A few questions about installed water cooler.

[Archer27]

So tonight I installed my water cooler(Lepa Aquachanger 240) and for my first liquid cooling install I think I did a decent job.

I removed the CPU from it's socket to clean the old paste off more effectively and am powering the pump directly from the power supply via Sata/Peripirhal to Molex .

Upon booting up after the change I got a few messages:

"Overclock failed"
"Asus anti-surge was triggered to protect system from unstable power supply"
"Keyboard"
"New Processor Installed"

After a reboot, these messages went away and haven't come back. Is it because I reseated the CPU and added the pump and 2 radiator fans to the electrical load? Is it normal? Should I be concerned?

Power supply is stable, voltages read what they are supposed to. VCCIN has actually increased from 1690 to 1740 at idle however actual core voltage remains roughly the same as before.

Ran Short FFT in Prime 95 for 10 mins, stable with core temps maxing out at 58c...much better than before.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, .05v can make all the difference when it comes to CPU and RAM settings. Even less than that can be a factor in some cases. Actually, a lot of cases. I've seen CPUs that would NOT be stable at a certain multi, or even a range of multi's, but a .025v adjustment allowed for a full two multipliers more with stability. Sometimes they even have "flat spots" that the CPU just doesn't like. For example, a CPU that might be stable at 4.2Ghz with 1.25v but would not remain stable with that voltage at 4.3Ghz. Still not stable with 1.3v at 4.3Ghz. But move the voltage to 1.325 and bam, gets stable again all the way to 4.5Ghz. Every chip has it's own characteristics based on the binning of the chip and luck of the draw.

That's why it's called the silicone lottery.

 

[Archer27]

Yes, .05v can make all the difference when it comes to CPU and RAM settings. Even less than that can be a factor in some cases. Actually, a lot of cases. I've seen CPUs that would NOT be stable at a certain multi, or even a range of multi's, but a .025v adjustment allowed for a full two multipliers more with stability. Sometimes they even have "flat spots" that the CPU just doesn't like. For example, a CPU that might be stable at 4.2Ghz with 1.25v but would not remain stable with that voltage at 4.3Ghz. Still not stable with 1.3v at 4.3Ghz. But move the voltage to 1.325 and bam, gets stable again all the way to 4.5Ghz. Every chip has it's own characteristics based on the binning of the chip and luck of the draw.

That's why it's called the silicone lottery.

Ah cool. This is alot of helpful info. This was my first build, my first overclock etc and it's good to have this resource to make sure everything keeps going smoothly.

So based on my 1.25v at 4.6 being pretty stable, does that mean I did pretty good at the slots then? lol

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's probably average for the 4690k I'd say. Not great, not bad either. You really don't start seeing whether a chip can shine or not until you go beyond 4.6Ghz, although I have seen some that simply would not be stable regardless of voltage at anything over 4.4Ghz.

 

[Archer27]

That's probably average for the 4690k I'd say. Not great, not bad either. You really don't start seeing whether a chip can shine or not until you go beyond 4.6Ghz, although I have seen some that simply would not be stable regardless of voltage at anything over 4.4Ghz.

You mean 4790k 😉

Average...story of my life lol.

20 minutes to go!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Both actually. Less often on the 4790k though since it's already binned and configured for a 4.4Ghz turbo. But I've seen a couple that wouldn't go past that clock speed. I think with only 20 minutes left to go, you can probably call it good and move on to the next phase if you choose to do further stress testing.

Personally, I'd probably just run with it and throw a game on to see how it does. If you have problems, then you can make some adjustments accordingly. Maybe give it ONE incremental bump in voltage and then run Prime again for 15 minutes to verify thermals, then try the same game again that caused it to crash, if it does, which it probably won't so long as your graphics card drivers are in good order.

 

[Archer27]

Success?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah. Looks that way. Now, for overclocking the memory. Nah, just kidding.

Looks good. Get to gaming.

 

[Archer27]

Yeah. Looks that way. Now, for overclocking the memory. Nah, just kidding.

Looks good. Get to gaming.

Haha, I actually have XMP profile enabled as well

I ran memtest as well, passed with flying colors.
Ran Heaven benchmark, my score increased 10 points
Ran EVGA OC Scanner CPU burn as well as graphics burn good stuff
Ran a bunch of applications at once, abeit not that demanding
Ran CPU-Z bench, apparenlty my I7 4790k outperforms their I7 4790k by a significant margin

Good stuff! Now, onto to the games to see what affect this processor will truly have..tommorow night lol it's like 2am now.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Sounds good. I'm about to call it a night as well. Good luck on the gaming.

 

[Archer27]

Sounds good. I'm about to call it a night as well. Good luck on the gaming.

Played guild wars 2 so far.

It would seem the 4460 was a bottleneck in the game because performance improved drastically.
The game is really CPU bound, and at 1080p at max settings, it still uses 50% of the I7 in more extreme game situations.
Framerate increases in the game in all areas.
No BSOD or errors!

Haven't tested any other games out yet but I'm very happy about the GW2 performance.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Niiiiice. Glad to hear it. Keep in mind that as you learn more about the overclocking techniques, you can probably dial in that overclock to more finely tune it, but it isn't STRICTLY a necessity so long as everything is working as desired.

 

[Archer27]

Niiiiice. Glad to hear it. Keep in mind that as you learn more about the overclocking techniques, you can probably dial in that overclock to more finely tune it, but it isn't STRICTLY a necessity so long as everything is working as desired.

It's offical, the framerates are better across the board. My GPU is getting loaded up more because of a 1.1 ghz faster CPU.

I suppose it's possible that the CPU was a bottleneck even at 80%-90%.

Now by dialing in the overclock do you mean adjusting more things or lowering voltage slightly to find the min voltage I'm stable at 4.6?

We have determined that 1.20 is too little for a completely stable 4.6 ghz OC and 1.25 is stable.

I actually do music editing as well, so the i7 might help a little more with that as well.

And again, I thank you so much for your help and patience through this.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Actually, I mean things like adjustments to the memory speed, latency, load line calibration settings, possibly VCC, uncore and system agent settings, but if you're good where you are, then it's good to me as well. Little fine tuning probably won't be very noticeable in comparison to the things you've already done and are not by any means essential. I say ride it 'til the wheels fall off.

 

[Archer27]

Actually, I mean things like adjustments to the memory speed, latency, load line calibration settings, possibly VCC, uncore and system agent settings, but if you're good where you are, then it's good to me as well. Little fine tuning probably won't be very noticeable in comparison to the things you've already done and are not by any means essential. I say ride it 'til the wheels fall off.

Ah I see . Welp, I'm content with things at the moment.
The framerate improvement in GW2 is incredible....I still can't get over it. I guess 3.5ghz wasn't enough for it at max. When I can run 50-60 fps on world bosses....I'm doing pretty flippin good.

As far as my other games are concerned, it would seem the issue has been solved as framerates are a bit more stable.

I know my issues in Guild Wars 2 were a CPU bottleneck, that was a given after seeing how well this processor performs on it.

The waterblock is now slightly off of the capacitors on the board now, there is a gap that you can fit some paper between.

I made sure to go a little easier on the screws for the block, so maybe that helped as well.
Before I put the i7 in, I checked the socket pins and they are nice and straight.

So I guess we won't truly know what the issue was because I introduced too many variables, but thank you for your help!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, I'm just glad it all worked out for you. That's all that really matters.