Vcore voltages acting weird

[Steo]

Hi. I have an ASUS Z170 pro gaming motherboard and a Kaby lake 7700k. At the minute I have it running at 4.8ghz but the vcore voltage seems a bit off. I've tried adaptive mode in the BIOS and adjusting the LLC but no matter what I do windows keeps using higher voltage than I'm setting. I should be fine with around 1.26v at 4.8ghz however hwmonitor is reporting that it's using 1.3 (assuming vid is what I should be looking at. What's even more weird about it is that if I stress it with CPU-Z it only uses 1.25v while performing tasks or using prime95 is giving me 1.3v.

 

Any reason this could happen and is it normal to somehow use less under more stress?

 

I've attached screenshots below.

[jymbob12]

windows does usualy give slightly higher than average vcore voltages just because it overcompensates v-droop and make sure that the bios is completely locked down with nothing allowed to move the voltage

[Steo]

4 minutes ago, jymbob12 said:

windows does usualy give slightly higher than average vcore voltages just because it overcompensates v-droop and make sure that the bios is completely locked down with nothing allowed to move the voltage

Thanks for the reply. I'm having a look in the bios now but I'm not entirely sure what else I've to change. If I disable turbo I also get a lower vcore. Either way is it normal to go as high as 1.3 but when being stressed harder with cpuz only go to 1.25 or is this some weird bios setting also?

[knightslugger]

VID is what the processor wants. Vcore is what the VRMs are delivering (and what you adjust in BIOS). LLC is applied automatically and is transparent.

[jymbob12]

cpu-z is a synthetic load so most likely yes it is probably what is causing your v-core confusion, try using a second monitor system like HWmonitor or something similar to watch the voltage

[Steo]

On 7/7/2017 at 4:41 PM, knightslugger said:

VID is what the processor wants. Vcore is what the VRMs are delivering (and what you adjust in BIOS). LLC is applied automatically and is transparent.

Alright cool that makes sense then. I'll try using adaptive mode again at 1.25 and see what voltages I get in hwmonitor. Also not too sure if 80c is a bit on the high side but then again it's a stress test not a game. Temperatures aren't too different between 4.5 and 4.8 and are as little as 8c in the difference.

 

So for now I've settled that I'm gonna have to just use offset mode with a negative value because this isn't making any sense. If I set my 4770k to an adaptive value it actually goes that value but when I set this 7700k to a value it just completely ignores me and goes about 0.1-0.2 higher than I have it set while completely varying up and down between that 0.1-0.2. Even manual mode doesn't work. I have it back at stock speed again and I was hoping to lower temperatures considering how hot it actually gets. The idea was I want to lower the voltage in increments until it's no longer stable to find out how low I can go which is impossible while it keeps varying.

 

 

Currently until I find out more I'm settling for -0.065 which seems to have the vcore varying between 1.2v and 1.26v under load. Any lower than that at the moment is unstable and as I said it's impossible to get it right with it fluctuating so heavily. The way these new chips work is weird unless my mobo is just acting up.

[knightslugger]

LLC is a separate setting than adaptive or offset.

[Steo]

16 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

LLC is a separate setting than adaptive or offset.

I'll have another good look through my bios in the morning and see what I can find. I have the LLC set to level 7 for minimum droop but there could be something I'm missing somewhere there has to be and I don't know why it's enabled by default. All it's gonna do is give big temperature spikes into the 80s when it gives the cpu 1.4v for no reason. I even tried level 1 to see what happened and my fans went full and it said 1.5v so I had to hit reset immediately and change it back.

[Steo]

So what seems to be happening today that I check it is that manual voltage seems to be working better than anything else. I'm just trying 4.8ghz so I know if it's stable when I get a water cooler. I have voltage set at 1.29v and in hwmontior vid is reporting that exact voltage but vcore is overshooting to 1.344v in prime95. It's basically just overvolting by 0.03-0.05 which is manageable now because I can just adjust it until I get a correct reading. I'll need 1.35 at 4.8 so 1.295 will probably give me just that. Also I noticed it still goes down to 0.6v when idle.

 

Edit actually it's overshooting by exactly 0.44 but it turns out I had it set to 1.3v where vid is looking for 1.29v. Kind of odd but at least I've an idea what I'm working with now. Adaptive does not work properly at all it's all messed up and overvolts it.

[Steo]

OK so now that I got my water cooler I'm tinkering with this again. It seems that I can get 4.8Ghz with 1.26v, 4.9Ghz with 1.312v and 5.0Ghz with 1.375v. I'd probably prefer to not go as high as 5.0Ghz because the temps of some cores under AIDA64 stability test reach 93C. 4.8Ghz seems to have decent temps and I could get away with 4.9Ghz but the problem is again with voltage. 

 

I'm using manual voltage to get these results but when I try use adaptive it's overshooting by 0.1v I use offset -0.1v to try correct this and it seems to report that it works but I get BSOD errors even though on manual that voltage seems to work perfect. Is it normal for voltages to be like that or is my board just skitso

[knightslugger]

using an offset of +/- .1 adjusts the voltage curve across the entire curve, from very high to very low. For what it's worth, you will really only notice the improvement in clock rate on paper (as in bench testing or monitoring). better to drop MHz and keep voltage sane.

 

also, i'm surprised that any core would actually go above 90*C with a liquid cooler. but i suppose this is a 7700k we're talking about. even still, should be better than that.

[thorhammerz]

When in doubt, reset CMOS & switch to manual(-override) mode.

[Steo]

I'm using override mode now instead and have a stable 4.8Ghz at 1.29v my absolute max temp now running real bench or any extreme test like that is around 85C after over 15 minutes. That's the highest I can get it to clock and any higher results in ridiculous temperatures.