Overclocking Next Step

[aBagofRockss]

Hey all,

 

So after a few months of dealing with a dying motherboard (an MSI z170A Gaming M5), the time had come.  One day it just decided to stop working.  I now have an Asus Z170 Pro Gaming mobo, and it's been great.  May go back to my MSI once the warranty repairs are done, but this is good for now.

 

I digress.  After a brief overclocking attempt on my I5 6600k, I now am stable at 4.2gHz at 1.23 vcore.  I usually don't overclock due to some bad past experiences with it.  However, I will say that Skylake was so much easier to overclock on then anything I ever have before.

 

Having said that, I have a couple questions:

1. Should I try switching to a different voltage mode like Adaptive instead of just keeping it on manual at 1.23 always?

2. Any tips for an overclocking semi-noob? 

 

Thanks all

 

Edit: Something I forgot to mention.  When I had everything at stock settings, my vcore was sometimes reaching 1.28 to 1.3 volts.  I thought this was kind of high for stock settings.  Would this mean that, considering I'm stable at lower voltages, that this overclock could be better in a way for the cpu health wise?

[Starelementpoke]

2 minutes ago, aBagofRockss said:

Hey all,

 

So after a few months of dealing with a dying motherboard (an MSI z170A Gaming M5), the time had come.  One day it just decided to stop working.  I now have an Asus Z170 Pro Gaming mobo, and it's been great.  May go back to my MSI once the warranty repairs are done, but this is good for now.

 

I digress.  After a brief overclocking attempt on my I5 6600k, I now am stable at 4.2gHz at 1.23 vcore.  I usually don't overclock due to some bad past experiences with it.  However, I will say that Skylake was so much easier to overclock on then anything I ever have before.

 

Having said that, I have a couple questions:

1. Should I try switching to a different voltage mode like Adaptive instead of just keeping it on manual at 1.23 always?

2. Any tips for an overclocking semi-noob? 

 

Thanks all

Keep it on manual. Have you stress tested it yet?

[aBagofRockss]

1 minute ago, Starelementpoke said:

Keep it on manual. Have you stress tested it yet?

I've ran Cinebench and Intel Burn test (High settings, 10 passes) as well as 30min of prime 95 so far.  Going to do a longer prime 95 test to be sure.

[Starelementpoke]

3 minutes ago, aBagofRockss said:

I've ran Cinebench and Intel Burn test (High settings, 10 passes) as well as 30min of prime 95 so far.  Going to do a longer prime 95 test to be sure.

Good call. Usually to deem it stable, most would say 10 hours. Although, if your just going to be gaming, a couple hours on Cinebench, if you can do that, should suffice.

[aBagofRockss]

Will keeping it on 1.23 constantly degrade the cpu anything noticeable?  And I'll be doing mostly gaming, with occasional video editing here and there.

[Starelementpoke]

2 minutes ago, aBagofRockss said:

Will keeping it on 1.23 constantly degrade the cpu anything noticeable?  And I'll be doing mostly gaming, with occasional video editing here and there.

With my limited knowledge, no. General opinion is that anything under 1.35 should be fine, and would be minimal if any, and hard to notice. With proper cooling of course.

[aisle9]

I don't mess with adaptive. Too much risk of overvolting and damaging your chip under load. I have three profiles on my PC: stock speed, 4.6GHz and 4.8/4.7GHz (per core). If I'm doing nothing in particular, stock. If I need a little extra power for photo and video editing, 4.6. If I want to go balls-out and crank my single-core performance into space, 4.8/4.7. Kind of a best-of-all-worlds thing. Stock uses auto voltage, but the higher settings have fixed, manual voltage levels so I can ensure that my motherboard doesn't randomly decide that I need 1.4v to boot into Windows at 4.7 (been there, done that, got the new underpants).

 

TL;DR, if you're worried about degrading your chip (and at 1.23v, you need not be), you're safer creating a couple of OC profiles and switching between them in BIOS than you are using adaptive.

[aBagofRockss]

5 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

With my limited knowledge, no. General opinion is that anything under 1.35 should be fine, and would be minimal if any, and hard to notice. With proper cooling of course.

Cooling should be good.  I'm using a swiftech h220x.  It hit its high of 71c during intel burn test and prime95 but those are pretty hard on the cpu so normally I'm expecting anywhere from 45-55 under load.

3 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

I don't mess with adaptive. Too much risk of overvolting and damaging your chip under load. I have three profiles on my PC: stock speed, 4.6GHz and 4.8/4.7GHz (per core). If I'm doing nothing in particular, stock. If I need a little extra power for photo and video editing, 4.6. If I want to go balls-out and crank my single-core performance into space, 4.8/4.7. Kind of a best-of-all-worlds thing. Stock uses auto voltage, but the higher settings have fixed, manual voltage levels so I can ensure that my motherboard doesn't randomly decide that I need 1.4v to boot into Windows at 4.7 (been there, done that, got the new underpants).

 

TL;DR, if you're worried about degrading your chip (and at 1.23v, you need not be), you're safer creating a couple of OC profiles and switching between them in BIOS than you are using adaptive.

Yeah 1.23 seems pretty low so I'll probably be ok.  Just was curious because I see some people saying that leaving the voltage on a fixed setting instead of adaptive or offset can cause the chip to degrade no matter what it is, and others saying just leave it on fixed.  I'll probably just leave it fixed.

[aisle9]

13 minutes ago, aBagofRockss said:

Yeah 1.23 seems pretty low so I'll probably be ok.  Just was curious because I see some people saying that leaving the voltage on a fixed setting instead of adaptive or offset can cause the chip to degrade no matter what it is, and others saying just leave it on fixed.  I'll probably just leave it fixed.

If you're going for an extreme overclock that has you pumping 1.35v into the CPU at all times, or something nuts like that, yeah, you'll take life off the chip. If you're only at 1.23, you've got plenty of room before you have to start worrying about degrading the chip.

 

As an example, quite a few 4790K's (particularly those from Vietnam) are keyed in to amp up their voltage to 1.24 when they turbo. My 4790K (from Malaysia) is stable at 4.6GHz at 1.225v. Basically, if 1.225 was going to degrade my chip in any way, Intel wouldn't have allowed thousands--or more--of CPUs to come off the line designed to run higher yet. I'm not 100% sure on Skylake voltages, but I believe you're in that same boat. Make sense?

[aBagofRockss]

1 hour ago, aisle9 said:

If you're going for an extreme overclock that has you pumping 1.35v into the CPU at all times, or something nuts like that, yeah, you'll take life off the chip. If you're only at 1.23, you've got plenty of room before you have to start worrying about degrading the chip.

 

As an example, quite a few 4790K's (particularly those from Vietnam) are keyed in to amp up their voltage to 1.24 when they turbo. My 4790K (from Malaysia) is stable at 4.6GHz at 1.225v. Basically, if 1.225 was going to degrade my chip in any way, Intel wouldn't have allowed thousands--or more--of CPUs to come off the line designed to run higher yet. I'm not 100% sure on Skylake voltages, but I believe you're in that same boat. Make sense?

I agree.

 

Just ran prime95 for a couple hours.  One of the four workers came up and said that a hardware failure was detected.  Temps were all good too.  Does this mean I should raise the Vcore?

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, aBagofRockss said:

I agree.

 

Just ran prime95 for a couple hours.  One of the four workers came up and said that a hardware failure was detected.  Temps were all good too.  Does this mean I should raise the Vcore?

Possibly. Try some other stress tests. Prime95 is designed to place the most extreme load imaginable on your CPU. I avoid it like the plague when testing, but that's a whole different argument unto itself. Still, though, don't rely solely on one program. If Prime95 gives you an error but eight hours each of OCCT, RealBench and AIDA64 come out golden, is it really worth upping your vCore and increasing heat?

[aBagofRockss]

1 hour ago, aisle9 said:

Possibly. Try some other stress tests. Prime95 is designed to place the most extreme load imaginable on your CPU. I avoid it like the plague when testing, but that's a whole different argument unto itself. Still, though, don't rely solely on one program. If Prime95 gives you an error but eight hours each of OCCT, RealBench and AIDA64 come out golden, is it really worth upping your vCore and increasing heat?

Good point there.

 

Another question:  Now when I test, the voltage seems to be fluctuating.  Before it was at a fixed voltage and now it's fluctuating from lower voltages to upwards of 1.3, while the clocks remain the same.  Is there something else I need to disable that I didn't?

 

Edit:  HWMonitor wont show my Vcore sometimes for some reason, and cpuz will only show my Core VID right now.  When I went into the Bios, however, it still showed my vcore as 1.25

[aisle9]

2 hours ago, aBagofRockss said:

Good point there.

 

Another question:  Now when I test, the voltage seems to be fluctuating.  Before it was at a fixed voltage and now it's fluctuating from lower voltages to upwards of 1.3, while the clocks remain the same.  Is there something else I need to disable that I didn't?

 

Edit:  HWMonitor wont show my Vcore sometimes for some reason, and cpuz will only show my Core VID right now.  When I went into the Bios, however, it still showed my vcore as 1.25

VID under your processor is what you want to look at in HWMonitor. It should show 1.25 steady.

[aBagofRockss]

10 hours ago, aisle9 said:

VID under your processor is what you want to look at in HWMonitor. It should show 1.25 steady.

It isn't steady at all.  Its jumping around quite a bit.  My CPU Vcore now wont even stay steady at 1.25 its now steady at 1.26 instead.  Aida64 shows it usually at 1.25 and then jumping up to 1.26-1.27 vcore at times but vid is still fluctuating.