Overclocking i7-4790K questions/discussion

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tAKticool

tAKticool

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Apr 10, 2013
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Hi all,

Built a brand-new 'hi-performance' rig in August, tried to overbuild as much as possible. i7-4790K and ASrock Z97 OC Formula with a Cooler Master Seidon 240M liquid cooler. It has been amazing, absolutely great, I have won the Silicon Lottery so to speak as far as thermals go... With the Intel-base turbo going to 4.4 GHz I get extremely low temps, I don't think I have ever even hit 50 except when running McAfee All-Access virus scans. Idles in the low 20s, sometimes 30s when using Chrome w/ 50 tabs,. etc, but great performance and great low-temps.

I wasn't planning on overclocking but wanted the capability, I want to make this system last so I figured I had no need to overclock it just to see the higher GHz # (at the expense of system life/CPU life etc.) -- well a few nights back I got a few drinks in me and overclocked it via the ASrock BIOS settings. First I went to 4.7 GHz (there are easy pre-set options for 4.5, 4.6, 4.7) ... after a night of 4.7, I wound up having a few more drinks and going to 5Ghz manually. When I go to 5Ghz manually, it won't boot up well, it fails on power-up repeatedly, and I have to let it sit for a few mins with the power-cord unplugged, then it will boot up and I can go into BIOS and adjust things. WHAT I DID TRY, and it worked, was using the EZ-OC 4.7Ghz option, then going and manually changing the multiplier from 47 to 50, and I believe I set the CPU Cache multiplier to 47 perhaps? But made no other adjustments- no voltage or anything like that. Well it worked, I spent a day and night running at 5GHz.

Here is the thing though-- When I OC to 4.7 Ghz, the temps jump significantly, and at 5GHz they jump up even more. At 5GHz , when I play World of Tanks, I'm in the 60s and hitting 70/71 occasionally. Now some people might say that's fine, but two things here- One is, Temp is the enemy of the system and CPU, right? The longer it's run at the higher the temp, the shorter the lifespan is, no? And it's not like I NEED to do that at all, I really cannot see any difference running at 4/4.4Ghz and 4.7 and 5GHz, it's just "Fun" I guess.

So this brings me to my questions- What if I were to OC to 5 or whatever else I Could get it to, and then used the Windows Power Management settings to implement lower-processor-use settings whenever I am not really needing the higher power? Like right now, I am almost always using a "Balanced" setting that I manually adjusted to go from 0% to 100% .... occassionally if I am trying to rev the system up or do something faster, I can implement the Hi-Performance option, which locks it at 100%. If I were to OC to 5Ghz, but didn't need that power that particular session or day etc. I could perhaps use a low-power option that limited the CPU Usage % to whatever , 75%, 80%, 90% etc. Would that make a difference, or would the CPU still be charged with as many volts as top-end, simply not running as fast?





-- LAST THING- This is something that is bothering me. When I go into BIOS, the ASrock UEFI whatever it's called, I can and have made system changes at will, exit and save, machine powers right back up. HOWEVER, when I mess with ANY OverClocking settings, save and exit, the motherboard will power up the system, and about 1 second later it dies. 2 seconds later it will automatically power back up, 1 second later it dies. It will do this continually (after a few times I will pull out the power cord to prevent any damage from this power-up-fail-loop). Put the cord back in, try again, same problem. However, if I leave the cord out "a few minutes" (could be 3, could be 5, or more? , I haven't counted) - then plug back in and power up, it successfully boots, runs at whatever overclocking settings I had previously adjusted it to, and is fine. Will boot and shut down and reboot fine etc. BUT WHEN I GO BACK INTO BIOS, readjust any OC settings, same boot failure. I thought it could be that I needed to update my BIOS, which I did Wednesday night, but while it successfully updated, it still has this boot-failure-loop upon adjusting OC Settings. Is there something going on I am not aware of or a problem I must have I don't know about etc? Otherwise everything has been tip-top, pretty great, it makes me want to just leave the BIOS/OC alone , but now that i've messed with it ONCE, I get the urge to mess with it more, know what I mean?

OK Thank you all for your help very much.
 
I think... what's going on here is you have a 454 and you are trying to make it rev up like a 305 (lol sorry bad comparison)... 5GHz is kinda pushing it... to be clear anything over the rated 4.4GHz should be considered a victory. I would set everything back to a "stock" or "auto" setting and start from the beginning with some in depth guides and research. It sounds like you might have a particularly good one, that with a little fine tuning could actually set some impressive marks. I have the 4770k (4790k's little brother so to speak) and I honestly don't use it much over 4.2 (all core). I can get it to 4.5 (all core) but the temps are not where I want them long term.

Intel CPU stuff
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1808604/intel-temperature-guide.html

Overclocking
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/259903-29-overclocking-benchmarking-guides

And google searches for the rest. There is actually a lot of little things that can affect how an OC will go.
 
Hey I wanted to say Thank You Very Much for both your time in responding and your knowledge.


I agree with the fact that I might have got lucky .... I am pretty sure I got a pretty good chip. At first when I got it, I was upset because all the internet searches I did on the i7-4790K and OverClocking had them as MALAY chips, and I got a VIETNAM chip, and I'm thinking, like , wtf? Did I get a second-run or something? But it was pretty clear off the bat when I got some amazing, amazing thermal results I had something special. But i was pretty adamant I wasn't going to Overclock for a long time, I wanted to have a pretty amazing system for a very, very long time RATHER THAN an A Real Amazing system for a lesser time.... lol.



However, about a month and a half ago, a life-event happened and I started drinking again after over 5+ years. Didn't take long for me to get my old, bold ways about me and woohoo Overclock time b!tches! When it wouldn't power up the first time I thought, "serves you right. Look what you did you little jerk!" Then it seemed to fix itself, which was a huge relief and you'd think I'd leave well enough alone, right?

Wrong suckas!


Now I am torn- by Day, just want to make it work as long as possible, it's not like I need so much power, I don't even need the power I have bare minimum! --- But at night, it's like,vroom vroom b!tche$ .... let's get it on! Wooooohooooo!






Hopefully I don't report back with a pile of smoking ruins like the Valyrian Freehold.
 
This is 5 GHz, right?



I tried bumping up the multiplier to 52 and the CPU Cache a bit , up to 48 or 47, ? but they didn't work.

Setting the auto-setting to 4.7, but manually changing the CPU Multiplier to 50 and the CPU Cache Multiplier to 46 works. the temps are a lot hotter, but we're running baby.

I think if I knew more about voltages and ran the CPU cooler at maximum, I could probably get into the 5.x's for a bit. but what would that get me other than high temps and probably no recognition, right?

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/y390/tAKticool/5%20GHz_zpsab4uorsb.jpg

 


I say push it as hard as possible if it isn't above about 34 idle and the motherboard is fine. If you would like, keep it as stock. But I do not... 4.5GHz on a CPU rated for 4.0
 
Now let me be honest here. I decided, "Perhaps I should give this a try NOW, in the morning, when I'm sober.... rather than at night when I'm drinking......"

So I tried 5.3 GHz, without touching anything else just making the multiplier 53 instead of 51, and it hangs on the Windows boot screen - it freezes up with the little circle of dots spinning and spinning and spinning. So I reset, tried upping some of the voltages a tad.... But I am not really an expert in this field and voltages are my weak point so I perhaps didn't give it enough, I don't know, I purposely try to make sure I don't OVER do it, but it might be why it doesn't work. So it didn't work, I tried adjusting again and I got a scary blue screen fail at boot, so I decided to back off and stop messing with it before I screw up.


Here is the thing- As I might have mentioned, the ASRock Z97 OC Formula has 3 Overclocking methods that i'm aware of. There is an EZ OverClock if you will, with a setting for 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7 GHz. There is also a "Nick Shih" category which all look like EXTREMELY out of my league, liquid nitrogen stuff and high, high GHz numbers. Then there is the manual adjustments for each and every category, some things I don't even really know what the values represent so it's a tad out of my league.

What I did the first time I tried overclocking was just hit the 4.7 GHz and it worked great. Then I strove for 5 GHz so I just used the 4.7 GHz profile, but edited the CPU Multiplier to 50. I put the CPU Cache multiplier at 44 - (I read the CPU Cache multiplier should be the same as the CPU Multiplier, but I think that whenever I go above 44 cache multiplier it might induce failures, I am pretty sure a bunch of early failures I got was all related the the CPU Cache adjustments and above 44). So I am able to get a pretty solid 5 GHz and for awhile also 5.1 GHz. When I tried to go to 5.3, I also tried enabling the Adaptive voltages settings, there are 3 or so areas where you can override the voltages or allow adaptive- I figured adaptive would be good, it would enable it to give it the juice it needs. Whenever I enable adaptive voltage, it won't boot. I couldn't get it to boot with a small (in my opinion) increase in some of the voltages, couldn't get it to boot with adaptive voltage, decided to back off. I feel like if I give it enough juice it will work but I'm not confident in my ability to fully understand each adjustment etc.


I am nearly certain I can hit 5.3 or even higher, possibly a decent bit higher, if I can learn enough about the entire process and therefore adjust each and every setting manually. Sadly without a friend or someone to say "Make this setting this- make that setting that- adjust this for that, etc. " It will probably be awhile before I am able to study and learn enough to do it. Because I do not repeat do NOT want to screw up and blow it up or burn it out etc. I think I have an excellent chip specimen in my i7-4790K and i am sure I have a good build around it , so I am confident i can play perhaps more than average, but still I am wary of making one mistake that ruins everything.


Thanks much, please let me know if anyone has feedback etc.
 

If not tried already you can disable single threading and sort of "stair step" your individual cores on the multiplier settings like CPU1@50, CPU2@48, CPU3@48, CPU4@46. This lessens the heat from the other cores and can gain you a little more headroom. I would thoroughly investigate guides specific to your board and cross referenced your findings to a guid specific to the 4790k.

I would honestly try not to push it past about 1.35~1.37 Vcore unless all other options are gone for getting another 100MHz out of it. Also i'm not liking the Vcore of 1.4 too much, that's really starting to push it, and definitely don't operate it normally (as for regular use) at more than 1.25~1.3 Vcore . Good luck!
 


Just to answer that- I haven't ran a formal test to see if it's stable, but I used the High-Performance (Windows Power Profile) to set it to run at 100% (so it was locked at the 5.0985, i think it got up to like 5.1001 at one point) and played World of Tanks ( which I have always set on the highest possible settings all the time) while using Google Chrome to listen to an audiobook and browse about 10+ open tabs at the same time, so it's sufficiently stressed. Or shall I say it's not now but I mean it was, and I feel comfortable saying it was stable under stress.



The_Tester,

I wanted to say THANKS very much that is very good advice. As I said I'm not really well versed in this field as a whole, but definitely not a voltage expert at all so that is very solid advice. After running it last night full-on at 5.1GHz (while gaming and browsing and listening and such) and experimenting with/failing to increase it this morning, I backed off and went back to the normal 4GHz (4.4 GHz Intel Turbo) - using the Balanced (Windows Power Profile) which I have set to go from low of 5% CPU power to 100%, right now i'm at basically 800 MHz across the 4 cores and from .72V to .73V across the 4 cores. Obviously it can go up but I can see your point, when I went back and looked at my screen-shot I can see how the VCore was at 1.4.

I always sort of thought I would be okay because I had over-built my machine and used overclocking-specific parts despite my ideas being NOT to overclock it much if at all, if ever. Specifically the ASRock Z97 OC Formula is one of the most high-performance overclocking motherboards for the dollar in the market, and I have a platinum power supply with much more juice than I need and a water-cooling Cooler Master w/ high-performance , top-quality thermal compound etc. Plus a full-tower case w/ 4 built-in case fans, an additional high-performance (exhausting) fan, etc. I assumed I would be pretty much good to as far as power, temps, etc. I guess I just read a few threads via Google about people overclocking and getting 6s and 7s GHz on their i7-4790Ks, I got a little cavalier and figured I could just OC that baby right up the 5.x's with ease and didn't realize I really was pushing it.

I do believe I could get higher and "stable" at that, but the problem is, as you pointed out, you wouldn't want to run that all the time and these machines and parts do have a limited lifespan, right? The longer you push it at faster speeds and higher voltages means the less time you get to use it, no?


OK Thanks again to all.... I don't know if I'll just be glad to have done it once and leave it alone or keep pursuing it, would be nice to see how high I could get it, but don't want to risk a loss/injury etc.





 

Have fun, but be careful!

 



I have to ask this-

I did a bit of research, people were replying to some other idiot who seems pretty much exactly like me, that he has no idea how much he ruined his chip if he actually let it run @ 1.4V any length of time.

Am I screwed now? Is there a way to check and see if I did some sort of damage? I always figured temp was the thing I need to be monitoring, and I don't think I have hit more than 70 or 71 for a few seconds , and that was at 100% CPU on 5.1GHz, etc. Otherwise it was pretty low.


Now I am thinking I should have kept my stupid hands of my stupid settings.

Thanks again for your help.
 
OK I'm freaking addicted -- it's like the gambling problem I had real bad in 2003 and particularly in 2004 and into 2005 ....

I can't stop.

I messed with it AT LENGTH.

Even tho I said I wouldn't.


I am now at 5GHz. @ 1.3V .....

so here's the problem -- 4.9987 GHz and 1.299V x3 cores and 1.3V x1 core pretty much steady, without change.

http://prntscr.com/9i9bmt

the thing is, when I use the "Balanced" Windows Power Profile normally, it always scales back the power Voltage and certainly MHz rates accordingly -- this time it's strictly full power. I can't figure it out. When I press "Low" it will go down (in MHz) but not in Balanced (even tho it normally does).


Also- am I in trouble here running at 1.3V? Because as much as there is a part of me that wants to set some records (or at least shut up the guy above who said "beat 5.2 bitch" or whatever he said.....) but there is also a part of me who would simply like to go as powerful as I can as safe as possible, whatever that is. Is 1.3V okay?


THANKS AGAIN AND MERRY CHRISTMAS.
 
1.4Vcore is not where you want to go on a regular basis, but it depends on if you have other stuff set to pull it back down if things start going out of control. 1.3Vcore should be fine as a safe max to start with, it's when you start going too much over over that things can get tricky.

I'm not familiar with the Formula OC UEFI specifically but i'm going to give you some settings to try that I'm pulling from the Extreme9 (should be fairly similar to what you can see). First start up a blank profile (or put everything to do with OC'ing back to disabled/stock/normal/auto), save changes and cycle through with F2 back into the UEFI for it to take effect.

Go in and select the "optimized" setting for 4.7GHz and then again cycle through back into the UEFI for it to take effect. Go through everything that states that it will help or improve overclocking and set it to that setting like filter PLL set to high bclk mode, internal PLL overvoltage set to fixed etc, BCLK spead specturm to disabled... Basically enable all the settings that allude to it "helping" or "improving" overclocking if it doesn't do it automatically. Also go to boot failure guard and set the number of attempts to 2, I belive the FOC has this. And be sure to have all your fans running max speed. Save changes > exit

Cycle into the operating system and go into the device manager > disks and be sure to disable write caching on all drives (will help prevent corrupted data in the event of a crash). Then undock/disconnect any USB devices and ethernet cord. In power options, set everything to "max performance" or "disable power saving mode". Set CPU min state to say 50% and the max to 100% (will let CPU throttle back). Then restart the computer and let all this take effect.

Once you get it into an "overclock ready state" as I'll call it Try these settings to start with in the UEFI

RAM XMP profile set high performance (like XMP.2 or something) and the ram is running at it's 2133 target freq

CPU ratio (per core)
0=48
1=48
2=44
3=44

CPU cache=44

CPU fixed mode=auto (will allow the cpu to throttle down as long as power plan lets it)

Long duration power limit=105

long duration maintained = 2 secs (to start with, so things won't spike too long)

Short duration power limit=125 (long will bring it back down but the short should allow you to see it hit a max set frequency briefly)

CPU vcore (adaptive)=1.3 (let's go right to the max safe to start with)
CPU cache (adaptive)=1.2 (should not need to change this unless you up the cache freq)

CPU input voltage (fixed mode) = 1.875 (roughly 0.45V~0.55V difference on the regulator should be good enough to compensate for any voltage drops)

DRAM=1.615 should only need 1.6 but a little over is ok for stability
PCH 1.05=1.15 or whatever it will let you set it to between 1.150 and 1.175
PCH 1.5=1.53 or whatever it will let you set it to between 1.530 and 1.550

If this works, systematically up the Core0 multiplier by one (for example to 49). If this works keep going up buy 1 on the multiplier for core0 until things start saying no in your system (after successfully entering the operating system). When things start saying no in you system allow it to "do it's thing" and collect info on the error. The next thing will be to start slowly upping the Vcore voltage and trying again (up the voltage by .1 increments for example 1.300 to 1.310). If you are approaching 1.350 Vcore with only changing core0 freq and it wont go any higher, back the Vcore down to 1.3 and the core0 48.

Now up the cache buy one multiplier (to 45 for example) and set the cache voltage to 1.25 and start over with core0.

Follow this trend until you either hit 1.38Vcore and or 1.35 cpu cache voltage (max, but not sustained as it should throttle back). You may need to increase the short duration power limit if you noticed it won't quite hit the target freq. But differently don't set it to more than 150% of TDP (4790K TDP=88@stock | 4790K TDP@150%=132

Once you get it to a point where it seems somewhat stable, you can increase the duration up to like 10 sec then 30 up to the max and see if it crashes. For the purposes of getting max OC, stability beyond being able to enter the OS and check the cpu freq is irrelevant. You definitely want to back off for regular use though

I would not try to go any higher on the above voltages without a lot more investigating on how to tune with your particular motherboard (it actually has quite a bit of stuff you can tweak). i'm not super heavy into overclocking but i'm also not into magic smoke much either 😉 Anything beyond this and you would need to make the call.
 



I just wanted to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH, The_Tester, not only did you did this for me but on Christmas Day! I cannot say thank you enough, I will get some time to play with this later today/tonight, but wanted to make sure I said thank you and Merry Christmas, very appreciative!

 
OK a bit of an update-

I played with this extensively the last 36-48 hours or so. A few things to report, some disappointment but some positives etc.

When I had initially said "This is 5GHz right? " and then "5.1 right?" above, I didn't realize the OC "EZ-Setting" was making the voltage 1.4V - straight up, no adjustments or up/down scaling, it was 1.4... so even if I set the Windows Power Profile to Balanced or even Power-Save, and the GHz went down to say .79 which is where it idles a lot, it was still at 1.4V. Which I of course now realize is dangerous, and certainly not acceptable for always-on full-time use.

I went and played with a lot of things- I *cannot* get the system work with adaptive power settings above 4.8GHz. Will not work , tried a multitude of combinations and various adjustments but without manual voltage control it won't go above 4.8GHz, and unfortunately it wants a fairly high level of 1.3xxx V to do it. The problems with this is that I just can't think it's acceptable to run a full-power-Voltage-setting all the time the machine is on and in use.... What I mean is, this makes it revving up the engine close to redline the entire time you're driving, even when slowed down and/or cruising gently on the highway.

I WAS however able to scale back my hopes and dreams, and get the thing to use adaptive power control at 4.8 GHz, which works out very very nicely. it stays low @ .7x V at lower GHz speeds and usages, and as the speeds increase/CPU usage increases up to 4.8GHz, it goes up to like 1.26 or something like that- IMHO acceptable for top-end power and usage, no? I ran a McAfee All-Access scan (which taxes the system to 100% across all the cores) while browsing w/ many tabs & watching as Youtube, and it was in the low-to-mid 60s and I think it only touched 70 once or twice briefly, staying in the 50s-60s. And as I said, the adaptive power is on-the-fly so it immediately scales back down when you are done or the CPU usage is less etc.

This is in contrast to my above attempts at the highest speeds possible.... it wants over 1.35V to do 5Ghz and a full 1.4V to go to 5.1 Ghz, I wasn't able to get it above 51 when I was trying before. I personally believe I could get the thing several ticks higher with increased voltage- but why really? So I can post on here that I did it? And what exactly would that get me? Or WORSE, I *couldn't* post on here because I ruined it etc. Or somewhere perhaps at a worst-case-scenario, I don't ruin it at once but significantly hurt it which lowers its capabilities AND lifespan, giving me less of a machine for less of a lifespan etc.



I went back to "normal" before bed last night, but I'm pretty sure I can replicate the 4.8 GHz w/ adaptive power settings for the voltage whenever I want... I'm not sure if I want to run that way full time or not, maybe I should just look at this as a fun experience over the course of a week or so, I know what my system can do a bit more now than I had, and take it as a trip to the casino and leaving with a bit extra money, can't call it a bad experience. There is a part of me who'd love to try to juice it up as big and bad as possible but I realize there is NO REASON really, what is it going to do for me, other than let me post about it on the internet lol?



Thanks again if and when I have more to report I will get right on it!
 
I just thought I would add some updated information: For the last 30-45 days, I have been running solidly full-time @ 5 GHz with adaptive power settings. I have set the overclocking settings to go to 5 GHz with a maximum voltage of 1.345 ; although it usually does not go above 1.343-1.344 but will sometimes hit 1.345 when it actually runs at 5.1 GHz. I am very happy with this because it idles at .72-.73V and I am able to take advantage of the power of the chip and get super hi performance/ OC Numbers while not having to simply set it at a potentially toxic/dangerous/breakneck voltage (Like the 1.4 I didn't know it was at when I originally started this thread/project/etc.)

It is pretty much solid stable, and runs fairly cool still. I may have said before, I have perhaps the most amazing chip when it comes to temps, if I were to leave it at 4/4.4 GHz normal settings, I don't get above 29C unless I'm utilizing all the power I have (i.e. virus scans or World of Tanks) -- the increased voltage and speeds do increase the temps but normal "full-speed/full-power" temps are 40s to 50s and I have only seen it break 59 a few times, and generally that is when I am not running the CPU Cooler fans full power ( i run my CM 240M @ 50% normally, but if I'm gaming or something I turn it up.)


So far so good, I am pretty happy, I certainly didn't want and don't want to induce any long-term damage or shorten my CPU lifespan but it appears I have hit a Hi-Power Happy "Medium" if you will.

 
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