[SOLVED] Stumped - 10700K Drops Clock Speed Unattended

[wyliec2]

I have three desktops:

• Ryzen 3950X (video encoding)
• I7-10700K (my daily driver)
• I5-10600K (my wife’s daily driver)

I do a lot of video encoding from ISO to MKV files. The 3950X is where I do 90% of my encoding. Recently, I have been doing some large batches and I wanted to spread the load (30 on the 3950X, 12 on the 10700K and 8 on the 10600K to do in 24-30 hours).

The 3950X and 10600K work fine but the 10700K will drop the CPU clock speed after the Display shuts off. The 10600K and 10700K are virtually side-by-side and I’ve checked every Windows 10 setting, every BIOS setting (all are ASUS mobos). I’ve been doing this for many years and I’ve never had this happen (old I7-4770K, I7-5960X platforms).

I have Display set to turn off after 10 minutes and System to Sleep after 20 minutes – I use Handbrake and have it set to not let the system go to Sleep while encoding.

The system isn’t actually in Sleep mode or throttling – the CPU continues running at 90%-100%. Normally the clock is 4700, but it will drop to 3600 for about 10 minutes and then drop to 2600 and stay there until I come back and ‘wake’ it up. This happens even when I have the system set to Never Sleep and appears to be tied to the Display shutting off with a lack of keyboard/mouse activity. It's a PITA to leave it running all night and then find that it only got half as much done as expected. Temps max at 72C and Vcore at 1.24.

I have a somewhat expensive 4K monitor and I don’t want to have to keep it on all night long…I’ve been debating just setting to keep the display on all the time and manually turning it off as a last resort.

Specs are:
Intel I7-10700K
ASUS ROG Strix Z490-E mobo
Seasonic Platinum 850W PSU
Samsung 970 EVO m.2
G.Skill Ripjaws F4-3200C14D-16GVK
Win10 Home Premium (current on updates – same with other PCs)

I’ve chased this issue since I got the 10700K a couple of months ago and remain stumped as to what’s happening – appreciation in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Wessam_1]

Simple and fast fix for you is to set clock speeds to max all the time from bios, don't let it go idle at all, you will need to fix the vcore manually to 1.24 all the time, save settings to bios and do your work, and if you like to restore later you can, i have my 9600k @4600mhz 24/7 with no problems, idle state won't save u much energy.

 

[wyliec2]

Simple and fast fix for you is to set clock speeds to max all the time from bios, don't let it go idle at all, you will need to fix the vcore manually to 1.24 all the time, save settings to bios and do your work, and if you like to restore later you can, i have my 9600k @4600mhz 24/7 with no problems, idle state won't save u much energy.

Thanks - that's another 'last resort' option.

I'd really like to get it working correctly like the other machines do. The 3950X, for example, will draw 250 watts (wattmeter readings) while running at 100%. Idling it draws 80 watts. Sleeping it draws 5-6 watts. I can set it to run 20 hours of encodes after which it will idle for 20 minutes and then sleep. Sometimes I won't run encodes for a few days and it sleeps fine except when my server wakes it up for a nightly backup. The 10600K works the same way.

Out of all the machines I've built, the 10700K is the outlier and it seems there must be a logical reason this is happening...

Added on edit: I have an encode running - while I was doing various things, reading news, etc. online and then creating this post - running solid 100% at 4700 clock. In the time between creating the post and adding this reply, it did the two-step drop down from 4700 - 3600 - 2600 all the while still at 100% CPU. The second I sat down and touched the mouse, boom back up to 4700 where it will stay until the display times out with inactivity.....

 

[Wessam_1]

i had similar problem after upgrading from 6600k to 9600k , mainly use my machine for gaming, i noticed fps drops and strange stuttering in cpu demanding games, long story short it was the cpu underclocks it self when it shouldn't, tried everything but no luck , after searching i found many posts and reviews having same problems with their 9600k's , so i overclocked and fixed my vcore to 1.212 , clocks @ maximum all the time ,since then i had no more stuttering and no other problems, i searched back then to make sure its safe on the long run and found many users do that even if they don't suffer any problems just to get the most performance out of their cpu's.

i'm no expert but i don't think high core clock will make much difference in watts, its the cpu load that draws more watts. i suggest you do that till you find another solution, as i don't think its a problem you can solve with a control panel option

 

[wyliec2]

FWIW - I finally figured this out - it was AI Suite - I'd played with it some when I first built the PC but stopped using it - I haven't had it launching when Windows starts for weeks. I wasn't sure it would do anything if not in the System Tray. I tried setting a fixed CPU clock in BIOS and that didn't work. I finally launched AI Suite and poked around in there and found Away Mode. It was apparently trying to drop the CPU power use to 33 watts when I was 'Away' which seems to be related to when the display turns off. In my case the system continued to run at near 100% CPU utilization but the clock speed would drop to reduce power use. It was dropping from 4700 MHz to 1600 MHz.

All is good now - it will run continuously at full speed, then when the encode is done, the system will go into hybrid sleep and just draw a few watts.