How do I use offset voltage?

NormRickard · December 26, 2016

I have an i5 6600k and an asrock fatal1ty z170 k4 motherboard. I have gotten the cpu to oc to a stable 4.4ghz when I use a fixed voltage of 1.275v. I want to run it as a 24/7 oc though, and I don't want to be sending 1.275v to it all the time. There is only the fixed and offset settings in the bios, and everytime I run the offset in any mode the windows crashes when I boot. Whenever I go back to the fixed voltage, it runs just fine. Is there any way to oc the cpu with an offset voltage setting to reduce the amount of volts sent to the cpu when it isn't under load, and if so how would I do this? Thank you in advance.

steffeeh · December 26, 2016

I'm not too familiar with the Offset method in solo in the dropdown menu, but to let the voltage go down with the clock when idle or light usage, you should set the voltage to Adaptive mode in BIOS.

Just switch to it, apply the similar voltage to the Maximum Adaptive Mode Voltage (or whatever it's called). Keep in mind that this effect only takes place if you allow the CPU to go below 100% in the Windows power options by either switching from High Performance to Balanced or so (or manually editing in the Advanced Power Options window), alongside with various other BIOS settings (that should already be setup by default).

What you could do also is subtract maybe 10-15 mV from this adaptive setting and bump up the additional Offset setting with 10-15 mV - that way it will always stay 10-15 mV above what voltage it would otherwise have been. This is great if you want to make sure you don't get any bad clock-voltage combo when the load goes down and get a crash.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that even though you output less heat in general as it downclocks when not under load, this doesn't mean that this setting will lighten the (in theory) degradation of your CPU, as voltage/temperature shifts cause stress on the material by itself.

So the only benefit you have is that as it will output less heat under light usage, so you can pull down the fan curves and get more silent casual PC usage, while still getting the overclocked power under load.