CPU wont peak at full speed

[Wolverine3587]

I know there's a whole bunch of threads that sound similar to mines but I've checked through all of them and none are near what my problem is like, so please dont dismiss this by giving me a link to something that was solved without properly reading through.

Specs:

Evga 850w PSU
FE 1080ti (corsair h105 aio liquid cooled)
I7-7700k (noctua nh-d15 cooler)

The problem started around 10 months ago. I was running off an unlicensed version of windows that I had bought (at the time i didnt bother putting in the cd key to unlock the full version for laziness reasons) and I messed around with the power settings to reduce the maximum clock speed from 4200mhz to around 3700mhz to stop my cpu from hitting temperatures that I felt were overheating because at the time I had a very generic cpu cooler. So the clock settings were around ~85% at all times and I had it like that for a while. Then I bought a cpu cooler, and around that time i decided to finally activate my windows, forgetting to put cpu max clock speed up to 100% because i didnt think it would be a problem.

Now cpu runs around the same frequency as it did when it was 85%, but the speed in power settings is at full 100%. I overclocked the cpu to try and get it to go back up to 4200mhz like its supposed to be but am afraid to keep going and it still sits around 4000mhz, well below the base clock speed, and wont even budge to go to boost clock speed which is around 4600mhz.

I didnt mind it for a while, but now i am noticing that my cpu is finally hitting 100% utilization for some games, and its reducing frames and I dislike stuttering very much. I performed several resets, reformats, and complete factory resets on my my C: drive, thinking the problem would be related to windows issues as it happened when I installed an activated windows os, but none have proved successful. Please help as this is very infuriating.

 

[jojesa]

Running Windows 10 activated or not it works just the same, only themes are disabled.
What's your CPU temp at idle and load?
If you have not try it, reset BIOS to default.

 

[anotherdrew]

Have you ever run Intel Extreme Tuning Utility? It's a good program that might help you figure out what is going on with the CPU, so I would recommend starting there. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-

Many motherboards come with software that allow you to adjust CPU speed. is it possible that you have set something and forgotten about it? MSI Afterburner, Asrock A-Tuning, etc.

I am also curious what BIOS reports. I wonder if you have messed up some setting in your attempt to overclock. What do you think about resetting BIOS to default settings.