stock i7 6700k sitting at 1.4v without any modifications

[Neebla]

I built my PC a couple months ago, and everything has been performing fine up until recently. Temps were in the mid 20's and CPU voltage range appeared to be normal. However, without any action on my part (that I can recall) the CPU nowadays always sits at about 1.4v no matter the load, however the temps have been more or less consistent (maybe a bit warmer) and performance is seemingly unaffected. This morning I turned on the PC, started Chrome and began watching a video before realising that the temp. had gone up to the 50's out of nowhere, before going on to 75 and at that point I panicked and shut it down. Upon start up after school, everything seems back to normal (except for that voltage). I've read that 1.4v is close to the limit for overclocking, let alone a stock i7 so I would appreciate any help because this is starting to worry me.

 

[Neebla]

Ok I feel a bit stupid now because I forgot that changing the power plan to high performance set the min frequency to 100% (I changed back to balanced). But I played an hour of CS:GO, and (I know you said it sucks but HWinfo just wasn't opening for some reason) HWmonitor reported the max frequency as 4004MHz. I tried again later using the NZXT CAM overlay and I never saw the frequency go above 4000MHz.

 

[Darkbreeze]

You don't want it on balanced either. You want to open control panel, open power options, select "performance", click on "change plan settings", click on "advanced power option settings", scroll down to processor power profiles and set minimum to 5 or 10% and maximum to 100%. Other plans have settings in other sub categories that are not conducive to a performance configuration. That's why you want the performance profile but without both min and max at 100%.


I'm at a loss as to why you'd be restricted to 4000mhz if you have the multi set to 45. I'd probably recommend resetting to default bios settings and starting over. Might be a good idea to find a good ROG Skylake overclocking tutorial and make sure there isn't something you're not doing. Also, make sure you are setting the multiplier in the CPU sub menu, not on one of the main pages.

 

[Neebla]

Right, I've switched back and changed the settings. I watched tutorials by Paul's Hardware, LinusTT and an ROG specific one by der8auer, and none of them actually disabled turbo boost, so I'm completely confused as to what I should do, after all I did seem to have a stable overclock with turbo enabled. Also, I'm not sure that there is any page to change the multiplier except for the first page under the extreme tweaker tab and der8auer did it the same way I did so I guess I was right in that respect?

The poster here had a similar problem, and he was advised to just leave it on.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2611469/overclocking-register-disable-turbo-boost.html

 

[Darkbreeze]

If it's getting to 4.5Ghz with it on, is not going past 4.5Ghz with it on and is not exceeding the recommended voltage or thermal ceiling with it on, then I guess it's ok. Generally, in every case I've ever seen and every overclock I've ever done on a system that was Turbo core or Turbo boost capable, the turbo setting has always been recommended to be disabled so as not to interfere with your manual settings. Since I don't have an ASUS Skylake board to tinker with, I can't fully confirm nor deny one way or the other, but my Gigabyte Z170x-Gaming 5 and the two ASRock Z170 boards I've worked with on client machines, have all had turbo boost disabled and were functioning as a normally overclocked system should behave.

 

[Neebla]

Hey sorry for not replying earlier, I was just planning my next step. I went back to default to make sure I hadn't accidentally hit (or missed) something when I disabled turbo, but I got the same result where the frequency was limited to 4000. But do I need to make changes to the speed states? Also it seems like I've lost the silicon lottery because my PC was unstable at 4.7@1.37v which I just tried for the lols.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Anything beyond 1.35v is not recommended for Intel 6th Gen CPUs in any case. Anything over that stands a good chance of increased electromigration, which will decrease the life expectancy of the processor.


4.5Ghz is a solid overclock for the 6700k. Benchmarks don't show any evidence of terrific gains beyond that anyhow, at least for gaming.

Did you try setting the max clock to per core rather than sync, and set each core to 4.5Ghz? Shouldn't even need to do that though. I'm gonna look into this a bit more. Something is not configured right in the bios if you can't manually overclock the CPU to 4.5Ghz and turn off turbo boost.

 

[Neebla]

Well I had tried doing it per core earlier, but I'm pretty sure nothing happened. I can't do it right now because I'm halfway through installing the witcher 3 and I don't want to lose my progress (it's happened before). Also, I can't believe I did this, there is no setting for 'boost performance' it's actually 'boot'
Edit: I'm on per core right now with no change, tops out at 4000.

 

[EldarMu]

Wanted to thank you all for this. Built a PC with MSI Pro Gaming motherboard and an i7 6700k, the damn thing was hitting 90c in aid64 and intelburn and 85 in witcher 3 etc.. Furthermore the turbo speed was just straight up not working.

I finally gave in and manually set voltage to 1.29 (a little below bios original value) and it stopped hitting 90. I got brave and set it to 1.25 and now it doesn't go above 75. Might still change out thermal paste though that's an adventure (it's a pain getting Isopropyl in Russia).

Thanks a lot, saved me a lot of pain.