i7 8700k and Asus TUF z370 plus overclocking

[Weathered]

I just recently built a new pc not too long ago. I would like to overclock it a bit but nothing extreme. I am running an i7 8700k, Asus TUf z370-plus gaming motherboard, G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Intel Z170 Platform, Cryorig H5 cpu cooler, MSI geforce 1080ti duke 11gb, samsung 960 evo m/2 ssd, EVGA supernova 650w psu.

Now I have done a little overclocking in the past but this has been several years ago. Need to get reeducated all over again.

Now after looking through the bios, my goodness there are a lot of options in there.

Right now, I am using the XMP profile which has a turbo boost of 4.7ghz with ram at 3200mhz, 16-18-18-38 and 1.35v. I believe the cpu voltage is running at 1.136. I am using Hwmonitor to monitor temps. I have ran prime95 but only for a couple of minutes, just wanted to see what my temps got up to. 5 of the cores get around 73 degrees while the 6th one hits 80. Now I don't know if that is considered high for running a stress test at 4.7ghz but why is that one core so much higher than the others? Does that indicate thermal paste is not spread just right? Running it in XMP profile, when idle, the cpu is running at 800mhz.

Now I know with it idling down, it's better for using less power when not needed. But according to HWMonitor, the cpu mhz is constantly jumping up and down if I am not doing much. Now would all the changing be hard on a processor vs it running at a constant speed all the time?

Would I be better off overclocking manual instead of using XMP profile? If I am to do it manual, what settings should I be changing? I have also have three OC settings in the bios called oc tuning normal, fast and extreme or something like that.

 

[guesswho120]

Intel uses a feature called speedstep that downclocks the cpu when it has little to do to save energy and if adaptive voltage is enabled the voltage will do down as well. You will most likely want this on to give your cpu a longer lifespan.

If you would rather have xmp off you could type in your ram timings and frequency manually if you like.

As for using prime95, you will want to look at what version your using because if you have a newer version it will use an AVX workload which will work your cpu much harder than any normal instruction set. This causes much higher than normal cpu temps and won’t be accurate for stress testing. You’ll want version 26.6 which is the last version without the AVX instruction. The bios also has an AVX Offset setting. Setting this to -2 or -3 can help with stability and temps when using avx.

Asus boards have a setting called something like enhanced turbo function (not sure what it’s called) but this automatically Overclocks your cpu. You’ll want to turn this off if you want to go higher than 4.7.

 

[Weathered]

Intel uses a feature called speedstep that downclocks the cpu when it has little to do to save energy and if adaptive voltage is enabled the voltage will do down as well. You will most likely want this on to give your cpu a longer lifespan.

If you would rather have xmp off you could type in your ram timings and frequency manually if you like.

As for using prime95, you will want to look at what version your using because if you have a newer version it will use an AVX workload which will work your cpu much harder than any normal instruction set. This causes much higher than normal cpu temps and won’t be accurate for stress testing. You’ll want version 26.6 which is the last version without the AVX instruction. The bios also has an AVX Offset setting. Setting this to -2 or -3 can help with stability and temps when using avx.

Asus boards have a setting called something like enhanced turbo function (not sure what it’s called) but this automatically Overclocks your cpu. You’ll want to turn this off if you want to go higher than 4.7.

Ty for the reply.

I am guessing that speedstep is already enabled since when not doing anything, it will idle down to 800mhz. Now maybe this is nothing to be concerned with but the mhz is constantly changing every second even when idle.

If I were to manually enter the settings, what exactly would I need to change? Is it more than just ram timings and frequency?

For prime95, I am using version 29.4 build 5. I will look into the different version

For the temps I am getting, I get around 72-74 on 5 cores and 80 on 6th core and this was without doing any stress testing like prime95.

If I do overclock it manually, don't think I would go higher than 4.7 if I go even that high.