Isaki]

Today I upgraded from my old i5 4690k to a new i7 9700k with an Asus Maximus XI Hero motherboard. I've enabled the AI to overclock in the bios settings which put the max frequency 5.3Ghz on all cores. The problem is that my CPU will now only run at 5.3Ghz.

 

I tried turning off the AI overclock, but it still runs at max clock speeds (4.8Gghz). I've already checked that the power plan in windows has the minimum processor state at 5%, and from looking at the graphs on MSI afterburner, I can see that it drops to ~800Mhz but only very very briefly before jumping back to the highest clock speed. 

 

My old CPU would usually idle between 800Mhz and 1.8Ghz, so I'm not sure if this is a problem or if the newer Intel CPUs just idle high. It's not too big of an issue as my idle temperature at 5.3Ghz is ~45 degrees, but i would like to have it drop to lower speeds when not heavily in use. Does anyone know what could be causing it to idle so high?

 

Thanks

[SkyHound0202]

Is there a background application, like a virus scan or Windows update, that is hogging all the resource and keeping the processor at its maximum state? Or did you select "High Performance" power plan instead of "Balanced"?

 

If not, then there's a probably a problem with power saving options being disabled in BIOS or other overclocking/power related problems.

[ch3w2oy]

I would just keep it at 5.3ghz if it's stable.. That's just the frequency it's running at, doesn't mean the processor is at 100% utilization.. It's nothing more than the speed it's operating at.. It's also not pulling the full power that it would need to run at 5.3ghz with 100% utilization..

 

I ran my 9700K at 5.2ghz all core as well with a manual OC.. 5.3 is really good but it may not be stable, I would run some stability tests before leaving it at that 24/7..

 

Run Prime95 for stability testing and use HWInfo > Sensors Only and you will see what I mean.. The power draw will increase significantly under 100% load using that program.. Aida64 Is also great and is what I use most of the time.. Chances are you might crash if you haven't tested 5.3ghz yet, so just restart your computer if that happens and manually lower your core ratio in the BIOS and try again.. Keep trying until you're stable..

 

You might also be able to lower your voltage in the BIOS.. Do you know what voltage it's running at? You might be able to get idle temps down.. You might have to bring it down to 5.2/5.1 to get decent temps and an acceptable voltage anyway.. Run some tests and get more info for us..

[Isaki]

1 minute ago, ch3w2oy said:

I would just keep it at 5.3ghz if it's stable.. That's just the frequency it's running at, doesn't mean the processor is at 100% utilization.. It's nothing more than the speed it's operating at.. It's also not pulling the full power that it would need to run at 5.3ghz with 100% utilization..

 

I ran my 9700K at 5.2ghz all core as well with a manual OC.. 5.3 is really good but it may not be stable, I would run some stability tests before leaving it at that 24/7..

  

Run Prime95 for stability testing and use HWInfo > Sensors Only and you will see what I mean.. The power draw will increase significantly under 100% load using that program.. Aida64 Is also great and is what I use most of the time.. Chances are you might crash if you haven't tested 5.3ghz yet, so just restart your computer if that happens and manually lower your core ratio in the BIOS and try again.. Keep trying until you're stable..

  

You might also be able to lower your voltage in the BIOS.. Do you know what voltage it's running at? You might be able to get idle temps down.. You might have to bring it down to 5.2/5.1 to get decent temps and an acceptable voltage..

HWMonitor says that the voltage is 1.393v.

 

I would like to leave it at 5.3Ghz or similar, but I thought that when there were few programs running the CPU was meant to downclock to avoid using power / lower temps, which is what my old CPU did. 

[Isaki]

7 minutes ago, SkyHound0202 said:

Is there a background application, like a virus scan or Windows update, that is hogging all the resource and keeping the processor at its maximum state? Or did you select "High Performance" power plan instead of "Balanced"?

  

If not, then there's a probably a problem with power saving options being disabled in BIOS or other overclocking/power related problems.

Looking at task manager the CPU utilization is only around 10%, with the highest usage being iCue at ~3%. When I closed that the clock speed dropped down to between 1.9 and 4.8Ghz Which is much more reasonable. I guess it must be making the CPU run at 100% despite having low usage.

[ch3w2oy]

8 minutes ago, Lord_Danalite said:

HWMonitor says that the voltage is 1.393v.

 

I would like to leave it at 5.3Ghz or similar, but I thought that when there were few programs running the CPU was meant to downclock to avoid using power / lower temps, which is what my old CPU did. 

There's a way to do that I believe but I wouldn't really worry about it.. It's not hurting anything.. I would still run stability tests.. Otherwise you might get a crash one day and not know why..

 

My 9700k was 5.2 @ 1.32v and -2 AVX offset..

 

3 minutes ago, Lord_Danalite said:

Looking at task manager the CPU utilization is only around 10%, with the highest usage being iCue at ~3%. When I closed that the clock speed dropped down to between 1.9 and 4.8Ghz Which is much more reasonable. I guess it must be making the CPU run at 100% despite having low usage.

Yea, so maybe even background tasks are telling the CPU cores to run at the frequency you set.. Which means your CPU is working and is perfectly fine..

[TomvanWijnen]

Perhaps it's on "high performance mode"? I believe (not sure though) that this (sometimes?) caused your CPU to be maxed all the time.

 

("hoge prestaties" = "high performance")

[Isaki]

After looking into it more, I'm almost certain that iCue is causing the issue. It seems that iCue has issues with high resource usage, especially with the RGB ram.

[ch3w2oy]

21 minutes ago, Lord_Danalite said:

After looking into it more, I'm almost certain that iCue is causing the issue. It seems that iCue has issues with high resource usage, especially with the RGB ram.

Yupp, depends what you have Icue operating.. Right now I have headphones and my RGB corsair keyboard and Icue is using 73mb Memory and 0-0.1% CPU, "very low"..

 

You're going to have background tasks running, if you need the programs running I wouldn't worry about it.. It's not like you're running extra electricity through the processor to maintain 5.3ghz for no reason..

 

I have my Ryzen 2600 at 4.1 with 1.38v at the moment and I have 6 Chrome tabs, afterburner, Icue, Roccat soffware and AMD settings running and my CPU is <6% and memory is 24%..

 

You're frequency isn't going to wear your processor out any faster.. And I don't think the lower frequency will save enough power to justify lowering it while not being utilized..

 

Here are screenshots of power draw before 100% CPU utilization and after 100% utilization, while running 4.1GHz full time, pumping full power into the processor..

 

[Isaki]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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33 minutes ago, ch3w2oy said:

Yupp, depends what you have Icue operating.. Right now I have headphones and my RGB corsair keyboard and Icue is using 73mb Memory and 0-0.1% CPU, "very low"..

 

You're going to have background tasks running, if you need the programs running I wouldn't worry about it.. It's not like you're running extra electricity through the processor to maintain 5.3ghz for no reason..

 

The problem is that over time the idle temp will climb to around 50 degrees, which is way higher than I would like.

 

It also seems that it's not just iCue, having any slightly intensive program open causes the CPU clock speed to lock at max.