Hows My (Automatic) Liquid Metal Overclock? (4790k)

[GuruMeditationError]

I've used my motherboard's automatic optimisation features to overclock my 4790k

This is what it's given me:

 

Frequency: 4625MHz
Vcore:1.36v

Bclk: 125.0MHz

Ratio: 37x

 

Is this a sloppy overclock? Can it be tweaked?

It's been a while since I built my last P.C. so I've more or less forgotten almost everything I learned about overclocking.

As for performance: 

I don't know what the room temperature is here but, running Prime95 with the overclock, the CPU temp I'm getting settles at 15C hotter than the System temp. (43C (CPU) & 28C (System)).

 

I'm using Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut between the die and a Rockit Cool Copper IHS and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut between the IHS and the cooler (the cooler is a Corsair H115i PRO). I've daisy chained, PWM fan-splitters so that I've got four 140mm fans in push-pull on the radiator, controlled by the PWM signal from the CPU header, plus an extra two 140mm fans in the floor of the computer case, also controlled by the PWM signal from the CPU header so as to push enough air into the case to feed the fans on the radiator as and when it's needed.

 How's my speed?

Should I tweak the overclock?

 

[Jurrunio]

Why so high BCLK? You dont need to use BCLK straps, this isn't a 3820, you can hit high clocks with just the multiplier alone while keeping BCLK at 100

[GuruMeditationError]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

Why so high BCLK? You dont need to use BCLK straps, this isn't a 3820, you can hit high clocks with just the multiplier alone while keeping BCLK at 100

I've no idea...I never used to touch the BCLK when I used to overclock, it was beyond my understanding. But that's what the automatic optimisation gave me.

Is there not a valid reason for it being so high?

[Jurrunio]

6 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

I've no idea...I never used to touch the BCLK when I used to overclock, it was beyond my understanding. But that's what the automatic optimisation gave me.

Is there not a valid reason for it being so high?

Valid reason? Maybe for pushing super high memory frequencies without using unstable multipliers there... that's way past 2666.

[GuruMeditationError]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Valid reason? Maybe for pushing super high memory frequencies without using unstable multipliers there... that's way past 2666.

Maybe that's why?

I haven't enabled my memory's XMP. Would that make a difference?

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Maybe that's why?

I haven't enabled my memory's XMP. Would that make a difference?

no it won't, by default Haswell runs memory at most at 1600, way too low to need BCLK tweak.

[GuruMeditationError]

19 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

no it won't, by default Haswell runs memory at most at 1600, way too low to need BCLK tweak.

Do you think it's worth altering manually? 

 

As far as I know 4.6 is about as fast as the 4790k can get. 

 

Edit: Okay well, I just totally screwed up. I don't know how I got to that overclock but it just sort of happened incrementally over the course of the day. I just enabled the memory's XMP and it's bumped everything back down to stock...and I've not been able to get it back...I think I need to start flipping switches on the motherboard again. Either that or to just try and do it myself.  

[Jurrunio]

19 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Edit: Okay well, I just totally screwed up. I don't know how I got to that overclock but it just sort of happened incrementally over the course of the day. I just enabled the memory's XMP and it's bumped everything back down to stock...and I've not been able to get it back...I think I need to start flipping switches on the motherboard again. Either that or to just try and do it myself.  

all you need to do is to force 100MHz BCLK, and 46 multiplier.

[GuruMeditationError]

29 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

all you need to do is to force 100MHz BCLK, and 46 multiplier.

Thanks. You don't think it would need an increase to the voltage to maintain that speed, or is that assuming it's overvolted to 1.3v?

Also, I think I might be being dumb...I assumed it was the motherboard configuring itself automatically, but the board was second hand and I'm beginning to think it was the last owner's overclock. 

[MeDownYou]

4 hours ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Thanks. You don't think it would need an increase to the voltage to maintain that speed, or is that assuming it's overvolted to 1.3v?

Also, I think I might be being dumb...I assumed it was the motherboard configuring itself automatically, but the board was second hand and I'm beginning to think it was the last owner's overclock. 

honestly that was a sweet OC for auto OC, Was it stable?

 

Just got done benching frequency on a g3258 today, hard wall at 4.8 the chip I had impossible to push it past 5ghz

 

That looks like a good chip at low frequency, You can try something manually if you want I'd go 100 bclk until you find your ratio, then increase from there. Most chips have no problem at 44 ratio I'd just plunk in 1.3 vcore, 1.8 external voltage, and 0.2-0.3 offset in system agent. Then increase the ratio until you have troubles, back it down 1 ratio and increase bclk the same way next. probably won't go past 101 at that point though.

 

[GuruMeditationError]

14 hours ago, MeDownYou said:

honestly that was a sweet OC for auto OC, Was it stable?

 

Just got done benching frequency on a g3258 today, hard wall at 4.8 the chip I had impossible to push it past 5ghz

 

That looks like a good chip at low frequency, You can try something manually if you want I'd go 100 bclk until you find your ratio, then increase from there. Most chips have no problem at 44 ratio I'd just plunk in 1.3 vcore, 1.8 external voltage, and 0.2-0.3 offset in system agent. Then increase the ratio until you have troubles, back it down 1 ratio and increase bclk the same way next. probably won't go past 101 at that point though.

 

Thanks for responding.

I'd assumed the motherboard had set the values automatically because I'd switched the switches on the board that allowed the overclocks before startup, but thinking about it, it looks like it might have still had the values the motherboard's previous owner had input (It's an Asus z97-WS I picked up on eBay). I screwed things up by enabling the memory's  XMP profile and that just re-set everything, so I lost that overclock.

 

I've sinced run the automatic overclocking tool in the BIOS and it's now running at 4590MHz at 1.3473v with the bcIk at 102, and the ram at 2719MHz...

...it's not quite as sweet as 4625MHz, but I think it's still pretty good...? ...and the core voltage isn't exceeding 1.35v.

And yeah, it was stable, although I didn't stress test it for that long? Also, I'm not sure how stable it is now I've changed things up? I'm still yet to test that. It doesn't crash immediately when I run prime but I've not left it running to see if it crashes over time?

To be honest I know very little about overclocking; I was learning about it some time ago but I've more or less forgotten everything about offsets and I don't think I ever knew anything about external voltage.

Do you know if the increase to RAM speed will actually give a noticeable improvement? I've always been told latency negates the increase in speed, so I'm worried I'm just overheating my RAM for no reason.

I'm not too bummed about screwing up and loosing the overclock because the OC utility on the motherboard has boosted my memory performance by 70% but if that's all negated by latency and I'm just boiling my RAM for no reason, I might try and look into trying to tweak my CPU a little more myself.

 

[gepowr]

7 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Thanks for responding.

I'd assumed the motherboard had set the values automatically because I'd switched the switches on the board that allowed the overclocks before startup, but thinking about it, it looks like it might have still had the values the motherboard's previous owner had input (It's an Asus z97-WS I picked up on eBay). I screwed things up by enabling the memory's  XMP profile and that just re-set everything, so I lost that overclock.

 

I've sinced run the automatic overclocking tool in the BIOS and it's now running at 4590MHz at 1.3473v with the bcIk at 102, and the ram at 2719MHz...

...it's not quite as sweet as 4625MHz, but I think it's still pretty good...? ...and the core voltage isn't exceeding 1.35v.

And yeah, it was stable, although I didn't stress test it for that long? Also, I'm not sure how stable it is now I've changed things up? I'm still yet to test that. It doesn't crash immediately when I run prime but I've not left it running to see if it crashes over time?

To be honest I know very little about overclocking; I was learning about it some time ago but I've more or less forgotten everything about offsets and I don't think I ever knew anything about external voltage.

Do you know if the increase to RAM speed will actually give a noticeable improvement? I've always been told latency negates the increase in speed, so I'm worried I'm just overheating my RAM for no reason.

I'm not too bummed about screwing up and loosing the overclock because the OC utility on the motherboard has boosted my memory performance by 70% but if that's all negated by latency and I'm just boiling my RAM for no reason, I might try and look into trying to tweak my CPU a little more myself.

 

Well i have a 4790k myself and i'm running 4.6GHz @ 1.264V Vcore max (I've done quiet a bit of tweaking and i'm currently using adaptive voltage which scales the voltage from 0.7V to 1.264V depending on the workload). I personally would never use any auto oc mode from my mainboard (Asus Z97 Pro Gamer). There are a lot of guides on youtube and this forum aswell for the 4790k). 1.35V seems too high for 4.6GHz imo. Happy to help if you got any questions.

[GuruMeditationError]

5 minutes ago, gepowr said:

Well i have a 4790k myself and i'm running 4.6GHz @ 1.264V Vcore max (I've done quiet a bit of tweaking and i'm currently using adaptive voltage which scales the voltage from 0.7V to 1.264V depending on the workload). I personally would never use any auto oc mode from my mainboard (Asus Z97 Pro Gamer). There are a lot of guides on youtube and this forum aswell for the 4790k). 1.35V seems too high for 4.6GHz imo. Happy to help if you got any questions.

That's really good of you to offer but it just seems so complicated I wouldn't know what to ask?

Do you know if there's a simple approach to it?

 

I'm also concerned about the voltage being that high because I don't want to shorten the life of my processor.

The one thing that makes me happy with the automatic overclock is that it's OC'd the RAM as well, but if latency means there's no advantage then I'm stressing my RAM for no reason. I should probably run some searches to try and find if OC'ing RAM actually makes it faster, or if the latency just negates it.

[gepowr]

8 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

That's really good of you to offer but it just seems so complicated I wouldn't know what to ask?

Do you know if there's a simple approach to it?

 

I'm also concerned about the voltage being that high because I don't want to shorten the life of my processor.

The one thing that makes me happy with the automatic overclock is that it's OC'd the RAM as well, but if latency means there's no advantage then I'm stressing my RAM for no reason. I should probably run some searches to try and find if OC'ing RAM actually makes it faster, or if the latency just negates it.

AMD's Ryzen cpus seem to love high ram frequencies but for haswell 1600MHz is enough imo. A good way to start overclocking is setting the vcore to a fixed 1.25V for the 4790k. With 1.25V you can usually start at around 4.4 GHz and slowly higher the multiplier. If it crashes: Lower the multiplier or SLOWLY higher the vcore. If it's stable: Lower the vcore until the point it crashes and then higher it to the last stable vcore. For my own 4790k i like to stay under 1.3V for daily use.

[GuruMeditationError]

19 minutes ago, gepowr said:

AMD's Ryzen cpus seem to love high ram frequencies but for haswell 1600MHz is enough imo. A good way to start overclocking is setting the vcore to a fixed 1.25V for the 4790k. With 1.25V you can usually start at around 4.4 GHz and slowly higher the multiplier. If it crashes: Lower the multiplier or SLOWLY higher the vcore. If it's stable: Lower the vcore until the point it crashes and then higher it to the last stable vcore. For my own 4790k i like to stay under 1.3V for daily use.

Thanks for the advice but I think I'm just going to stick with the overclock I've got now.

I know people say 1600MHz is the most you need for Haswell and that RAM speed doesn't make a difference to gaming, but if you look for them you can find benchmarks that show it can help. For example: https://wccftech.com/haswell-works-high-speed-ram-benchmarks-show-ddr31600-mhz/

Also, I'm using Fallout 4 as a test case, because it's been shown to benefit from higher RAM speeds: https://wccftech.com/fallout-4-performance-heavily-influenced-by-ram-speed-according-to-report/ (and because I play it a lot).

I guess yeah, I'm kind of pleased with the 70% boost to RAM performance that this overclock has got me. The voltage could be a little lower but 1.3v is generally considered the threshold for the 4790k, or at least a safe upper-limit before electromigration becomes an issue.

[MeDownYou]

2 hours ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Thanks for responding.

I'd assumed the motherboard had set the values automatically because I'd switched the switches on the board that allowed the overclocks before startup, but thinking about it, it looks like it might have still had the values the motherboard's previous owner had input (It's an Asus z97-WS I picked up on eBay). I screwed things up by enabling the memory's  XMP profile and that just re-set everything, so I lost that overclock.

 

I've sinced run the automatic overclocking tool in the BIOS and it's now running at 4590MHz at 1.3473v with the bcIk at 102, and the ram at 2719MHz...

...it's not quite as sweet as 4625MHz, but I think it's still pretty good...? ...and the core voltage isn't exceeding 1.35v.

And yeah, it was stable, although I didn't stress test it for that long? Also, I'm not sure how stable it is now I've changed things up? I'm still yet to test that. It doesn't crash immediately when I run prime but I've not left it running to see if it crashes over time?

To be honest I know very little about overclocking; I was learning about it some time ago but I've more or less forgotten everything about offsets and I don't think I ever knew anything about external voltage.

Do you know if the increase to RAM speed will actually give a noticeable improvement? I've always been told latency negates the increase in speed, so I'm worried I'm just overheating my RAM for no reason.

I'm not too bummed about screwing up and loosing the overclock because the OC utility on the motherboard has boosted my memory performance by 70% but if that's all negated by latency and I'm just boiling my RAM for no reason, I might try and look into trying to tweak my CPU a little more myself.

  

See if you can just drop the voltage to 1.3v and keep your OC, it probably will be stable since auto applies a bit too much usually. Ram speed is the bottleneck of those chips with high end gpu's these days. If you have a 1060 or something don't worry about it but a 1080ti, or 2070 will definately hurt from it (then again most wouldn't run a 1080ti in a 4790k these days)

[GuruMeditationError]

52 minutes ago, MeDownYou said:

See if you can just drop the voltage to 1.3v and keep your OC, it probably will be stable since auto applies a bit too much usually. Ram speed is the bottleneck of those chips with high end gpu's these days. If you have a 1060 or something don't worry about it but a 1080ti, or 2070 will definately hurt from it (then again most wouldn't run a 1080ti in a 4790k these days)

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I'd like to get it at or below 1.3v just to feel a bit more comfortable with not reducing the CPU lifespan.

It's a newly built gaming rig and I'm going to forget about Prime95 and stress test it by downloading the games I want to play from my Steam Library...it sends my CPU to about 99% load and is more real-world, as my CPU's probably only going to be under the highest loads during game loading phases.

I've just installed a 2070 and am stress testing it as I'm write this (the RGB LED's seem to have just failed, which is a bit worrying). As for the RAM bottlenecking my card, it can't really be helped as I can't afford a motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU upgrade all at once...

 

...I'm working with a budget and everything's been bought incrementally; with the RTX being the final component; but it's okay: I'd rather have a bottlenecked graphics card than have my graphics card be the bottleneck . I opted for the 2070 over the 2060 because of the extra 4GB of VRAM, and it seemed that picking up a 2070 was a better option than a 1080 because I'm interested in the ray tracing.

[gepowr]

5 hours ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I'd like to get it at or below 1.3v just to feel a bit more comfortable with not reducing the CPU lifespan.

It's a newly built gaming rig and I'm going to forget about Prime95 and stress test it by downloading the games I want to play from my Steam Library...it sends my CPU to about 99% load and is more real-world, as my CPU's probably only going to be under the highest loads during game loading phases.

I've just installed a 2070 and am stress testing it as I'm write this (the RGB LED's seem to have just failed, which is a bit worrying). As for the RAM bottlenecking my card, it can't really be helped as I can't afford a motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU upgrade all at once...

 

...I'm working with a budget and everything's been bought incrementally; with the RTX being the final component; but it's okay: I'd rather have a bottlenecked graphics card than have my graphics card be the bottleneck . I opted for the 2070 over the 2060 because of the extra 4GB of VRAM, and it seemed that picking up a 2070 was a better option than a 1080 because I'm interested in the ray tracing.

It all depends on your resolution. With a RTX 2070 I'd definitely recommending playing at 1440p to make use of that GPU horsepower. It will shift the load to your GPU quiet a bit.

[GuruMeditationError]

3 hours ago, gepowr said:

It all depends on your resolution. With a RTX 2070 I'd definitely recommending playing at 1440p to make use of that GPU horsepower. It will shift the load to your GPU quiet a bit.

Thanks for the advice, it's most appreciated.

 

I had forgotten about that. I'm still gaming at 1080p and I must admit my monitor's starting to feel a little small.

I think that'll probably be my next upgrade, hopefully with G-sync, but I want to get something that's large enough to show off the higher resolution, which means it'll probably be a little more expensive   so it might be a while. 

[GuruMeditationError]

1 minute ago, CUDAcores89 said:

how do yo even GET the blck so high on haswell? Anything over 110mhz usually crashes the system.

No idea; I didn't know it was unusual, but I can confirm it was running with those values.

[GuruMeditationError]

Just now, CUDAcores89 said:

what board are you using?

 

Screenshots?

 

Truth be told this is an anomaly. I wouldn't be surprised if the board is vomiting out incorrect values.

Well that's interesting, I hadn't even considered that. It's an Asus z97-WS.

Unfortunately I can't give you a screen capture of those values because I enabled XMP and it re-set everything, so I'm now just using the OC I got from the onboard OC utility. I've no idea what the settings were other than those I posted.