i7 4770k's desiring high voltage values

[odemmah666]

Hi guys,

I was up to OC my system so I grab one Thermaltake NIC C4 with configured at highest fan speed.
with stock speeds which is 3.5 ghz I see 25-30C's at idle situation so some of my friends said this system should easly reach 4.5 ghz without any problems.

I read A LOT of guide about overclocking 4770k so I just put those values which are done with identical systems of mine. The thing is, when I assign 1.25v for 4.5 ghz, system crashed and I had to reset bios through CMOS. But when I use upgrade profiles, system was perfectly stable and passed all of those stress tests but with very high temperature of 95C's...I even saw 100C.

So I checked the core voltage and I saw 1.4v which is way out of what I saw from the guides. So with profile was still actived, I lowered it to 1.25v which was enough to system work, but not enough to pass those stress tests.My friends had warned me about those high voltage values of upgrade profiles and suggested me to do it manually but either way system was not able to work properly.

System is working fine right now, except that high temperature on full load. But is there even really a disadvantage of using those profiles?...should I really try to find the matching values manually? is there any possibility that my cpu is actually wanting that voltage to work at that frequency?btw, upgrade profile of 4.3 ghz is also assings 1.4v core voltage so there is no difference.

I just need some advice guys...I don't wanna shorten my cpu's life but I also want it to work at 4.5 ghz.

Also my mobo is Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 with 1866 mhz ripjawsx ram(e.m.p profile 1 enabled to achieve all the speed of memory), integrated graphic processor disabled to help relaxing the cpu

 

[MeteorsRaining]

Firstly, never copy and paste OC settings from even an identical system, every CPU is different, you may get 4.4GHz on stock voltage with one while not even getting 4GHz from another, both taken from the same line in factory. Go through OCing this way:

Increase the multiplier by 1 or 2, from stock speed, and on stock voltage, then stress test. Upto 80C is fine. Do this until you crash, then reduce the OC by 1 (in multiplier), up the VCore by 0.05, and repeat the process till you're stable on stress testing, with fine temps ofc. Then increase the multiplier, if it crashes, increase VCore, stop when you reach 1.35V, that should be your final OC, and no one can garuantee you'd get to 4.5Ghz, not matter how hard you try, if the chip isn't good enough.

 

[odemmah666]

Firstly, never copy and paste OC settings from even an identical system, every CPU is different, you may get 4.4GHz on stock voltage with one while not even getting 4GHz from another, both taken from the same line in factory. Go through OCing this way:

Increase the multiplier by 1 or 2, from stock speed, and on stock voltage, then stress test. Upto 80C is fine. Do this until you crash, then reduce the OC by 1 (in multiplier), up the VCore by 0.05, and repeat the process till you're stable on stress testing, with fine temps ofc. Then increase the multiplier, if it crashes, increase VCore, stop when you reach 1.35V, that should be your final OC, and no one can garuantee you'd get to 4.5Ghz, not matter how hard you try, if the chip isn't good enough.

sorry it took so long...I did everything step by step just like you said. so here's the two situations I observed;

1. 4.4 ghz at 1.25v (temps where at late 70C's. I saw 82C few times as highest)
2. 4.5 ghz at 1.30v (late 80C's. saw 94 as the highest)

I used Intel Extreme Tuning's stress test for 5 min and cinebench rendering test...also pcmark 7

these two situations passed these tests first but then failed after doing it again so I increased voltage again by 0.05v. I realized why people use these tests for like 6 hours or something...to be sure its stability for good.
it seems like 4.5 ghz wants more voltage then its lower values somehow.Right now, I prefer 4.4 ghz at 1.26v and temps are late 70C's under full load as I observed at 1.25v.

I don't think there are any other application that can push cpu as much as these stress tests..especially not as Intel Extreme Tuning since I'm just gonna do play some games and stuff which can push cpu only for its 60% of what it can do.

thank you for your clear explanation. Right now, I'm much more acknowledged about tweaking cpu.

 

[MeteorsRaining]

Yep, as you can see, if the CPU doesn't want to go beyond 4.4GHz w/o adding voltage, then its not worth it, there's not a single FPS gain in 100Mhz increment, better to be safe than sorry.
Glad to help

 

[odemmah666]

Yep, as you can see, if the CPU doesn't want to go beyond 4.4GHz w/o adding voltage, then its not worth it, there's not a single FPS gain in 100Mhz increment, better to be safe than sorry.
Glad to help

seems like even 1.26v is not enough to make 4.4 ghz work after doing Intel E.T.'s benchmark test (its odd that actually 1.26v passes stress test but fails benchmark test) so I increased it again. Right now, 1.27v for 4.4 ghz passes all these tests with almost no difference in temperature (averagely 75C's, early 80C's)

by the way, I set uncore frequency (cache frequency, or northbridge frequency etc) to 4.0 ghz...even tough motherboard's itself recommends me to set it to the same value of core frequency. but system fails again if I set them both to same frequency (I guess because requirement for voltage also increases) so 4.0 works just fine for it.

but what about analog/digital, agent, ring stuffs???...should I also change those or just leave at auto?

 

[MeteorsRaining]

Seems that 4.4Ghz will work out for you. And yes leave other on auto, play with Voltage and Multiplier. Temps are ok. Upto 80C (average, not peak) and 1.35V is fine. But since your CPU is not stable on higher OC, its fine to stop.