i5-6600K - At what voltage do you start shortening the life of the CPU?

[CC268]

Hey guys,

 

It seems like a lot of people are doing 1.325V and getting a very stable 4.5-4.6GHz out of it. However, I am wary of going outside of the stock voltage as I do plan on keeping this PC for quite a while. At the same time, I didn't buy a K series CPU to not use it!

 

At what voltages will I start really shortening the life of my CPU?

[zzenigmaxzz]

1.35 is about the highest i would go 

 

im lucky i got 4.6 on stock voltage 

[ThatOneRussian]

as soon as temps go above 85 degrees

[CC268]

I haven't even tried OCing my CPU yet so for all I know I may not even need to up the voltage...but I wanted to know what a safe voltage would be.

 

The thing is...no one really has any hard evidence (that I have seen) that says what voltage is going to degrade your CPU - so I am a bit weary of overclocking if I have to up the voltage.

[zzenigmaxzz]

you should be able to get to atleast 4.4-4.5 even without touching the voltage

 

just make sure you have decent cooling and you can up the voltage a bit and it will be fine 

 

going by your sig your cooling is fine 

[ProKoN]

1.35 is about the highest i would go 

 

im lucky i got 4.6 on stock voltage 

 

how do you define stock voltage

 

did you just change your multiplier and leave your voltage set for auto?

[ddswh1pk0s]

If I stay on stock voltage and add some multiplier will temps stay the same?

[zzenigmaxzz]

how do you define stock voltage

 

did you just change your multiplier and leave your voltage set for auto?

i didnt touch voltage at all, and when im stress testing it never goes above 1.312

 

If I stay on stock voltage and add some multiplier will temps stay the same?

 

temps will only increase if you increase voltage 

[CC268]

So...if you were to guess...is your current overclock going to hinder the life of your CPU significantly?

[zzenigmaxzz]

So...if you were to guess...is your current overclock going to hinder the life of your CPU significantly?

nope

 

my cpu never goes above 65 degrees (it got to 70 during aida64 but thats synthetic)

[ProKoN]

i didnt touch voltage at all, and when im stress testing it never goes above 1.312

 

 

temps will only increase if you increase voltage 

 

 

all main boards will increase your core voltage if you leave it set to auto and increase the frequency

 

to properly determine stock voltage

 

load defaults or clear cmos

 

run cinebench at stock settings, observe core voltage.

 

your stock voltage will be less than 1.3V

[CC268]

I thought you would just manually enter in like 1.325V in the BIOS...never thought of doing Auto

[typographie]

If I stay on stock voltage and add some multiplier will temps stay the same?

 

Most likely, yes. You may see a few degrees over stock, but it might be hard to even tell.

 

To be clear, damage from high temperatures (at least in the range we're talking about) usually take long periods of time to truly start to damage a CPU. If you fire up your stress test and see it start to get near 90*C, just turn it off and change the settings. Don't run it like that for very long, but a few seconds won't hurt it. Anything that would hurt it would probably trigger it to either throttle down or shut itself off anyway.

 

If you're feeling uncertain, take your time. Wait until you're feeling bolder, or just set yourself a smaller goal: like a nice round 4 GHz. Probably wouldn't even need you to change the voltage.

 

---

 

I'm pretty comfortable in the 1.30-ish range. Technically it's probably best to consider any elevated voltage as potentially subtracting life from the chip, though at this level it should still last much longer than it will take me to replace it. I don't really know what voltage would start to become dangerous for Skylake, but even as a pretty cautious overclocker I'm quite sure you're safe at 1.35 V or below.

 

I run my Core i5-6600K at 100 MHz * 45 (4500 MHz) at 1.318 V. With a Corsair H80i, I idle around 25-30°C and max out around 65°C in AIDA64's stability test. I'm usually in the early 40's in games.

[CC268]

Thanks typographie - for AIDA64, when you run the stress test how long do you run it for and do you have any specific settings you use? Do you stress CPU, FPU, cache, and system memory or just the CPU?

[typographie]

Thanks typographie - for AIDA64, when you run the stress test how long do you run it for and do you have any specific settings you use? Do you stress CPU, FPU, cache, and system memory or just the CPU?

 

I left it at default, which I believe is CPU, FPU, cache, and system memory. I think I only ran it for a few hours at the longest, but it's been well over two months and probably a few hundreds of hours of use in that time. I mainly do gaming on this machine, so if I see a BSoD at some point I'm not terribly worried. If you do a lot more important work on your machine you'll want to validate the overclock for a lot longer.

[CC268]

Na its really just a fun/gaming machine. I am thinking I may just leave it alone and not even overclock it anyways...I just can't seem to convince myself it is really worth overclocking for gaming anyways.

[NuclearPeace]

I wouldn't go higher than 1.35V for vCORE. Remember that no matter how cold your CPU is, excessive voltage can degrade your CPU quickly because of electromigration.