Safe operating temps for I9-9900k OC'd?

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whoisme555

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May 24, 2010
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Hi, I recently snagged a 9900k during newegg's latest shipment and installed it. I've got a corsair h150i pro as my cooler, and I tried out the "CPU Upgrade 5ghz" option in the gigabyte aorus gaming 7 motherboard's bios for a one click OC type of thing, just to see how it worked.

Everything is stable, but the temps are a little high and I wanted to see what you guys thought.

The average operating temp is about 30 degrees, but during black ops 4 gaming, it spiked as high as 85, with an average of 75-80.

Should I turn down the OC or is this alright?
 


Yeah, I figured that'd be the response, I just wanted to make sure.

I'll try a manual overclock tonight or tomorrow and see if that helps. I'd like to get a stable 5 ghz oc, if for nothing other than bragging rights
 
The problem with the 9900K, is that even at 5ghz, it's a beast to cool. So 80C is normal, but not exactly good for longevity.

I'd personally, see if you can undervolt a bit at 5ghz. See what you get (test with prime95 and asus realbench). Then in BIOS (since you'll be manually overclocking when undervolting), make sure you set your LLC so that it hits the voltage you typed in when under load, and also set the power limit as high as you can.
 


The idle temps are good but the in game temps are high, especially as you have a 360mm AIO in the Corsair H150i....I have the exact same setup but with the 8700K. I definitely agree with TechyInAZ that a manual overclock should allow you to run a lower vcore to reduce temps whilst still attaining 5GHz...

It would be great to know what you reach on the manual overclock in terms of vcore and settings as I have the same motherboard in the Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7 and wanted to know A - If it can actually handle overclocks on the 9900K and B - how far it can take the overclock safely. Keep an eye on your VRM temps! Might consider the 9900K next time I upgrade...Thank you in advance..
 


I'm seeing that most people who OC this thing are looking at 80s-90s peak temp during stress testing, which seems pretty crazy to me. Black ops 4 also seems to like to tax my processor at 80-90% so that's more or less a stress test in itself. I'll hopefully shave some degrees off when I manually do this, but I ended up backing the auto oc down last night from 5 ghz to 4.9 ghz until I had time to look into it, and that kept it under 80, with occasional spikes to low 80s
 


I'll post back when I get a chance to play with this. I have an event tonight, otherwise I'd for sure do it after work, hoping I'll have time after the event, but who knows.
 
Hey guys, thanks for all the responses. As promised I said I'd post back with results of the manual overclock.

Setup:
Z370 aorus gaming 7 motherboard
I9 9900k
Corsair h150i pro AIO liquid cooler
Corsair 500d SE case with 3 top/rear exhaust fans (2 140mm, 1 120mm), and 6 120mm fans in front (push/pull radiator configuration). All fans are Corsair LL series
64 gb Corsair vengeance pro 3200 ram
Aorus 2080 Xtreme gpu
Evga g3 1000w PSU

Had to turn LLC to extreme, but it seems stable during the last 30 minutes to an hour of stress test

Current settings are 5ghz, 1.2 voltage. Max core temp 84 during stress test, max VRM temp 106

Hilariously enough, while posting this, I got a blue screen. May need more voltage

However, definitely the auto OC that was the issue. Played a game of BO4 with these settings and temps didn't break 65
 
^^^ Agreed. Either use 26.6 out of the box. Or use the latest prime95 and disabled AVX in the config file.

With my Ryzen CPU it would not work with 26.6 at all, so going the other route was the only option for me.

I also recommend following CompuTronix's guide on how to thermally stress test your Intel CPU. For me personally, you don't have to run small FFTs if all your doing is less intensive workloads like encoding video or pure gaming. But if you want to insure your system can handle anything, definitely run it.
 
I'll hopefully play with the voltage tonight, but it's definitely stable enough for gaming. Played all night with no issues. I'm sure I'll run into further problems as I get into more CPU intensive tasks, but I'm not mad about where it sits now.

I want to up the voltage, and maybe see if I could push 5.2ghz, see how hot that gets. I'll post back to let you know if I have any success.
 
whoisme555,

You've obviously done some research. Just FYI, another option is to use AVX Offset adjustments (downclock) in BIOS. -3 (300 MHz) or more may be needed to limit Core temperatures to 85°C. Nevertheless, for those who don't run any AVX apps such as for rendering and transcoding, it's counter-productive to configure BIOS to accommodate AVX stress test temperatures at the expense of lower performance.

Also for FYI, “Stress” tests vary widely and can be characterized into two categories; stability tests which are fluctuating workloads, and thermal tests which are steady workloads. Intel tests their processors at a steady 100% TDP workload to validate Thermal Specifications. As per Intel’s Datasheets, TDP and Thermal Specifications are validated “without AVX”.

Prime95 version 26.6 Small FFT's is ideal for CPU thermal testing, because it's a steady 100% workload with steady Core temperatures that typically runs Core i variants with Hyperthreading and Core 2 processors within +/- a few % of TDP. No other utility so closely replicates Intel's test conditions.

Utilities that don't overload or underload your processor will give you a valid thermal baseline. Here’s a comparison of utilities grouped as thermal and stability tests according to % of TDP, averaged across six processor Generations at stock settings rounded to the nearest 5%:

Higher TDP tests produce higher Core temperatures. All tests will show 100% CPU Utilization in Windows Task Manager, which indicates processor resource activity, not % TDP workload. Although actual Power dissipation (Watts) varies with Core Speed, Core voltage and workload, Prime95 v26.6 Small FFT’s always provides a true and steady 100% workload, whether you’re running stock or overclocked.

When tweaking your processor near it's highest overclock, keep in mind that for an increase of 100 MHz, a corresponding increase of about 50 millivolts (0.050) is needed to maintain stability. If 70 millivolts (0.070) or more is needed for the next stable 100 MHz increase, it means your processor is overclocked beyond its capability.

50 millivolts will significantly increase Core temperatures, especially on the 9900K. Considering that you're already at 84°C with 1.2 Vcore in normal ambient temperature, it's highly unlikely that you'll achieve 5.2GHz, as that would require at least 1.3 Vcore and a custom loop.

Although 9th Generation is soldered, the Die and solder are both considerably thicker than earlier Generations, which adversely affects thermal conductivity. Here’s an excellent and detailed explanation by Mechatronics Engineer, Roman “der8auer” Hartung - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Doo-zgyQs

It would of course be fun to explore the overclocking limits of your particular 9900K sample for benchmarking purposes. But in my opinion, for everyday use I would stop where you are at 5.0GHz and declare victory, as there's little room for higher seasonal temperatures, which affects indoor ambient temperature.

CT :sol:
 
Thanks, CT, that's immensely helpful!

I'll see what the increased voltage for current clock stability does to the temp before playing too much. But I'd like to see the limits of this thing haha

Also, for what it's worth, I'm in Florida, so there's no such thing as higher seasonal ambient temperature. I keep the AC always on at 72 degrees year round :)
 
I lived in Fort Lauderdale aboard my sailboat (with A/C) for many years, so I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from! Although December, January and February were typically quite comfortable, I still had to turn on the heat about 4 nights a year! :sol:
 
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