I7 4790k Stable Overclock Settings?

[Philadd]

Working towards a good, stable, and mild Overclock. Currently sitting at 4.4Ghz and 1.19 volts. Prime95 26.6 has been running event free for about half an hour now. So far, the highest core temp I've seen has been 70c.

Thoughts on these settings? Should I continue to adjust one or the other until I begin to experience issues and then dial it back or are these both pretty safe settings considering the temps? I guess my main question is this? Is there any harm in running at 1.19 volts if I can still achieve a 4.4Ghz clock at a lower voltage?

 

[IntelTurtleFan]

It depends on what your cooler is and what your needs are. I would dial it back a tad if you are getting what you need done (4.2) if the temps are high on idle, but 4.4 is a good oc for the CPU.

 

[Philadd]

Cooler is an H100i. System will be used primarily for gaming and Photoshop. I can probably dial it back a bit. If I take it back to 4.2 any thoughts on what I should dial the voltage back to as a starting point?

 

[FITCamaro]

All I did with mine is set all 4 core to turbo to 4.4Ghz which is the stock turbo on 1-2 cores. It's fast enough.

 

[IntelTurtleFan]

After looking at this some more your OC is not too far off from stock. What is the point of OC'ing to 4.4 or 4.2 if the turbo is 4.4 and stock is 4.0? Also check the water cooler and make sure it is not on too tight.

 

[Philadd]

Forgot about Turbo Boost. I wasn't getting up to the 4.4 because Turbo got disabled somehow. I've gone back to the default settings but when I run Prime95 I'm only maxing out at 4.2Ghz. Any idea why turbo would only be hitting 4.2 if 4.4 is it's max? Would the cooling system have anything to do with this? Also, why the comment about the tightness of the water cooler? Did something I've said raise a concern for you?

 

[IntelTurtleFan]

Check the turbo clock settings. It is BIOS specific if it disables it once a OC is made I suppose. Reset the BIOS to default and it should fix it.
Sometimes with a water cooler and it sitting too tight it will cause higher temps.

 

[FITCamaro]

At default settings the CPU only goes to 4.2GHz when all 4 cores are active. I have adjusted this in the BIOS so I get the full 4.4GHz with all 4 cores. You can do this as well.

 

[Philadd]

Check the turbo clock settings. It is BIOS specific if it disables it once a OC is made I suppose. Reset the BIOS to default and it should fix it.
Sometimes with a water cooler and it sitting too tight it will cause higher temps.

I played around with this for the better part of the day yesterday and I think I've finally landed where I'm going to stay. This is really my first time playing around in the BIOS like this so I figured I would start with letting the motherboard set my Overclock and I would tweak from there. So, the first thing I did was choose the preset option for gaming with a water cooler. The system did it's thing and took me to 4.6Ghz @ 1.3 volts with temps in the high 70s. From there, I went back into the BIOS and brought the clock down to 4.5 and reset. After that, the voltage and temps were still slightly higher than I would have liked so I went back in and changed the core voltage to run with a very slight negative offset. I rebooted and Prime95 has now been running for about two hours with the following results (4.5Ghz/70c/1.19V). Also very pleased that the voltage is still able to run on auto with the offset so when the load decreases the voltage drops back down as well.

 

[FITCamaro]

You might try reducing your voltage further until your OC becomes unstable. I believe I'm down to like 1.13V with running all 4 cores at 4.4GHz when it's in turbo mode. And might try going even lower.

I specify a voltage because my motherboard otherwise ramps it up to like 1.3V and my temps get a lot higher.

 

[mahanddeem]

4790K at 4.4ghz is very enough. Lower voltage if you'll tweak or itch to tweak.