Haswell 4670k OC

[EmmEff]

Hi,

I currently have my Haswell OC'd to 4.2Ghz @ 1.15v. I've tested in OCCT AVX Linpack for 2 hours and temps are sitting below 70 (average maybe 65). I've also run Prime95 blend test for 8 hours with temps sitting below 60. I'm now considering the OC stable.

Before I try to push a little further, is there anything else I should be checking? Is the CPU temp the only temp I need to consider?

I just want to be sure before I carry on.

TIA

 

[Netroxen]

Honestly not sure why you're doing 8 hour P95 runs at 4.2Ghz...? 4670k should do that on stock volts no problem. Call back when you're stressing 4.5-4.6Ghz, lol!

Anyway, back to a serious note.
What cooling do you have on the CPU, 70c sounds a little rough for such a mild overclock, that said however, those temps are perfectly safe and relatively expected from P95. Ignore your motherboard socket temperature, those things are wildly innacurate.
Temps atleast, at 4.2Ghz is the only thing you need to worry about at the moment - When you start pushing 4.5Ghz, voltages, VDroop, LLC and voltage response will need to be tweaked in accordance to your stability results.

However, for the time being - You're good to go!

 

[EmmEff]

Honestly not sure why you're doing 8 hour P95 runs at 4.2Ghz...? 4670k should do that on stock volts no problem. Call back when you're stressing 4.5-4.6Ghz, lol!

Anyway, back to a serious note.
What cooling do you have on the CPU, 70c sounds a little rough for such a mild overclock, that said however, those temps are perfectly safe and relatively expected from P95. Ignore your motherboard socket temperature, those things are wildly innacurate.
Temps atleast, at 4.2Ghz is the only thing you need to worry about at the moment - When you start pushing 4.5Ghz, voltages, VDroop, LLC and voltage response will need to be tweaked in accordance to your stability results.

However, for the time being - You're good to go!

I'm using H100i for cooling. Prime95 is in mid 50's, it's OCCT Linpack that is getting high 60's.

Well, I've tried 4.4Ghz but it's just not having it. I'm having to jump from 1.15vcore up to 1.23 and it's still not stable, I had to clear CMOS last night as BIOS was freezing at that OC.

Think I'll stick to 4.2 as the temps are mild and it's stable.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Slowly move up in the overclocks. Do not skip. Won't learn how your chip responds nor will you learn proper overclocking techniques overtime.

 

[EmmEff]

Slowly move up in the overclocks. Do not skip. Won't learn how your chip responds nor will you learn proper overclocking techniques overtime.

I haven't explained the full process, I didn't actually jump to that clock on those volts.

I've added a link to current BIOS settings at the bottom of this post.

Once stable at 4.2 I then increased to 4.3 @ 1.15 vcore. OC was unstable at that, so I slowly increased vcore by 0.005 and tested with OCCT each time. I managed a 2 hour run of OCCT with 4.3ghz @ 1.18. Temps were fine, below 70, so I moved on to 4.4ghz @ 1.18.

The system wouldn't boot, so again I increased by 0.005 each time and tested with OCCT. When I got to 1.23 vcore it crashed in OCCT after about an hour and a half. I entered BIOS to increase vcore but every time I tried to save settings, BIOS froze and I had to hard reset. When I re-entered BIOS the settings were not changed, the system was stuck on the unstable OC. After trying about half a dozen times I eventually had to clear CMOS.

I've reverted back to 4.2 ghz @ 1.15vcore because it seems totally stable, the temps are low and it's actually running below stock voltage.

Have I lost the silicone lottery, or have I missed something obvious?

** Edit to add link to BIOS settings screen cap **

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rwo6edf0jgimmxv/NPUQRurozW

 

[NeverBackDown]

Anything under 1.3 for most chips-if not all- will hit a heat threshold and limit the ability of the chip to go further. As long as you can stay under 80C(for me at least) and not hit the threshold of the CPU then i would consider that a safe overclock.

 

[airdeano]

Have I lost the silicone lottery, or have I missed something obvious?

too soon to tell. don't think enough has been explored to deem a dud OC chip.
i usually will increase vCORE voltage in .05 steps till stable.
one thing i don't see is DRAM dedicated timings being set. i see 1600 and DRAM
voltage, but no timings. pretty much the first thing to do is remove any RAM
stability issues with dedicated settings (i prefer manual over XMP).
most of my 5 hassie OC didn't get 80°+ until 1.3v using an AIO 240 cooler.

 

[EmmEff]

too soon to tell. don't think enough has been explored to deem a dud OC chip.
i usually will increase vCORE voltage in .05 steps till stable.
one thing i don't see is DRAM dedicated timings being set. i see 1600 and DRAM
voltage, but no timings. pretty much the first thing to do is remove any RAM
stability issues with dedicated settings (i prefer manual over XMP).
most of my 5 hassie OC didn't get 80°+ until 1.3v using an AIO 240 cooler.

With DRAM settings, you mean override the auto timings on channel A to the default CL9 (9-9-9-24)?

The problem I had was that when I was unstable at 4.4 @ 1.23 vcore I couldn't step up the voltage because BIOS was freezing. I couldn't change anything, I had to clear CMOS.

Is there anything in particular that could cause the BIOS freeze? The RAM issue, would that solve it?

Also, is there someway I could test the RAM to rule that out?

 

[airdeano]

With DRAM settings, you mean override the auto timings on channel A to the default CL9 (9-9-9-24)?

yes and on channel B as well. make sure you have the latest BIOS update.

BIOS crash is usually related to out of range adjustments, voltage or device
inconsistency. i had a USB keyboard actually causing BIOS lock-ups as well as
can flash drives, WiFi USB adapters, and what not. make sure if using an USB
keyboard to use one of the dedicated USB 2.0 ports.

verify PSU output on 12 and 5v rails, too.

airdeano

 

[EmmEff]

yes and on channel B as well. make sure you have the latest BIOS update.

BIOS crash is usually related to out of range adjustments, voltage or device
inconsistency. i had a USB keyboard actually causing BIOS lock-ups as well as
can flash drives, WiFi USB adapters, and what not. make sure if using an USB
keyboard to use one of the dedicated USB 2.0 ports.

verify PSU output on 12 and 5v rails, too.

airdeano

Thanks for the info, will give new settings a try and let you know how I get on.

By the way, how do I verify the PSU output voltages?

 

[airdeano]

back probe the connector with test probes on a digital multi-meter.
mainly the yellow wire 12v circuit and red wire for the 5v circuit.

 

[EmmEff]

I've been reading through gigabyte website regarding using qflash to update bios. I've never done this before.

Would I be right in saying that as my Mobo has dual bios, if my update goes wrong the system will recover to previous setting automatically?

Also, is it ok to use a USB 3.0 pen drive, or is USB 2.0 preferable?

 

[ShaunB-91]

I think Linus said somewhere to use USB 2.0

 

[EmmEff]

Well, have spent a fair bit of time on this and I seem to have gone backwards! Please note my choices of hardware when building my rig were made with overclocking in mind, so just because things aren't working out initially doesn't mean I'm losing heart here, I'm actually enjoying the learning curve. If I had tweaked a few settings and reached 5.0Ghz in half an hour, then I would have declared overclocking a tad boring!

Anyway. I've flashed bios to latest rev, F6. I removed all USB devices and ran with ps/2 keyboard and USB 2.0 hard wired mouse. I set up dram timings manually, and tried 4.3Ghz at 1.18 vcore. This was stable before, but now it's not. I upped vcore to 1.19 but still not stable. So, I reverted to 4.2Ghz at 1.15 which was an overclock I had ran for a couple of weeks and tested for stability a few times with success. Unfortunately, I can no longer achieve this!

One thing I have noticed, is that since bios update I'm getting frozen screens with OCCT stress test. Before, if oc was unstable the system would blue screen or reboot, but I had never saw a screen freeze like that. Don't know if that's important?

I've loaded safe defaults in bios and am now stress testing without any overclock, just to make sure system is stable at stock.

I don't think my cpu is bad, I just think I've got the overclocks set up wrong somehow. Some setting or other is causing this instability. The guide I followed was TTL's guide for Z77 systems. I think I need to follow a guide for my Mobo and chip, I.e. Haswell i5 4670k on Gigabyte Z87X-OC.

Have any if you guys overclocked this hardware, or stumbled upon a guide for it anywhere?

Cheers.