Question Ideas for 13600k optimization ?

[MrFrankitoGR]

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great!
So I built a new PC this week and I was testing my CPU with cinebench r23

My build:
CPU: i5-13600k
MOBO: Gigabyte Aorus x690 Elite DDR4
COOLER: Arctic Freezer II 280 Rev 7

My BIOS settings:
XMP profile enabled
Power Limit set from "Auto" to "Intel POR"

My score was: 20526 and here are my Hwinfo64 logs during a 10 minute CPU Multi core test:

I would be happy to see your suggestions in order to improve/optimize my CPU!
Thank you in advance!

 

[geofelt]

What would you like to "optimize/improve"?
Do you have a budget?

What is the make/model of your case and what is the fan arrangement?
What is the make/model of your graphics card if any?
psu??

What will your main usage of this pc be?
Running cinebench/ multithreaded batch apps/ games??

 

[SkyNetRising]

I would be happy to see your suggestions in order to improve/optimize my CPU!

Can you show a photo of your system with side panel removed?

 

[MrFrankitoGR]

What would you like to "optimize/improve"?
Do you have a budget?

What is the make/model of your case and what is the fan arrangement?
What is the make/model of your graphics card if any?
psu??

What will your main usage of this pc be?
Running cinebench/ multithreaded batch apps/ games??

I am referring to overclocking/undervolting CPU sorry for not clarifying that.
My main usage is gaming.

 

[geofelt]

Running games will stress only a couple of threads.
Multi thread benchmarks do not tell you much.
Overclocking is no longer a way to get something for nothing.
Chips are binned and the better performing chips are used in more expensive cpu variants.
Gamers do better by allowing the turbo mechanism to boost a couple of cores.
This results in better game performance than an all core overclock.
Expect your 13600K to touch 100c. It is built to do that.

 

[uWebb429]

@MrFrankitoGR
With proper cooling and without any overclocking, the 13600K should run at its full rated speed of 5100 MHz for an entire Cinebench test. The 13600K should score somewhere in the 24000 to 24500 point range in R23.

Your results and HWiNFO confirm that your CPU is thermal throttling and only running at 4300 MHz to 4400 MHz. That is 700 MHz to 800 MHz slower than the speed it should be running at. That is why your Cinebench score is poor. Your cooler is not doing the job it should be doing.

Are you aware of the problem that your Arctic Freezer cooler is having on a wide variety of different motherboards?

https://support.arctic.de/en/lf2-280

Even if your motherboard is not on this list, if this is a new cooler, I would return it and get something better. Poor cooling is reducing performance significantly. An Intel CPU can run safely up to 100°C but it is not going to deliver consistent performance or maximum performance if it is bouncing off the thermal throttling limit.

The other thing you can try is undervolting. Some 13600K can run 100% reliably with a negative offset voltage of -100 mV or more. Some Gigabyte boards seem to use excessive voltage at default settings. Start at an offset of -50 mV, test for stability and work your way up to -75 mV, -100 mV, etc. Less voltage equals less power consumption and less heat for the cooler to deal with. This will allow your CPU to run faster before thermal throttling starts.

Undervolting can help the cause but I would still look into replacing the cooler. Perhaps Arctic Freezer is using the older stands so their coolers are not making full contact on some boards.

Edit - Some more info about Arctic Freezer using the wrong stands.

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/11m69ht/arctic_liquid_freezer_ii_280_rev_7_not_making/

 

[Atomic Skull]

@MrFrankitoGR
Some Gigabyte boards seem to use excessive voltage at default settings. Start at an offset of -50 mV, test for stability and work your way up to -75 mV, -100 mV, etc. Less voltage equals less power consumption and less heat for the cooler to deal with. This will allow your CPU to run faster before thermal throttling starts.

Lower the core voltage start by manually locking it to 1.2v (intel stock) and see what happens. It seems a LOT of LGA1700 motherboards go too far with the core voltage and some of them are pretty bad about it.

MSI boards are like this, they come out of the box set for water cooling and it looks like they never tested air cooling much on them when designing the cooling profiles. I moved my 13600k from an Asrock Steel Legend B660 to an MSI Pro Z690 A Mb (found a really good deal on the MSI Z690 shortly after I got the B660) and immediately noticed that it would slam to 100C on cinebench within seconds even with the cooler tuning in the bios set to "tower air cooler" First thing I tried was to manually lock the core voltage at 1.2v and that immediatly brought the temps down to around 85C max, in line with the previous board. After some experimentation I found that if I set the core voltage to 1.2v and left "CPU light load" at auto, it always selected "mode 1" where with both core voltage and CPU light lode set to auto it was selecting mode 12.

Set core voltage to Auto and CPU light lode to mode 1 and cinebench now runs around 80C, 155w and zero throttling (benchmark score of 24060). CPU vcore shows .811v~1.26v with the average being around 1.15v or so. This is well within intel's voltage specs for the CPU.

Some MBs also expose the CPU undervolt protection feature, I turned this on though it didn't seem to make any difference it was stable with or without (it's not even getting close to the lower voltage limit for the CPU though)

Keep in mind that I'm not overclocking anything you'd almost certainly need to raise the voltage for that.