[SOLVED] Did I get unlucky with my i9 9900k?

[EatMyPizza]

I have an i9 9900k on a Gigabyte z390 Aurus Pro wifi board. Just to hit 4.8 on all 8 cores I need V core set to 1.315. This seems insanely high to me since people are reporting 5hz with that vcore. At stock clocks, i can't pass stress testing with anything under 1.3.

Do I just have a "slow" chip?

 

[EatMyPizza]

i was going to ask you if your bios was hesitant to accept settings changes - from the very beginning selecting a value to change took anywhere from 3 or 4 cliks to 10+ and i thought it was just a sluggish chip.
Then last night i, for the hey of it, I tried booting up only on the backup BIOS, switching the main BIOS off.
initially it was fine, actually much more responsive, one clik opened whatever setting i wanted - i tried the defaults, and got crazy temps with Vcore values showing 1,205ish, it didn't make sense. Went thru a few different BIOS setting sets, and noticed that each time i went into that backup BIOS to change settings, it was becoming more and more sluggish, like i was filling up some kind of internal ram - i wish i knew more about the architecture of BIOS chips,

but mine has just gone completely south, when for whatever reason it booted up with a clock ratio setting of 13, Vcores were showing 1.19X and or but temps were high 80s to mid 90s - don't know if the board's reporting sensors were just being mis-interpreted by the CPU or something bad on the board.

but both are going back home tomorrow. Newegg has already shipped the replacements.

back to your original question, ie unlucky - i keep thinking about that, your 1.315V to get 5.0, there was another poster that posted screen captures showing, iirc, 1.272V at 5.0, that MrFinite indicating 1.250V being the expected norm -


anyways on the advice of that guy over on the geforce forum, i'm going with a MSI MEG Z390 Ace

Well the thing is too regarding the vcore is how much are they actually getting under full load? Mine was set to 1.315 just for 4.8 clocks, but i was only getting like 1.17 under load. If someone had it set to 1.27 but was getting let's say 1.25 under load, that's actually more voltage.

 

[The Original Ralph]

Well the thing is too regarding the vcore is how much are they actually getting under full load? Mine was set to 1.315 just for 4.8 clocks, but i was only getting like 1.17 under load. If someone had it set to 1.27 but was getting let's say 1.25 under load, that's actually more voltage.

your 1,17 actual v under load at 4,8 GHz is in line with what MrInfinite said about 1.250 at 5.0

Sorry my bad, i thought you said 1.315V to pass stress testing at 5.0.

Like i said earlier i'm not ace ventura of OCing but what bothered me about my board once the BIOS started going south, was the values being reported were all over the map, ie 1.3GHz, Vcore at 1.19x and temps hitting mid 90s - i just don't see how those temps are possible unless something else was playing a factor, and that's where i'm electrically illiterate

on the MSI board coming in, it provides voltage checkpoints, which i suspect will have me learning something about electricity

you seem to be more electrically literate - have you thought about verifying voltage values you're seeing reported?

 

[EatMyPizza]

Well the thing is too regarding the vcore is how much are they actually getting under full load? Mine was set to 1.315 just for 4.8 clocks, but i was only getting like 1.17 under load. If someone had it set to 1.27 but was getting let's say 1.25 under load, that's actually more voltage.

your 1,17 actual v under load at 4,8 GHz is in line with what MrInfinite said about 1.250 at 5.0

Sorry my bad, i thought you said 1.315V to pass stress testing at 5.0.

Like i said earlier i'm not ace ventura of OCing but what bothered me about my board once the BIOS started going south, was the values being reported were all over the map, ie 1.3GHz, Vcore at 1.19x and temps hitting mid 90s - i just don't see how those temps are possible unless something else was playing a factor, and that's where i'm electrically illiterate

on the MSI board coming in, it provides voltage checkpoints, which i suspect will have me learning something about electricity

you seem to be more electrically literate - have you thought about verifying voltage values you're seeing reported?

Trust me, I'm not.

 

[The Original Ralph]

what temps were you seeing at 1.315 Vcore setting, and were you still running Medium on LLC?

 

[EatMyPizza]

what temps were you seeing at 1.315 Vcore setting, and were you still running Medium on LLC?

When I was at 1.315 Vcore I had LLC on auto. My temps were good, probably because my cpu was using only 1.17v under full load. Temps were in the mid to upper 60s in full load. Ended up being unstable though I discovered after a longer run of prime 95.

Seems stable now at 1.26 vcore with LLC medium at 4.8 all cores.

 

[The Original Ralph]

spent yesterday from 1:00 PM until 11:00PM trying to get my 3rd cpu past 4.8 with no luv. It was stable at 1.240 Vcore, ran 2 tests (P95 vs 26.6 small FTTs) 20 minutes each. On the 3rd stress test thought i let it run for 30 minutes, - left the room at the 20 or so minute mark and it crashed ad rebooted while i was out of the room. WhoCrashed didn't pull up any crash reports.

Tried my damnest to get it to 4.9, it did run a couple of times but only with Vcore at 1.30 (HWiNFO was reporting 1.319 to 1.324 as Core VID), but was hitting 96 - 98C in a few minutes, so i would shut the test down. If i tried a Vcore under 1.30V, 2-3 seconds into the test the mouse and keyboard would freeze.

Just got off the phone with Newegg, they've RMA'd this cpu as well. Was talking with the CSR, and asked her were they seeing a lot of RMA requests on the 9900Ks and she confirmed - even though she was not computer component savvy, she remembered this one was on backorder for the longest time, and yeah, they were getting a lot of RMA requests on it. Makes me wonder if Intel started cranking them out too fast to catch up with demand.

 

[EatMyPizza]

spent yesterday from 1:00 PM until 11:00PM trying to get my 3rd cpu past 4.8 with no luv. It was stable at 1.240 Vcore, ran 2 tests (P95 vs 26.6 small FTTs) 20 minutes each. On the 3rd stress test thought i let it run for 30 minutes, - left the room at the 20 or so minute mark and it crashed ad rebooted while i was out of the room. WhoCrashed didn't pull up any crash reports.

Tried my damnest to get it to 4.9, it did run a couple of times but only with Vcore at 1.30 (HWiNFO was reporting 1.319 to 1.324 as Core VID), but was hitting 96 - 98C in a few minutes, so i would shut the test down. If i tried a Vcore under 1.30V, 2-3 seconds into the test the mouse and keyboard would freeze.

Just got off the phone with Newegg, they've RMA'd this cpu as well. Was talking with the CSR, and asked her were they seeing a lot of RMA requests on the 9900Ks and she confirmed - even though she was not computer component savvy, she remembered this one was on backorder for the longest time, and yeah, they were getting a lot of RMA requests on it. Makes me wonder if Intel started cranking them out too fast to catch up with demand.

This is worrying. I stopped trying at 4.8 because my temps are good and im happy with that, but now I am wondering if I can even hit 4.9 if I wanted to.

 

[The Original Ralph]

on the first two CPUs i RMA'd i felt strong about RMAing them, but on this last one, my only excuse was that Intel indicates it's capable of 5.0 on one core, and i couldn't get above 4.8 on that last CPU. Newegg was great, and to be frank i don't know amazon would have been as good in terms of giving me a RMA. If you're not past the 30 day mark, i'd consider RMAing your CPU

I don't know about your's, but my Gig board was inconsistent - remember way back up when i told you my temps fell when i set LLC to Medium? - it should have been the exact opposite. THen my BIOS just kept getting worse and worse, it was like watching a slow trailn wreck from inside the train. But i noticed core VID values in HWiNFO were inconsistent from one stress test to the next, don't know if it was just bad reporting on the Mobo's part, the CPU''s part, or the BIOS's part.That was the reason i RMA'd the GIg board. Oddest part is, i've never RMA'd a thing in the way of computer components..

Two other things that it might pay for you to consider. When i was stress testing with the last CPU at 4.9, i got two BSODs, used WhoCrashed to pull up the dump files, and it reported a conflict between a windows kernel and my VIrus software (Emsisoft), so i dis-abled it for every stress test after that and the BSODs stopped so i wondered if my virus program had hindered the cpu in the previous tests. Don't know which virus software you're using, but it's worth a try

Last item - i ordered a 2nd ATX power cable to connect to the 2nd cpu power port - i know there was a discussion in this forum about using it, and a couple of posters were pretty adamant about it being useless. IIRC, one stated the CPU's max current draw was 215 watts, (which i think was low) and the gauge wire used was capable of 235 watts, but in reading the MSI manual, they're specific to connect cables to both power ports.

There was also this from Tom's Review at https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9900k-9th-gen-cpu,5847-11.html
bear in mind they're talking about OCing to 5.0 on one or two cores, not all eight

"But power becomes more of an issue in some productivity applications because a constant load on all cores at high clock rates is almost too much. And to be clear, the Core i9-9900K gets super hot faced with Prime95 and AVX instructions (205W stock, 250W overclocked), exceeding the specified TDP.

We measured 137W (232W) during the Cinebench test, and we topped 145W (241W overclocked) under the larger Blender workload. We even pushed past 120W (198W overclocked) with various CAD plug-ins for Creo and SolidWorks. The limits of normal all-in-one compact water cooling solutions are in sight during standard operation at 4.7 GHz on all cores, but you can easily overwhelm cheaper AIOs during overclocking. "

I talked to MSI's tech support and asked him about it yesterday, and his position was that that power port is also serving other circuits, ie DIMMs, etc and he'd connect it. So i've ordered a 2nd Seasonic PSU to CPU cable. While my knowledge of electricity is limited, i do know it doesn't hurt to oversize the wiring.

I won't know if it makes a difference until that cable comes in, and don't care to push the OCing until i've got it in hand.

 

[The Original Ralph]

was going thru the MSI guide for overclocking the 9900K, and the very last adjustment they suggest, is to dis-able "intel C State" which is a power management setting - they feel it will limit power, which could explain or help with your vdroop (i now know or think i know what it is)

anyway, scroll down and you'll see their suggestion https://www.msi.com/blog/intel-9th-cpu-overclocking-5ghz-with-z390-motherboards

 

[EatMyPizza]

was going thru the MSI guide for overclocking the 9900K, and the very last adjustment they suggest, is to dis-able "intel C State" which is a power management setting - they feel it will limit power, which could explain or help with your vdroop (i now know or think i know what it is)

anyway, scroll down and you'll see their suggestion https://www.msi.com/blog/intel-9th-cpu-overclocking-5ghz-with-z390-motherboards

Thanks, I will check into this. Also, I am using both cpu connectors already, my PSU (EVGA 850 G3) came with 2.