Overclocking the i5-8600k?

[Geotropism]

Hello everyone

Just got my new H115i Pro cooler so i'm looking to overclock my i5-8600k. How do I find the right voltage? Should I use offset or adaptive voltage? If I'm using Speed Step should I use LLC? I have an ASUS board, so should I keep ASUS MCE on? 

[TheGlenlivet]

7 minutes ago, Geotropism said:

Hello everyone

Just got my new H115i Pro cooler so i'm looking to overclock my i5-8600k. How do I find the right voltage? Should I use offset or adaptive voltage? If I'm using Speed Step should I use LLC? I have an ASUS board, so should I keep ASUS MCE on? 

You're on a Z170/270 right?  Read the thread below.  They go into pretty good detail.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?98101-Overclocking-intel-core-i5-8600k/page3

[Geotropism]

2 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

You're on a Z170/270 right?  Read the thread below.  They go into pretty good detail.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?98101-Overclocking-intel-core-i5-8600k/page3

Coffee Lake can only be used on Z370 boards. Thanks for the guide.

[TheGlenlivet]

Just now, Geotropism said:

Coffee Lake can only be used on Z370 boards so I didnt look at the Z170/270 guides

My bad, you are correct.  For some reason I read it as 6600K.  

[jiyeon]

Hi, 8600K and Asus board owner here. I personally have MCE off since I don't like how much power it consumes even if my PC is idling.

 

Generally you start at 1.25V and work your way up from 4.4GHz and go up from there. I was able to get 5GHz on 1.3V if I remember correctly.

[Geotropism]

1 minute ago, seoz said:

Hi, 8600K and Asus board owner here. I personally have MCE off since I don't like how much power it consumes even if my PC is idling.

 

Generally you start at 1.25V and work your way up from 4.4GHz and go up from there. I was able to get 5GHz on 1.3V if I remember correctly.

I would be able to do that too, but I want my voltage and frequency to drop when idle. I don't want a static 1.3V or whatever stable voltage I need for 5GHz to run constantly. I have Speed Step on and AVX -2 but I don't know how to tweak the adaptive/offset voltage.

[Geotropism]

10 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

My bad, you are correct.  For some reason I read it as 6600K.  

Just read everything but the guide doesn't go into too much detail about SVID and adaptive voltage, theres only a mention of it on page 5.

[TheGlenlivet]

5 minutes ago, Geotropism said:

Just read everything but the guide doesn't go into too much detail about SVID and adaptive voltage, theres only a mention of it on page 5.

From what I understand, SVID should be enabled if you are using adaptive voltage (which you are, correct?) and disabled if you want to manually set it so it stays at all times.  Disabling it cuts the signal off from the voltage controller to the CPU and lets you set it manually.

[Geotropism]

7 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

From what I understand, SVID should be enabled if you are using adaptive voltage (which you are, correct?) and disabled if you want to manually set it so it stays at all times.  Disabling it cuts the signal off from the voltage controller to the CPU and lets you set it manually.

I enabled SVID and set an adaptive voltage of 1.27 @ 5Ghz. Now to run AIDA64 and see if it's stable! By the way, I have HWMonitor and I'm just wondering if I should look at the VCORE voltage in the motherboard section or the voltages in the CPU section to see my CPU voltage? 

http://prntscr.com/kbvyi1

[TheGlenlivet]

49 minutes ago, Geotropism said:

I enabled SVID and set an adaptive voltage of 1.27 @ 5Ghz. Now to run AIDA64 and see if it's stable! By the way, I have HWMonitor and I'm just wondering if I should look at the VCORE voltage in the motherboard section or the voltages in the CPU section to see my CPU voltage? 

http://prntscr.com/kbvyi1

CPU should be what the CPU is getting and MOBO should be what is being sent to it, but there have been issues in the past with accuracy so take it with a grain of salt.  1.27 won't hurt anything.

[Geotropism]

55 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

CPU should be what the CPU is getting and MOBO should be what is being sent to it, but there have been issues in the past with accuracy so take it with a grain of salt.  1.27 won't hurt anything.

Just ran AIDA64 (Only "Stress CPU" box ticked) for an hour and it passed at 1.285V. Should I continue stress testing with something like Realbench or P95? Or is a stable hour of AIDA64 good enough?

[TheGlenlivet]

Just now, Geotropism said:

Just ran AIDA64 (Only "Stress CPU" box ticked) for an hour and it passed at 1.285V. Should I continue stress testing with something like Realbench or P95? Or is a stable hour of AIDA64 good enough?

I use P95 and realbench.  Realbench to test a bit of everything and P95 to hammer the CPU (not at the same time).  If you do P95 Small FFT for an hour and it passes it should be stable enough for games and rendering.  Watch your temps if you do this though, don't just walk away from the system under P95 small fft.

What are you going to use the system for?

[Geotropism]

6 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

I use P95 and realbench.  Realbench to test a bit of everything and P95 to hammer the CPU (not at the same time).  If you do P95 Small FFT for an hour and it passes it should be stable enough for games and rendering.  Watch your temps if you do this though, don't just walk away from the system under P95 small fft.

What are you going to use the system for?

Just gaming really, nothing too intensive. And thanks for the replies, they are very helpful. I'll run P95 for an hour and see how it goes.

 

Edit: PC crashed after 10 seconds haha

[Geotropism]

Two of my cores fall down to 5-30% after a few minutes, I assume they're crashing because the OC isn't stable? Also set my adaptive voltage to 1.305v but I'm only getting 1.295v according to HWMonitor. The clock speed is also only 4.2Ghz when my AVX is only -2.

[Connor Price]

I can't remember my settings exactly as I haven't been running 5GHz for a while now, but I think I had my voltage at 1.3 for 5.1GHz and slightly lower for 5GHz. LLC was set to either Level 5 or Level 1 (I had level 5 for 4.8GHz at around 1.2v and can't remember if I upped it to Level 1) and IA and DC LL was set to 0.1. SVID was at best case scenario. I was using fixed voltage too, not adaptive voltage. This was my first attempt at overclocking a CPU so I'm no expert by any means. Pretty much just winged it based on what I'd seen being done by other people haha. Still, been running problem free without a single crash for 8 months now, so I obviously did something right... hopefully. 

[Geotropism]

43 minutes ago, Connor Price said:

I can't remember my settings exactly as I haven't been running 5GHz for a while now, but I think I had my voltage at 1.3 for 5.1GHz and slightly lower for 5GHz. LLC was set to either Level 5 or Level 1 (I had level 5 for 4.8GHz at around 1.2v and can't remember if I upped it to Level 1) and IA and DC LL was set to 0.1. SVID was at best case scenario. I was using fixed voltage too, not adaptive voltage. This was my first attempt at overclocking a CPU so I'm no expert by any means. Pretty much just winged it based on what I'd seen being done by other people haha. Still, been running problem free without a single crash for 8 months now, so I obviously did something right... hopefully. 

Thanks for your input. I could easily set it to a static voltage, but that'd be a waste of electricity and would probably reduce the lifespan of the chip. Out of curiosity, did you stress-test at all?

[Connor Price]

6 minutes ago, Geotropism said:

Thanks for your input. I could easily set it to a static voltage, but that'd be a waste of electricity and would probably reduce the lifespan of the chip. Out of curiosity, did you stress-test at all?

To be honest, I didn't even take that into account when selecting static. Might see if I can change that tomorrow if I get a chance. I did what most people would probably call a very limited amount of stress testing. Tested Aida 64 for about 15 minutes and then played a few rounds of BF1 and PUBG. Didn't crash and I've not had an issue since. I have since dropped the voltage and frequency down though. Running very little extra voltage at 4.6Ghz because my cooler isn't really suited for much more. 

[Geotropism]

1 hour ago, Connor Price said:

To be honest, I didn't even take that into account when selecting static. Might see if I can change that tomorrow if I get a chance. I did what most people would probably call a very limited amount of stress testing. Tested Aida 64 for about 15 minutes and then played a few rounds of BF1 and PUBG. Didn't crash and I've not had an issue since. I have since dropped the voltage and frequency down though. Running very little extra voltage at 4.6Ghz because my cooler isn't really suited for much more. 

I guess I'll just be stress testing with P95 for an hour, cant be arsed doing it any longer. Changed the voltage from 1.285v to 1.315v because I got sick of the 0.05v increasing increments. Everything looks stable now but I could probably get it down a bit.

[O9B0666]

9 hours ago, seoz said:

. I was able to get 5GHz on 1.3V if I remember correctly.

Why don't you run this then? 4.4 isn't really a oc, and it's not a heat issue as my 8700k running 1.3 @5ghz in a hot region my Temps don't touch 70c.

[jiyeon]

50 minutes ago, O9B0666 said:

Why don't you run this then? 4.4 isn't really a oc, and it's not a heat issue as my 8700k running 1.3 @5ghz in a hot region my Temps don't touch 70c

My crappy motherboard VRMs is the answer. I don't trust it to run my 8600K at 5GHz on the daily...

[Connor Price]

4 hours ago, seoz said:

My crappy motherboard VRMs is the answer. I don't trust it to run my 8600K at 5GHz on the daily...

Do you have the Z370 Prime A? I have one myself and although I'm currently only running 4.6GHz, I have seen many people running 5GHz daily with no issues. 

[jiyeon]

51 minutes ago, Connor Price said:

Do you have the Z370 Prime A? I have one myself and although I'm currently only running 4.6GHz, I have seen many people running 5GHz daily with no issues. 

No, I have the Z370-P, a board notoriously bad at overclocking. I wish I knew that before I bought it.

[Theellyence]

17 hours ago, Geotropism said:

Coffee Lake can only be used on Z370 boards. Thanks for the guide.

Actually my friend in China did that, used a 8600k on a MSI Z170I GAMING PRO AC, after flashed BIOS and some other thing.

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/34902263

 

(Chinese words maybe too hard to understand, but he uploaded pictures.