ASUS Z-170a Overclocking

[drax_mafra]

Hello! I've recently tried to overclock my processor (again!), an Intel Core I7-6700k. Managed to pull a stable performance at 1.300v @ 4,5Ghz. Although this performance suits my needs, the CPU tends to spike temps sometimes. For example, upon opening My Computer, it will jump at around 52-53 degrees Celsius for 2 seconds, then drop at around 28-29 degrees, then after 10 seconds, coming back to 24-25 degrees, it's normal idle temp. Also, under heavy load, the voltage tends to go higher than specified in the motherboard OC page (instead of maximum 1,300v sometimes jumps to 1,342v!). There are 2 more options for the voltage other than manual, which are Offset Mode and Adaptive Mode. I don't fully understand those options, and also i cannot seem to find the LLC option in my motherboard settings, so i can tinker with it. Any help will be much appreciated! Have a nice day!

[Lord Nicoll]

27 minutes ago, drax_mafra said:

Hello! I've recently tried to overclock my processor (again!), an Intel Core I7-6700k. Managed to pull a stable performance at 1.300v @ 4,5Ghz. Although this performance suits my needs, the CPU tends to spike temps sometimes. For example, upon opening My Computer, it will jump at around 52-53 degrees Celsius for 2 seconds, then drop at around 28-29 degrees, then after 10 seconds, coming back to 24-25 degrees, it's normal idle temp. Also, under heavy load, the voltage tends to go higher than specified in the motherboard OC page (instead of maximum 1,300v sometimes jumps to 1,342v!). There are 2 more options for the voltage other than manual, which are Offset Mode and Adaptive Mode. I don't fully understand those options, and also i cannot seem to find the LLC option in my motherboard settings, so i can tinker with it. Any help will be much appreciated! Have a nice day!

the temps are normal, you'd love Kaby lake though, my i7 7700K @ 5GHz on 1.28v can still hit the 70°Cs occasionally under heavy sustained loads, and into the 60's for fractions of a second running windows. The voltage riding higher is probably some load based LLC, that's automatic, while I have an ASUS board mines ROG so has the DIGI+, if your board has the same VRM engine then the LLC would be int the external DIGI+ settings. I do have an ASUS Z170-P but I'd need to update it and install it to look.

[Imakuni]

28 minutes ago, drax_mafra said:

For example, upon opening My Computer, it will jump at around 52-53 degrees Celsius for 2 seconds, then drop at around 28-29 degrees, then after 10 seconds, coming back to 24-25 degrees, it's normal idle temp.

Normal behaviour, that's how electronics work.

 

31 minutes ago, drax_mafra said:

I don't fully understand those options, and also i cannot seem to find the LLC option in my motherboard settings, so i can tinker with it.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/Z170-A/E10611_Z170-A_UM_V2_WEB.pdf?_ga=2.92118170.1870799286.1495624592-1420393963.1487242403

 

Page 2-25

[drax_mafra]

31 minutes ago, Imakuni said:

Normal behaviour, that's how electronics work.

 

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/Z170-A/E10611_Z170-A_UM_V2_WEB.pdf?_ga=2.92118170.1870799286.1495624592-1420393963.1487242403

 

Page 2-25

It says there that, quote : "The CPU working voltage decreases proportionally to CPU loading." In manual mode, the voltage stays the same, no matter the load. It can be idle or under full load, the voltage does not change. A friend of mine uses some Gigabyte Gaming motherboard and an Intel I5 6600k and his voltages drop when the processor is under full load, and also the processor is not spiking when entering any applications at all. This is what bugs me the most.

[Imakuni]

2 minutes ago, drax_mafra said:

It says there that, quote : "The CPU working voltage decreases proportionally to CPU loading." In manual mode, the voltage stays the same, no matter the load. It can be idle or under full load, the voltage does not change. A friend of mine uses some Gigabyte Gaming motherboard and an Intel I5 6600k and his voltages drop when the processor is under full load, and also the processor is not spiking when entering any applications at all. This is what bugs me the most.

High load causes voltage to droops, there's just no way around it (can't mess with physics). If you were to put a single voltage and just provide that, it would droop. So to try and compensate for that drop and achieve the actual specified manual voltage, LLC quicks in and add some extra on top of it, so that it droops from extra to actual input when load is high.

 

Supposedly, Auto LLC would just pick the perfect level, but that doesn't really happen in practice. And that's where the user comes in: through trial, error, and human observation, you can pick the appropriate level for your setup so that load voltage matches whatever you want.

[drax_mafra]

Thank you! Hopefully, this will once and for all answer my dumb questions about OC and temps and voltages and so on.