Question Is this safe and adequate voltages for I7 9700k?

Jan 6, 2020
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5
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I was having cooling problems with my chip at 5ghz with auto voltage applied. It was reaching highs of 85°c. Now I understand this is a safe and reasonable temperature for a Cinebench stress test but just didn't like it running that hot.

I have since lowered the CPU clock to 4.9ghz and set my own manual Vcore voltage to 1.285v and performs a Cinebench run fine at max of 68°c

However, I was a little confused as to why the voltage ran higher on boot than on the actual Cinebench stress test. The voltage rose to 1.284 max just as I turned on my pc and lowered to 1.117v as I was performing the Cinebench test.

Any help would be appreciated, and are these voltages safe?

Build:
CPU: I7 9700k @ 4.9ghz
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra
Cooler: NZXT kraken x62
RAM: 16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengance Pro RGB
Storage: Kingston a400 120gb

UPDATE
I have since lowered my Vcore voltages from 1.285v down to to 1.275v anything under that voltage won't boot my PC. I'm also running Cinebench aswell as AIDA64 stress test. I'm still receiving lows of 1.164v and highs of 1.188v to 1.212v
 
Last edited:

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
I think you have room for improvement with that voltage. You could try and tone down the voltage just a tad bit but you will need to try other benchmarks as well since an undervolt might be stellar on one app or game but be horrible for another.

Latest BIOS for your motherboard? Make and model of your PSU, just in case?
 
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Well, you're safe though cause if you set 1.285 and it has a bump to its max (1.284 - v's aren't 100% precise) on boot it may just because once you start your system it goes to its set voltage, wich is the aforemented, then the cool/power saving features kick in and it reduces and rises the voltages automatically on demand, chips doesn't stay on a set voltage all the time nowadays, unless you disable those features but those are for another discussion and should stay on.
as to why cinebench only uses 1.117? ive no idea, probably because its all its need? wich is a good thing too, it lowers temps.

try another test, a cpu intensive one and it should likely go to its peak of 1.285v or a bit more even, maybe you have room to lower the v a bit more but as said before, some V may be just fantastic for one application and some other one crashes right away, and 1.285v is absolutely fine, keep as it is if everything is stable and cool, lower 0.05-0.10 and test
 
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Jan 6, 2020
47
5
35
I think you have room for improvement with that voltage. You could try and tone down the voltage just a tad bit but you will need to try other benchmarks as well since an undervolt might be stellar on one app or game but be horrible for another.

Latest BIOS for your motherboard? Make and model of your PSU, just in case?
I think you have room for improvement with that voltage. You could try and tone down the voltage just a tad bit but you will need to try other benchmarks as well since an undervolt might be stellar on one app or game but be horrible for another.

Latest BIOS for your motherboard? Make and model of your PSU, just in case?
Thank you for your reply, I have an RM850x for PSU, it's the latest bios.
 
Last edited:
Jan 6, 2020
47
5
35
Well, you're safe though cause if you set 1.285 and it has a bump to its max (1.284 - v's aren't 100% precise) on boot it may just because once you start your system it goes to its set voltage, wich is the aforemented, then the cool/power saving features kick in and it reduces and rises the voltages automatically on demand, chips doesn't stay on a set voltage all the time nowadays, unless you disable those features but those are for another discussion and should stay on.
as to why cinebench only uses 1.117? ive no idea, probably because its all its need? wich is a good thing too, it lowers temps.

try another test, a cpu intensive one and it should likely go to its peak of 1.285v or a bit more even, maybe you have room to lower the v a bit more but as said before, some V may be just fantastic for one application and some other one crashes right away, and 1.285v is absolutely fine, keep as it is if everything is stable and cool, lower 0.05-0.10 and test
Thank you very much for your reply, I'll be sure to do that straight away. I appreciate the help. Thanks