Gigabyte Z590/590i - Need help with BIOS settings please

[Gill]

Hi.

I'm interested in UNDER-VOLTING the CPU without loosing performance and no OC. Stock speeds.

I got the following specs:

• Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3070 Master Graphics Card
• Gigabyte AORUS Z590i Ultra motherboard
• Intel Core i9 11900KF
• Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB 3200Hz
• Crucial 2TB M.2 SSD
• CoolerMaster ML240R AIO Liquid Cooler - Radiator is side-mounted and fans are pulling air out.
• CoolerMaster NR200P Case
• CoolerMaster SFX V 850W Power Supply
• CoolerMaster SF240R Top fans - Fans are pulling air out.

 

I used Prime95 to benchmark.

In the BIOS settings, I used Vcore offset and tried to reduce by 0.001v and the system froze.

 

I think there are other settings required to be adjusted as well like LLC and others, but I don't know really.

The VID max = 1.2590v (Prime95, not using AVX. Using smallest FFT)

 

VRout max measured 1.340v and 1.289v average.

 

CPU cores are reaching 90c(!) with AIO watercooling. Ambient temps are 19c.

 

Can someone please help out?

 

 

[Fasauceome]

When I tweak Intel CPUs, I usually drop the one and two core speeds a couple hundred MHz, especially since you're almost always using more than a single core. It usually gives you some more wiggle room on the voltage offset.

 

What's your LLC set to?

[Gill]

8 hours ago, Fasauceome said:

When I tweak Intel CPUs, I usually drop the one and two core speeds a couple hundred MHz, especially since you're almost always using more than a single core. It usually gives you some more wiggle room on the voltage offset.

 

What's your LLC set to?

It is currently set to Auto (Default).

 

Yesterday I tried to set it to Standard and set Vcore to Voltage Override and reduced by -0.001v and that was enough to fail Prime95. Clearly, something is not done right by me.

 

[Fasauceome]

11 hours ago, Gill said:

It is currently set to Auto (Default).

 

Yesterday I tried to set it to Standard and set Vcore to Voltage Override and reduced by -0.001v and that was enough to fail Prime95. Clearly, something is not done right by me.

 

I don't recall if the vcore on that motherboard is an offset. Prime 95 crashed but what did the voltage show when sitting idle?

[Gill]

On 5/10/2021 at 11:06 PM, Fasauceome said:

I don't recall if the vcore on that motherboard is an offset. Prime 95 crashed but what did the voltage show when sitting idle?

I don't know. I'm afraid to try again and do some damage.

 

[Gill]

On 5/10/2021 at 11:06 PM, Fasauceome said:

I don't recall if the vcore on that motherboard is an offset. Prime 95 crashed but what did the voltage show when sitting idle?

I ran Cinebench R23 multicore test.

Max Vcore stock settings = 1.368v

Max core clocks stock settings = 4.9Ghz

Some cores reached 90+ degrees

 

Before making any changes, this is my current setting:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Fasauceome]

You could set the LLC to low or medium because those will reduce the vcore dynamically (depending on how you have it set) and it might let you set the voltage less high.

[Gill]

12 hours ago, Fasauceome said:

You could set the LLC to low or medium because those will reduce the vcore dynamically (depending on how you have it set) and it might let you set the voltage less high.

I didn't set anything yet.

so you're saying by setting LLC to low, it should already provide low voltage or current to the CPU and help with thermals? Or is it just a precurser to reducing voltage afterwards?

 

I've done reading as much as I can about these settings, but I don't understand the relationship between them and the combination I need to use in order to effectively reduce voltage and therefore thermals, without impacting performance.

 

[Fasauceome]

9 hours ago, Gill said:

I didn't set anything yet.

so you're saying by setting LLC to low, it should already provide low voltage or current to the CPU and help with thermals? Or is it just a precurser to reducing voltage afterwards?

 

I've done reading as much as I can about these settings, but I don't understand the relationship between them and the combination I need to use in order to effectively reduce voltage and therefore thermals, without impacting performance.

 

I guess my explanation was poor.

 

Load line calibration will give you extra voltage when your CPU is working to compensate. Setting it to "low" or "medium" will sprinkle on a bit of extra voltage when needed. Combined with a reduced 1 core and 2 core speed in the BIOS, and a low voltage setting, I have found that this often leads to reliable stability in a lot of cases, with reduced thermals.

 

Also, instead of a negative offset, simply set the vcore manually. Since you're already checking the vcore in windows, you know what your CPU is working with so you can choose a number that's slightly lower and just run with that. I was under the impression that you were using a negative offset before (especially because gigabyte settings seem to enforce that type of setting for some reason)

[Gill]

15 hours ago, Fasauceome said:

I guess my explanation was poor.

 

Load line calibration will give you extra voltage when your CPU is working to compensate. Setting it to "low" or "medium" will sprinkle on a bit of extra voltage when needed. Combined with a reduced 1 core and 2 core speed in the BIOS, and a low voltage setting, I have found that this often leads to reliable stability in a lot of cases, with reduced thermals.

 

Also, instead of a negative offset, simply set the vcore manually. Since you're already checking the vcore in windows, you know what your CPU is working with so you can choose a number that's slightly lower and just run with that. I was under the impression that you were using a negative offset before (especially because gigabyte settings seem to enforce that type of setting for some reason)

Nah, mate. You explained ok. My noobiness is the problem here.

 

I was actually using negative offest, you were correct in your assumption.

See the 4th screenshot. I used Voltage override and set the Vcore voltage to -0.001v and it was already unstable.

 

Taking your advice, do you recommend that I reduce 100Mhz from the 2 hottest cores and the reduce a fixed value voltage from Vcore?

Also, given I'm reducing voltage, do I really need to change anything in LLC?

 

Lastly, what do you reckon on the AVX settings I have?

 

[Fasauceome]

9 hours ago, Gill said:

Nah, mate. You explained ok. My noobiness is the problem here.

 

I was actually using negative offest, you were correct in your assumption.

See the 4th screenshot. I used Voltage override and set the Vcore voltage to -0.001v and it was already unstable.

 

Taking your advice, do you recommend that I reduce 100Mhz from the 2 hottest cores and the reduce a fixed value voltage from Vcore?

Also, given I'm reducing voltage, do I really need to change anything in LLC?

 

Lastly, what do you reckon on the AVX settings I have?

 

Voltage override should set the vcore directly if I recall, I could have sworn the gigabyte bios settings for offset was labeled differently. But I could be mistaken.

 

I don't believe you can access the individual speeds for specific cores, but you should be able to change the per-core speed. That is, the CPU already knows what the best cores are so those will be the high clockers, and if you reduce the single core boost it will cut that speed. But the all core boost should be the same.

 

LLC is something you should experiment with a bit. You can often squeak out some slightly lower voltage with it.

 

AVX is annoying when it comes to performance and power draw, reducing its impact when possible is recommended. Seems fine.

[Gill]

On 5/15/2021 at 10:54 PM, Fasauceome said:

Voltage override should set the vcore directly if I recall, I could have sworn the gigabyte bios settings for offset was labeled differently. But I could be mistaken.

 

I don't believe you can access the individual speeds for specific cores, but you should be able to change the per-core speed. That is, the CPU already knows what the best cores are so those will be the high clockers, and if you reduce the single core boost it will cut that speed. But the all core boost should be the same.

 

LLC is something you should experiment with a bit. You can often squeak out some slightly lower voltage with it.

 

AVX is annoying when it comes to performance and power draw, reducing its impact when possible is recommended. Seems fine.

 

 

I took some screenshots of my bios again, and oh boy... very confused.

 

Here I used the Adaptive Vcore instead of Override Vcore. I was told Override is better/smarter but I don't know how to use it without screwing things up.

I set the Internal CPU Vcore to Normal

and then Internal CPU Vcore Offset to -0.050V

You can see on the right side that the voltage is 1.356v but I know from HWMonitor_x64 that under stress it goes up to 1.368v

 

 

 

 

Turbo Power Limits - What the hell do I do here if I want to limit it so my cooling handle 90deg?

 

 

 

My AVX was disabled, so I enabled it here (I think)

 

 

These are some of the readings I get with stock settings (no voltage changes, no clock changes) after over 4 minutes of run.

Vcore=1.260v

VRout=1.206v

Core VIDs=1.289v

CPU Package power = 213w

Ambient = 19deg

[Fasauceome]

9 minutes ago, Gill said:

Turbo Power Limits - What the hell do I do here if I want to limit it so my cooling handle 90deg?

 

you can drop the package power limits, or the time. I don't remember what the default turbo duration is but I believe the default wattage is 125. That page is also giving you the "turbo per core limit" which was the per-core clock speed setting I was talking about earlier.

 

10 minutes ago, Gill said:

I set the Internal CPU Vcore to Normal

 

if you want to start reducing voltage I suggest you use this instead of the offset, setting it to something like 1.35 and start working your way down, since you said it's operating somewhere around 1.38