Question regarding 4790K OC'ing using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility

[ilikefinefood]

Hello all

Hope you're all well

I have never OC'd from the bios, I've only ever used this tool.

Now, a good while ago I used this tool, created an OC after thoroughly watching videos ETC, which seamed nice and stable. Over time I re-installed windows (or upgraded to Win10) forgetting to first reset the tool (the OC) to default settings before doing so!

I re-installed the tool a while ago and in the Advanced Tuning Tab the multipliers for all 4 cores are at 48x - Is this normal for my chip?? Before it was only OC to 4.7GHZ. Re-loading my old profile just didn't seam right though that could be due to me stressing ETC.
When un-installing the tool it tells me to restore to default even though nothing has been touched! is this normal?

As it stands my system does not have the UTX tool installed.

I'm a total NOOB when it comes to OC so please excuse my lame post if it is in-fact lame lol

Thanks all

 

[trents]

I'm thinking the first time you used XTU it made overclocking changes to your bios (EUFI) that were retained. How it got from 47x to 48x I don't know. If you start with an overclock in place then XTU will start with those values as well.

If I were you, I'd restore your bios to defaults (F5 key while in bios) and redo the overclock. I would not recommend using XTU as a permanent overclocking solution. Typically, we use it for temporarily exploring the gross limits of the CPU's overclocking ability and to get an idea of what numbers we should stick into bios as a place to start. Then we tweak in bios to refine the overclock. XTU manipulates the same variables you will find in overclock.

Tell us more about your hardware.

 

[ilikefinefood]

Hi Trents, thanks a lot for your answer.

So F5 in the bios will simply give me an option to restore will it? Simple as that?

I am also aware that OC'ing in the bios is the best way of doing it, I simply do not have the experience nor knowledge to do so but I'm thinking of doing so given my chip and cooler. As you mentioned, I shall list my current hardware so you have more of an idea what you're/I'm dealing with One problem though, I'm writing this at work, home tomorrow morning, so I am a little unsure of a few parts which I shall edit in tomorrow when I return if needed.


CPU - i7 4790k
MOBO - ASUS ROG Maximus V11 Ranger
Cooler - Corsair H100i
Ram - 4x4 gb (unsure what) 16 gb total
GPU - MSI 1070 Armour OC ( I've decided to ditch the added OC, shall be restoring to normal and deleting MSI Afterburner tomorrow)
PSU - Unsure, it's 750w though
Storage - x2 SSD's x1 HDD
OS - Windows 10 64bit

Thanks again

 

[trents]

F5 will restore the bios to default vanilla settings.

Actually, overclocking with Intel CPUs is very easy. There are only two or three variables you need to be concerned with as long as you are not including RAM and Ring components (CPU cache) in the overclock. A basic overclocking of the CPU cores is pretty simple. You have an excellent motherboard with many more overclocking variables than you need to be concerned with and that may be confusing to you. A lot of the overclocking variables in your bios would only need to be adjusted if you were doing extreme overclocking, like with liquid nitrogen cooling.

Really, all you need to do is set the overclock mode to "Adaptive," increase your core multiplier in 1X increments, stress test, monitor core temps during the stress tests and when you start failing the stress test just add some "Offset" voltage.

See the thread "Help with my 6600k overclock" in this same section of the forum. There I have given some guidance to another user who is not an experienced overclocker. Even though he and I are using Skylake CPUs it is much the same as with Haswells. There are bios pics in that thread that might be helpful to you, especially since you are also using an Asus motherboard.

 

[ilikefinefood]

Fantastic, thank you !!

I shall have a look now

Once changed in the bios will it change the GHZ reading in the system window from control panel?... that's always remained the same (stock) when using the utility

 

[trents]

The Control Panel>System does not always report the speed of an overclocked CPU. Usually, it just reports the stock factory frequency. The stock frequency and other information about the CPU is encoded information built into the chips at the factory and these values are static. Windows is just reading those stock values from bios which gets it from the chip.

 

[ilikefinefood]

In your example picture, the one that shows Prime95, the window to the right of that - what is it?

Also

What figures should I 'roughly' expect with my cooler?

My cores should be 40, correct? whereas yours show 45 - 4.5ghz?

So I should basically do it in these steps;

1. AI overclock tuner is in XMP mode
2. Set the mode to adaptive
3. change all the cores to 41 - save bios settings - boot, then run stress test in prime95 for two hours while monitoring? I know you say monitor the temps but what exactly should I be looking out for? How hot is borderline or too hot? + how will I know it's starting to fail the tests? It'll start producing errors and warnings in Prime95 will it where it says 'torture test completed 49 tests in 2mins'?

If/when it does start failing I add the offset voltage. Will the offset be 0.000v as default? How much should I add each time once errors/warnings appear?

Sorry for all the questions. I'm a keen learner and I want to ensure it's done correctly without putting my system at risk

Regards

 

[caddi daddi]

+1 to everything trents has said.
I run two 4790K rigs, here are a few things I have learned.

turn off hyper threading, none of my software uses it, yours may but most likely, will not.
set your clocks per core, one of my rigs runs 5.2,5.2,4.8,4.8 the other runs 5.2,5.0,4.8,4.8, both at less than 1.25 vcore.
per core because my rigs boost to 5.2 when on one or two cores, when it loads all 4 cores it runs at 4.8.

leave the cache at default, I still have seen nothing in cache overclocking.

you are in very good hands.

 

[trents]

Prime95 is a program that makes the CPU work very hard. If the CPU overclock is not stable then it will fail the Prime95 stress test. Failing can mean spontaneous restart, blue screen or simply one or more of the P95 worker threads dropping out. Prime95 will work the CPU harder than most all real life programs so if you can pass the Prime95 "blend" stress test for at least two hours then your overclock is likely stable and will not give you problems when running real life applications. There are other stress testers besides P95 that we sometimes use. The best approach is to stress test with several different tools as each one will stress in a unique way. Prime95 is the defacto gold standard, historically speaking. However, if your cooling is not up to it, you will need to use another stress tester that does not generate as much heat but that will be run for a longer period of time to establish that the overclock is stable.

Monitor the "package" and "core temps" with a free program called HWMonitor. The package temp is the temp reading of the hottest core. You don't want package temps to exceed 90c except for brief spikes. When stress testing or intense gaming you don't want the package temp to exceed 85c for long periods. By long I mean hours.

ilkikefinefood, I think it would be wise for you to read the "sticky" guides at the top of this forum section that explain basic concepts of overclocking and stress testing.

 

[ilikefinefood]

+1 to everything trents has said.
I run two 4790K rigs, here are a few things I have learned.

turn off hyper threading, none of my software uses it, yours may but most likely, will not.
set your clocks per core, one of my rigs runs 5.2,5.2,4.8,4.8 the other runs 5.2,5.0,4.8,4.8, both at less than 1.25 vcore.
per core because my rigs boost to 5.2 when on one or two cores, when it loads all 4 cores it runs at 4.8.

leave the cache at default, I still have seen nothing in cache overclocking.

you are in very good hands.

Thank you very much..... I would be interested in getting a nice high OV without too much potential damage. I built this rig as it was/is to be used for P3D where CPU speed is paramount for performance. If I could get 4.7, 4.8 I'd be quite satisfied

Why the offset in core speeds? shouldn't I start by keeping them all the same, increasing by 1 in between each 2 hour tests?

Thanks again. I have been aware of this site for MANY MANY years and am fully aware you guys really know what you're talking about

 

[trents]

In your example picture, the one that shows Prime95, the window to the right of that - what is it?

Also

What figures should I 'roughly' expect with my cooler?

My cores should be 40, correct? whereas yours show 45 - 4.5ghz? Yes. Stock core frequency for the 4790k is 4.0 ghz and the core speed multiplier at stock is 40x. The stock speed for my 6600k is 3.5 ghz and a 35x multiplier. This is base, not turbo.

So I should basically do it in these steps;

1. AI overclock tuner is in XMP mode
2. Set the mode to adaptive
3. change all the cores to 41 - save bios settings - boot, then run stress test in prime95 for two hours while monitoring? I know you say monitor the temps but what exactly should I be looking out for? How hot is borderline or too hot? + how will I know it's starting to fail the tests? It'll start producing errors and warnings in Prime95 will it where it says 'torture test completed 49 tests in 2mins'? You need to have all Prime95 worker threads (eight of them for a 4790k) pass the Prime95 test. IF any drop out you have failed the test. You probably need more vcore to pass the stress test. More offset voltage, in other words.

If/when it does start failing I add the offset voltage. Will the offset be 0.000v as default? Yes How much should I add each time once errors/warnings appear? 0.01

Sorry for all the questions. I'm a keen learner and I want to ensure it's done correctly without putting my system at risk

Regards

If you can get it stable enough for all 8 workers to pass the Prime95 stress test for 20 minutes you are very close to being stable. Reserve the longer two hour test for when you get to the point where you have "hit the wall." Hitting the wall means you have to add a whole bunch more vcore just to get one more .1 ghz. of core speed frequency. When you sense you have reached that point, pull back to the previous core speed frequency that would pass Prime95 for 20 minutes and then do the long test. Note: You will have eight core workers in Prime95 because for every real hardware core on the CPU you have a secondary parallel processing thread (aka, "virutal core") that shows up as another core in Prime95. So you have 4 cores and 4 threads on that CPU. Intel calls this "HT" for "hyper threading."

- - - Updated - - -

+1 to everything trents has said.
I run two 4790K rigs, here are a few things I have learned.

turn off hyper threading, none of my software uses it, yours may but most likely, will not.
set your clocks per core, one of my rigs runs 5.2,5.2,4.8,4.8 the other runs 5.2,5.0,4.8,4.8, both at less than 1.25 vcore.
per core because my rigs boost to 5.2 when on one or two cores, when it loads all 4 cores it runs at 4.8.

leave the cache at default, I still have seen nothing in cache overclocking.

you are in very good hands.

I would advise this only if necessary. Only if your cooling or lack of it dictates it. Hyper threading can boost performance in some applications like 40%. But it is not used in most games at this point in time.

 

[ilikefinefood]

Lovely detailed reply - thank you!

SO. I have read the guide (sticky) as you recommended. This part sticks out to me

Now, I’ll share a secret imparted by the folks at ASUS who gave several reviewers some tips on overclocking the retail stepping Haswell chips: Set Vcore to 1.20 V. Set all cores to 46x (which would be a 4.6 GHz overclock), save & reboot. If the system boots past the UEFI and either begins to load or, ideally, makes it into the OS and is stable

Would you recommend that tomorrow I go home, get in the bios, press F5 to reset then follow what the sticky/ASUS says? OR follow the advice in this thread thus far?

If following the ASUS part I manually set the Vcore to 1.20 - is this the value which is set to 'adaptive' as first mentioned? I don't see where the manual input of Vcore is added.

Obviously the chip will take 4.1 and be stable no?? If following the suggestions in this thread would it be more feasible to start with a higher multiplier from the get-go?

Trents. You said this about the UTX utility at the start

Typically, we use it for temporarily exploring the gross limits of the CPU's overclocking ability and to get an idea of what numbers we should stick into bios as a place to start

I was seeing (as far as I knew) stable 4.6 - 4.7 in the intel tool

Thank you both for your patience with me! It's most appreciated it really is

 

[trents]

Personally, I would start at 4.4 and add .125 to the adaptive offset to begin with. Almost all 4790k's will do 4.4 without a problem but quite a few will not go beyond that.

 

[ilikefinefood]

One question before I do this today

My Corsair cooler has three speed settings on it .... Quiet, Balanced or Performance. Which should I set it to while benchmarking with Prime95 ETC? Obviously on performance the fan spools up to its fastest for optimum cooling though its not set to performance all the time

Regards

 

[EarthDog]

Leave the cooler where you want to it to be when testing. I mean think about a second.... would you test with the fans cranked if you couldn't stand the noise? Set it where it's quiet to see 'worst case' temps.

 

[ilikefinefood]

Makes sense, thank you very much

 

[ilikefinefood]

Ok so I went in to the bios, F5 and reset. I then had a good look at the options. I was able to change to XMP mode and set the mode to adaptive. However I am not able to change the figures on any of the cores - they are all greyed out and on auto

The option where I would change the adaptive offset voltage is also set to auto, greyed out and cannot be changed. I have included a couple of screen caps





And here is a screen cap of the HWMonitor with Prime95 running - totally standard F5 bios - no errors or warnings



thanks

 

[EarthDog]

You can take screenshots of the bios (f12?) If you have a USB stick in a USB slot. You can take print screens by pressing the prtscn button and pasting it in MS paint (save the file, then attach) Also alt+prtscn will only capture the active window. Screencaps are so 90s...

Regarding the cores greyed out... get it off auto!!!!!! Set to manual and that should allow you to change them. Don't hesitate to play around a bit in your bios so you can learn it.

 

[ilikefinefood]

LOL I didn't realise you could simply delete the word 'auto' and type in what's required haha

Which is the offset field I need to change to .125 in my bios picture?? I seam to have many

And I took a picture on my phone and emailed it to myself

 

[EarthDog]

Instead of typing in that field cpu core voltage section, use the drop down and select which mode. That will then display more options.

Yes, screencaps are sooo 1990's. Learn to do it the 'right' way... its probably quicker... but sure looks a ton better.