Help with non k i5 3570

[loprojoe]

Hello,

Running the following setup:

i5 3570 non k stock intel cooling
gigabyte ga-z77-d3h mobo
2 x 4gb corsair vengeance 1866 ddr3

I see lots of overclocking stuff on this cpu...but I am looking for what the stock settings for this cpu should be. I went into bios and found that the cpu was set to 2.8...but it's advertised as a 3.4. I bumped the cpu up to 3.4 and then found when I returned to bios after a reboot that the cpu was clocking at 3.8, but the setting was still at 3.4. I figure turbo boost must be kicking in somewhere...I just want to know if I should set the cpu back to 2.8....3.8 is scary even though all temps have been 70C or below even under a load.

I want to be clear that I do not want to overclock. I was only in the bios because I was afraid my ram was not clocking at the right speed. I was right, the ram was only set at 1333...so I adjust that and noticed the cpu was set at 2.8. Any suggestions would be great.

 

[steddora]

If your CPU Frequency is set to Automatic, voltages set to automatic, and everything works and stays under 70C.... You're fine. 3.8Ghz is one of the turbo settings on that processor so no worries. These chips also are compatible with Intel's Speedstep technology that actually allow them to drop the multiplier on the fly during idle to save power. Overall that processor should be able to drop under 5w usage when idle.

 

[loprojoe]

Steddora, thanks for the info. I was in the bios again, checking things out.
It appears that everything is set to auto. So that's good. I returned the cpu setting to 2.8 then after booting up I installed CoreTemp. I guess the Speedstep is working, because normal web surfing shows cpu at 1.6 ghz. The interesting thing is that when running a game, it maxed out at....2.8. So I think the cpu setting is a form of a limiter.
I noticed that while capped at 2.8, each core's load approached 90ish%. Is that 90% of the 2.8? or 90% of the max frequency of 3.8 (even though the bios lets me go to 4.0). I am asking because the temps were right around 70 when I had it set to 3.4 so I would like to return it to that setting.
By the way, with stock intel cooling is 70-75Cish okay as far as life of the cpu? Or do I need to get better cooling ASAP

 

[us11csalyer]

You should upgrade to a better cooler if you do any OCing. I had a i5-2500k with stock cooler running at 4Ghz and stayed under 75c.

You need to rune IBT or prime95 to see your max freq in windows. If it does hit it then at times goes down for a few seconds you maybe experiencing throttling which is a sign that your cpu cooler isn't up to the task.

 

[marshal11]

yes, i'd say anything under 80c for long periods at a time is safe. when you get 70-75, what program are you running?

 

[loprojoe]

yes, i'd say anything under 80c for long periods at a time is safe. when you get 70-75, what program are you running?

When I first became concerned about my cpu overheating at 3.8ghz I set an alarm on the mobo to warn me if it reached 70C (this was before any monitoring applets etc were installed). I was about an hour into Guild Wars 2 on full ultra settings at 1080p when the alarm sounded. Of course I was at a point where I didn't want to just log out and reboot to bios to turn the alarm off. And I figured 70C wasn't a problem for a few minutes anyways. Well, the alarm was constant for about 3 minutes, then the temp seemed to stabilize because it would come one and off rapidly, like it was at 69-70C. So I rounded up to 75, thinking it could have been getting warmer while the alarm was sounding. Did not try alarm at a higher setting, in fact disabled at this point

 

[loprojoe]

You should upgrade to a better cooler if you do any OCing. I had a i5-2500k with stock cooler running at 4Ghz and stayed under 75c.

You need to rune IBT or prime95 to see your max freq in windows. If it does hit it then at times goes down for a few seconds you maybe experiencing throttling which is a sign that your cpu cooler isn't up to the task.

First, I want to say that I understand I need to upgrade the cooler to OC. That is why I am here lol. I don't want to overclock. But I want it to run at the advertised speeds. I was under the impression 3.4ghz is advertised speed, and 3.8ghz is the turbo speed. Out of the box it stops at 2.8ghz.

So far the max frequency in windows is 1.6ghz according to CoreTemp applet that runs on my Logitech g510. What I do notice is that it jumps right to 2.8 when loading a web page (just loaded this one to see what happens).
It appears that it goes right to whatever I set the 'limit' to. At first I thought it would only hit the limit when under heavy load, but seems to skip any middle ground and go right to the max. All cores are under 30% load when it jumps to the 2.8ghz 'limit'.

 

[loprojoe]

You should upgrade to a better cooler if you do any OCing. I had a i5-2500k with stock cooler running at 4Ghz and stayed under 75c.

You need to rune IBT or prime95 to see your max freq in windows. If it does hit it then at times goes down for a few seconds you maybe experiencing throttling which is a sign that your cpu cooler isn't up to the task.

Ran a Prime95 stress test. Default settings. The following is the same for all 4 cores. I never saw a temp higher than 69C and that was just a flash once or twice. Stayed between 55-65 for the most part. Wasn't sure how many tests to run so hopefully this wasn't a wasted attempt?

[Dec 22 00:58] Worker starting
[Dec 22 00:58] Setting affinity to run worker on logical CPU #0
[Dec 22 00:58] Beginning a continuous self-test to check your computer.
[Dec 22 00:58] Please read stress.txt. Choose Test/Stop to end this test.
[Dec 22 00:58] Test 1, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922945 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 00:59] Test 2, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922943 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 01:00] Test 3, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19374367 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 01:01] Test 4, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19174369 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 01:02] Test 5, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M18874369 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 01:03] Test 6, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M18874367 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 01:04] Test 7, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M18474367 using FFT length 1024K.
[Dec 22 01:04] Torture Test completed 6 tests in 6 minutes - 0 errors, 0 warnings.
[Dec 22 01:04] Worker stopped.

By the way, it stayed at the 2.8ghz the entire time (100% load on all cores)

 

[amuffin]

That's normal.

There's really no point of running Prime95 or any benching programs to be honest. You won't be testing for an OC so there really isn't a need to use them.

 

[steddora]

Steddora, thanks for the info. I was in the bios again, checking things out.
It appears that everything is set to auto. So that's good. I returned the cpu setting to 2.8 then after booting up I installed CoreTemp. I guess the Speedstep is working, because normal web surfing shows cpu at 1.6 ghz. The interesting thing is that when running a game, it maxed out at....2.8. So I think the cpu setting is a form of a limiter.
I noticed that while capped at 2.8, each core's load approached 90ish%. Is that 90% of the 2.8? or 90% of the max frequency of 3.8 (even though the bios lets me go to 4.0). I am asking because the temps were right around 70 when I had it set to 3.4 so I would like to return it to that setting.
By the way, with stock intel cooling is 70-75Cish okay as far as life of the cpu? Or do I need to get better cooling ASAP

I'm confused...

First, that kind of temperature is to be expected with the stock cooler/voltage settings. You could probably set a negative voltage offset like (-0.050v) and remain stable with lower temperatures. But it may become unstable and would require a bit of stress testing to make sure.

But the fact that it's not going to 3.3Ghz is what gets me. Are you never hitting 3.4Ghz or are you purposely setting the CPU Ratio to 28? The stock setting should be 34 for the 3570.

Also as long as you stay below 80C, you should be just fine. I don't really like being over 70C myself, but I don't run a stock cooler at all. If it's not hitting the advertised speed, there is something seriously wrong there. Whether it be a setting with the motherboards power to socket limiter or a specific power saving problem. It also could be a number of things but I know one thing; if I wasn't getting the advertised speed, I'd be rather pissed off about it as well. The temperatures are warm but not dangerous, the turbo "seems" to be working? But you still never reach 3.4Ghz?

 

[loprojoe]

I'm confused...

First, that kind of temperature is to be expected with the stock cooler/voltage settings. You could probably set a negative voltage offset like (-0.050v) and remain stable with lower temperatures. But it may become unstable and would require a bit of stress testing to make sure.

But the fact that it's not going to 3.3Ghz is what gets me. Are you never hitting 3.4Ghz or are you purposely setting the CPU Ratio to 28? The stock setting should be 34 for the 3570.

Also as long as you stay below 80C, you should be just fine. I don't really like being over 70C myself, but I don't run a stock cooler at all. If it's not hitting the advertised speed, there is something seriously wrong there. Whether it be a setting with the motherboards power to socket limiter or a specific power saving problem. It also could be a number of things but I know one thing; if I wasn't getting the advertised speed, I'd be rather pissed off about it as well. The temperatures are warm but not dangerous, the turbo "seems" to be working? But you still never reach 3.4Ghz?

I am learning a lot from all the posts; it's all good information.I wish I was a pro at this and could describe what's going on better. Doing my best. I wish I could screenshot the BIOS. May end up posting a photo of the settings.

The motherboard had the CPU ratio set at 28 out of the box. Was this an error on the part of the pc builder? Were they covering their ass as far as liability on the CPU burning up? I don't know.
Yeah, I was pissed when I saw it was set at 28 lol. I didn't know until after messing with the ratio that the CPU would never go any faster than the ratio setting. So I just wanted to bump it up to the advertised speed.
I am not seeing any Turbo action at all really. Seems like whatever the CPU ratio is set to, it never clocks any faster than that. Idle CPU ratio is always 16...then when it starts working it jumps to whatever the ratio is set to, never any middle ground. Is that normal?
From what I am gathering here there are a few things I need answered:

1. Can I put the CPU ratio at 34? Don't know why it was at 28 out of the box...but I'm thinking the answer is 'Yes'
2. Is it supposed to power boost to 38 if ratio is set to 34? It has not been going any higher than the setting. (just the one brief time while in BIOS the clock speed was at 38 with a ratio setting of 34, has not done that since.)
3. Is there an Auto setting for the CPU ratio that I am missing?

 

[amuffin]

Everything on default and auto.

 

[steddora]

Here's how it works...

The motherboards gets it's information from the CPU at boot and saves it. Take my 2600k that runs at 3.4Ghz just like your processor.

The processor basically sends information such as.

Name : Intel i7-2600k @ 3400mhz
Multiplier Range : 16 to 34
Voltage : Variable
Speedstep Values
Turbo boost bin values

Now the motherboard takes this information and fills in the blanks for a default setup at first boot after a clear cmos data reset or it's actual first boot. So everything is default.

Seems to me that whoever built the PC set the multiplier to 28, why I don't know. Maybe they messed up installing the heatsink and didn't want to risk an overheat? Beats me why; but they did. There should be a setting where the motherboard just uses that information from the processor and leaves it at that. (Default settings).

Basically you want to see this..

CPU Ratio = Auto or 34
VCore = Auto
All other voltage settings = Auto

Load DRAM from XMP or similar to yes or enabled.

This will result in a stock setup.

Turbo boost works like this.

Stock default clock speed is 3400mhz or 34x multiplier
Stage 1 turbo is 3500mhz or 35x multiplier and has all four cores enabled.
Stage 2 turbo is 3600mhz or 36x multiplier and only three cores are enabled.
Stage 3 turbo is 3700mhz or 37x multiplier and only two cores are enabled.
Stage 4 turbo is 3800mhz or 38x multiplier and only one core is enabled.

Basically the faster the speed the more cores the processor disabled automatically to prevent higher amounts of heat. Why there is a 35x4core turbo beats me. Just set the stock clock to 3500mhz and be done with that if it was me.

So if you can't set it up for automatic, set the multiple to 34x and you'll be fine. I hope this helps you understand what's going on here. As for the turbo running with 28x multiple? I have never experimented with that and don't know how it would react when the processor itself was underclocked.

 

[loprojoe]

Best answer selected by loprojoe.

 

[loprojoe]

Thanks to some help from Tom's and a few calls to Cyberpower, got to the bottom of it. The ratio setting of 28 was a mistake on their part and they directed me to change it 34 after restoring optimal defaults. Somehow it now boosts to 38 like it is supposed to. And its a good think I called them. I set my ram at 1866mhz and my board does not support it like I thought it did...it only runs at 1600...so hopefully no lasting damage was done (didn't run it that way very long anyway).

So, I am going to start with adding 4 more cooling fans to the case to see if I can keep it below 75C while at 3.8ghz. Then will consider upgrading the cpu cooler.

Thanks again for all the information.

 

[steddora]

Great news! Great news! It's nice to hear when things work out! Running that speed probably didn't hurt anything as long as it's good now. You'd probably have to run that ram at that speed for quite some time to do any lasting damage.