Should I enable MCE + XMP in 9700k with a Noctua U12s Chromax in ASUS Prime Z370-A?

[AltF4_345]

I want to know if by enabling both MCE + XMP would cause potential problems for my board. My cooler is the Noctua U12S Chromax and supposedly my vrms are not great (according to this tier list), especially for an 8-core cpu like the 9700k.

 

P.D: XMP was giving me too much vccsa and vccio voltage on auto, so I lowered them to acceptable limits while being stable.

[RONOTHAN##]

9 minutes ago, AltF4_345 said:

I want to know if by enabling both MCE + XMP would cause potential problems for my board. My cooler is the Noctua U12S Chromax and supposedly my vrms are not great (according to this tier list), especially for an 8-core cpu like the 9700k.

 

P.D: XMP was giving me too much vccsa and vccio voltage on auto, so I lowered them to acceptable limits while being stable.

Just enable it and monitor VRM temps in stuff that you do (games, renders, etc.). If you've got good system airflow it should be OK, and if your case is a hot box the VRM will be getting a little to hot for comfort. If it gets above 100C, disable it and try to tune the OC a bit more and/or just point a fan at the VRM (more airflow fixes 95% of VRM overheating issues), and if it stays below 100C, you've got free performance for no extra work. 

 

That said, ASUS is known to on some of their lower end boards hide the VRM temp sensors from the user, even though they're fully present on the board to enable VRM Over-temp protection, so monitoring the temps might not be an option. Not sure if that board is one of the ones that does that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was, and if that is the case I would leave MCE off unless you zip tie an 80mm Noctua fan to the VRM heatsink (again, one of those fans will fix any possible VRM heat issues on that board). 

[AltF4_345]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Just enable it and monitor VRM temps in stuff that you do (games, renders, etc.). If you've got good system airflow it should be OK, and if your case is a hot box the VRM will be getting a little to hot for comfort. If it gets above 100C, disable it and try to tune the OC a bit more and/or just point a fan at the VRM (more airflow fixes 95% of VRM overheating issues), and if it stays below 100C, you've got free performance for no extra work. 

 

That said, ASUS is known to on some of their lower end boards hide the VRM temp sensors from the user, even though they're fully present on the board to enable VRM Over-temp protection, so monitoring the temps might not be an option. Not sure if that board is one of the ones that does that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was, and if that is the case I would leave MCE off unless you zip tie an 80mm Noctua fan to the VRM heatsink (again, one of those fans will fix any possible VRM heat issues on that board). 

I have a Meshify 2 Compact with 2 front 140mm Fractal Venturi HF-14 fans and a rear 120mm Fractal gp-12 fan. Yes, my board is one of those, I tried searching for vrm temp on HWInfo64 and I can't find it anywhere.

[RONOTHAN##]

4 minutes ago, AltF4_345 said:

I have a Meshify 2 Compact with 2 front 140mm Fractal Venturi HF-14 fans and a rear 120mm Fractal gp-12 fan. Yes, my board is one of those, I tried searching for vrm temp on HWInfo64 and I can't find it anywhere.

That rear 120mm fan would probably make it fine, though I would personally want a fan zip tied to make sure there's no issues before enabling MCE. Realistically, the worst case scenario would be that the board just shuts off randomly, ASUS does set their OTP at a pretty reasonable limit before any damage will occur, even for long term usage, so it's probably not a problem, but at the same time I'd be concerned enough where I'd want that fan.