Question Why is my 9900k running at 5ghz on ALL cores STOCK?

analogboy

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May 6, 2019
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Hey all, new to the forum and figured I'd try get solve an issue with a new build I'm having.

-Intel 9900k
-Gigabyte Designare 390
-16gb 3200mhz RAM
-EVGA 650w Gold PSU
-Noctual DH15s

imgur.com/8eCNCEH

Am I seeing this correctly? I built this system last week and it was boosting up to 5ghz on all cores right off the bat, only occasionally dipping to 4.7 on all cores. Default voltage set to auto is going up to 1.35 resulting in temps in the high 80's. Only thing I've touched is XMP profile which is turned on. Everything else is auto. I bought the 9900k to eventually dabble in overclocking, but with it being seemingly stock OC'd I feel like I have to dive in headfirst just to get my system stable. I'm just confused why my system is boosting to 5ghz on all cores, when it's supposed to only boost on 1 core, correct? I have reset the CMOS as well and it still defaults to this.

I manually set the VCore to 1.275 which helped the temps a lot, but at the expense of system stability. I've gotten "IRQL LESS THAN EQUAL" playing specifically BFV and Anthem. From what I can gather, this is a result of an unstable overclock and possibly VRDroop. So I feel like I have to choose between system stability and safe temperatures. This can't be normal.

EDIT: I did turn MCE off with no change to the behaviour.
 
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Have you done any tinkering with automatic auto-overclock presets in BIOS?

Or tinkered with any settings in Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility?

(Not sure how it could possibly do this with MCE off, but, certainly you quite easily can lower the max clock speeds and specify a core voltage offset in XTU if desired)
 

analogboy

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May 6, 2019
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I haven’t tinkered with any of the automatic overlock settings. In fact, the only reason I started tinkering with anything was because I knew that the 9900k isn’t supppsed to behave this way stock. Don’t get me wrong, I did eventually want to dabble in ocerclocking and get it up to 5ghz like everyone else but now I’m worried something is wrong either either the board or processor. As of right now I’ve gotten it seemingly stable over the day by doing the following

-turned off MCE
-set vcore to 1.30v
-set LLC to turbo
-turned on xmp

I haven’t had a blue screen since setting the LLC, but I’m still overclocked like I mentioned in my original post. You mentioned setting a voltage offset, could you elaborate?
 

rigg42

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Oct 17, 2018
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I haven’t tinkered with any of the automatic overlock settings. In fact, the only reason I started tinkering with anything was because I knew that the 9900k isn’t supppsed to behave this way stock. Don’t get me wrong, I did eventually want to dabble in ocerclocking and get it up to 5ghz like everyone else but now I’m worried something is wrong either either the board or processor. As of right now I’ve gotten it seemingly stable over the day by doing the following

-turned off MCE
-set vcore to 1.30v
-set LLC to turbo
-turned on xmp

I haven’t had a blue screen since setting the LLC, but I’m still overclocked like I mentioned in my original post. You mentioned setting a voltage offset, could you elaborate?
Voltage offset just raises or lowers auto voltage by the amount you set. In other words if the MB thinks it needs to go to 1.4v to turbo to 5ghz and you set a negative offset of 50 mv it will only send 1.35. It won't really achieve anything that your fixed voltage won't besides using a bit less power and lower temps at idle.

You can set per core turbo manually if you want. If some weird auto setting is causing this behavior this should over ride it. You could always just lock the all core multiplier at 47 as well. That should be sustainable at 1.25 or less depending on the CPU lottery. At this point you may as well just overclock. You are pretty much doing it anyway.

Gigabyte has a decent guide: https://www.gigabyte.com/FileUpload/Global/multimedia/2/file/525/946.pdf

For stability testing I suggest a combo of Intel burn test, Prime95 26.6, and real bench. HWinfo64 is the best monitoring app.

Run IBT on standard to quickly test the viability of you OC. If you pass that run p95 for 30 min - 1 hour to test your temps. If temps look good (below 80c is ideal) and no crashes then run a realbench stress test for 4-8 hours with half of your ram.
 

Karadjgne

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Throttling usually starts somewhere above @ 90°C ish. Anything under throttling range is considered Operational range, and default stock settings will automatically attempt maximum performance. That means bumping to 5.0GHz if the temps can handle it.

It's going to show 5.0GHz on any core or all cores until loading puts temps into throttle range. If you run Prime95 26.6 small fft, that's a constant 100% load on all cores, you'll see that unless you have exceptional cooling, Every core will be at 4.7GHz, maybe lower.

Random dropping of core voltages by just choosing a number, can and often will create instability. You'll need to look at 3 numbers offset, VID and vcore. VID and vcore should remain @ within 0.05v of each other, you use offset to get that, either positive or negative. If current vcore at idle is 1.35v, you'd only drop 0.005v (or close) per drop, then adjust offset to maintain VID distance. Then use Asus RealBench for a few loops, rinse and repeat until you get instability, bump vcore back up 0.005v, test again for anywhere upto 8hrs loop.

That'll put you at your lowest stable voltage.
 

analogboy

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May 6, 2019
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Thanks for the reply. Yeah I think just changing the VCore and nothing else led to instability. Since I've set the LLC I haven't had a blue screen (yet). Another thing that confuses me: currently looking at HWinFO and the freqency on all the cores changes every second. One second it will be 4.7, the next it will be 5.0 but staying between those values. Is this normal behavior?
 

rigg42

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Oct 17, 2018
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Thanks for the reply. Yeah I think just changing the VCore and nothing else led to instability. Since I've set the LLC I haven't had a blue screen (yet). Another thing that confuses me: currently looking at HWinFO and the freqency on all the cores changes every second. One second it will be 4.7, the next it will be 5.0 but staying between those values. Is this normal behavior?
At idle or very light load yes. This is the cores hitting max single core speed. Pretty much any significant load will have them all peaking at 4.7.
 

Karadjgne

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Yep, perfectly normal behavior. It's Intels way of getting every last scrap of performance out of a cpu. If it has the thermal room to go faster, it will, upto it's preset limits. You'll almost never run into anything gaming that'll max all core / all thread usage on a 9900k, so if it has the room, it'll get you a few fps more on the cores/threads it does need to use.

It's a good thing.

Games, apps, programs are almost never consistent in thread usage, you really gotta use something like p95 to get a solid, even load. So each core will bounce a little depending on what it's working on. If your game sees a field of grass, that's a very cpu dependent thing, so that particular core will drop to 4.7GHz, but then you move and the cab of the car is now going through that core, and it's a static mesh, very easy on the cpu, so that same core now bumps back to 5.0GHz. That's a broad generalization, but the theory is solid. In reality, code going through the core is exponentially faster, but the lengths, intensity etc of each code string vary, so does the GHz accordingly.
 
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analogboy

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Yeah that makes sense. When I was running stock settings I was getting up to 90C on some cores with the voltage going to 1.36V. I've since lowered it to 1.30 manually and was getting BsoDs until I set the LLC to Turbo. Since doing that I haven't had a bsod and my temps max out at 85C. Part of me wants to lower the voltage even lower not that I know that LLC seems to help with stability, but part of me wants to just leave it and see how it performs for the next little bit. I think I am just getting tried of messing with me new computer as opposed to enjoying it. What would you guys suggest?
 

Karadjgne

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Lol. For many ppl, when not actively gaming, 'messing around' with the pc, as in overclocking is a joy unto itself. The challenge! My pc is going to do what I want it do do, not what it wants to do! I own it, not the other way around.

So different ppl enjoy pc's differently 😅
 

analogboy

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May 6, 2019
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Haha I hear ya, but I think for me it has been stressful as it's more of a "I hope the parts I just spend 800 bucks on aren't faulty and I need to find out". Because it was OC'd out of the gate, I basically had to go backwards to figure out how to get it cooler or more stable.