6700k safe voltages?

O

oddmanout

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 22, 2009
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Hello,

I have not seen an authoritative source for safe Skylake voltages. I have a mild overclock on my 6700k and wanted to be certain my voltages were safe.

Running at a x45 multiplier
Max Temp after 1hr: 63c
CoreV: 1.32 (Adaptive set in UEFI)
Cooler: DH-15 Noctua
ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero

The curious thing is that while during the stress testing Ai Suite 3 said my CPU Core Voltage was 1.376v.

Is this well within Skylake's safe parameters? (I know the temp is fine) and second why the discrepancy between 1.32 in UEFI and 1.375 in AI Suite?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Asus have said 1.4V max if you stress test.
1.42V if you stress test while water cooled.
1.45V if you dont stress test.

But Kyle said Asus informed him that all programs that read CPU voltage can have large errors after he reported problems.
He has seen over 0.4V discrepancy.
Apparently you cant trust any program, even those that come with the motherboard.

Careful if you use high LLC settings as under load this can exceed the voltage you set in the BIOS.
 
No modifications to LLC. Just adaptive v core and multiplier. Curiously though Speedstep is not working properly. Goes down to 40x but not lower at idle.

Idle voltage is at 0.8 which is normal. Perhaps another BIOS update will fix this issue.
 
oddmanout said:
No modifications to LLC. Just adaptive v core and multiplier. Curiously though Speedstep is not working properly. Goes down to 40x but not lower at idle.
Click to expand...
I have the same issue with power saving not letting my cpu go to idle, I think down to x40 min as well.
edit: drops to x43 from x46
The other day I tried Windows 10 on a spare drive and it works down to x8, exact same settings in the BIOS.
I'm glad you posted that because I was about to troubleshoot my Windows install.
Looks like a bug.
 
Last edited:
Hardware Canucks posted the same issue about this in their review of the Z170 deluxe.

There were two other minor hiccups during testing, one of which was power consumption. From a performance per watt standpoint the i7-6700K aligns well with previous architectures but there’s no real improvement per se and idle consumption was a bit higher than expected. It also took a significant number of BIOS modifications and reboots to actually get Intel’s SpeedStep to work on our processor. Both of these were likely due to relatively immature firmware rather than an underlying problem with the architecture.
Click to expand...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...intel-i7-6700k-review-skylake-arrives-15.html

I am on BIOSv 0508 on my Hero. I hope another BIOS update will fix the issue.

Edit: My CPU idles at 15.3w @ ~0.784v. So at this point I am not so worried about it. Just wanted to give another data point
 
My mobo is the MSI gaming pro so its more of a general bug, not just Asus.
I'm running 1.37V which doesnt reduce at idle yet it did with Windows 10.

I'll leave it for now because I dont like this board anyway and have another one coming next week.
See how ASRock fare.
 
I haven't overclocked since a Q6600 so excuse me if I'm a little behind :eek:

How do you tell if your processor is stepping down? AI suite always shows me at 4.5Ghz

I also tried the adaptive voltage setting on my Asus Hero, but it didn't seem to be doing what it should. AI Suite always reported the CPU running at ~1.4v at any load. Now I just have it at a fixed value of 1.3v in the bios. Still AI suite shows 1.312 at idle and light loads and 1.344v under stress testing. I don't understand why it's even changing when I set a fixed voltage. My CPU was hitting 70c in stress testing with adaptive mode, now it's sitting 50-55c. I may try lowering the voltage further later, but I'd like to just enjoy the computer for a bit before more tweaking (lets just call playing games stability testing) :)

Also my ram is rated for 1.35v at 3000Mhz but the bios auto setting was feeding it 1.48v. I manually set that down to 1.35v and everything still seems stable. This makes me a little concerned about all the other voltages left at auto that I don't understand, I hope those aren't being way overvolted too.

Not to pile on the complaints, but all the fancy fan controls leave me baffled too. The temps were ramping up, but the fans didn't seem to be. Now I just have them all set to max, my pc is still nearly silent (quite fans and silencio case) and I don't have to worry about my computer cooking before my fans decide it's time to do something about it.

I really miss the days when a jumper on the motherboard was all you needed to overclock... I may have just dated myself :p
 
M76 said:
Based on what?
You can't just make up a number, and say don1t go past that.
Click to expand...

I'm basing that on Haswell's safe limits. Sandy Bridge max safe limit was around 1.5, Haswell 1.35, so I would assume Skylake would be at, or less than, Haswell's.
 
I noticed that even at stock speeds if set to auto the Asus program is reporting voltages of 1.4v under stress

Mind sharing the exact settings you used for adaptive? what was the voltage set and how much did you put into the adaptive field? I had some odd voltage readings so I felt safer leaving it to manual for now.
 
1.45v is fine on water IMO, but the trade-off of 100mhz for a lot less voltage is a good call as we documented in our review.
 
zaniix said:
I noticed that even at stock speeds if set to auto the Asus program is reporting voltages of 1.4v under stress

Mind sharing the exact settings you used for adaptive? what was the voltage set and how much did you put into the adaptive field? I had some odd voltage readings so I felt safer leaving it to manual for now.
Click to expand...

The guide I found showed putting your max voltage in the adaptive field, but when i put 1.35v in it the reported voltage seemed to blow right by 1.35v. I'm starting to think you're supposed to put how much voltage it can add, not the total. So in my case I'd want to put in .15v since the stock is 1.2v. But when I tried this I found the minimum is .250v, so smallest adaptive you could set would allow the processor to go to 1.45v. That's when I decided to switch to manual.
 
Man you really need to watch out with anything set to auto, the Asus program was reporting my DRAM voltage as 1.5, I would have sworn I set it manually to 1.35v but it seems I must have reset it one too many times and not realized it

sheesh
 
zaniix said:
I noticed that even at stock speeds if set to auto the Asus program is reporting voltages of 1.4v under stress

Mind sharing the exact settings you used for adaptive? what was the voltage set and how much did you put into the adaptive field? I had some odd voltage readings so I felt safer leaving it to manual for now.
Click to expand...

I have been setting my adaptive voltage via the method below:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?73856-The-ASUS-Z170-Thread

Staying with 4.5 Ghz and have been able to lower it to 1.3v stable. May push voltages further down but with 1.3v and 62c stress temps I am comfortable.
 
Nenu said:
My mobo is the MSI gaming pro so its more of a general bug, not just Asus.
I'm running 1.37V which doesnt reduce at idle yet it did with Windows 10.

I'll leave it for now because I dont like this board anyway and have another one coming next week.
See how ASRock fare.
Click to expand...


Turns out the idle problem is specific to MSI, the ASRock Extreme 4+ doesnt do it using the same install of Windows 7.
Voltage drops to 0.8V ish (HWmonitor said 0.4V but I didnt see that happen).
Multiplier drops to x8.
This is with a 4.7GHz overclock applied using +0.08V offset voltage.

The MSI board used to drop BCLK to around 83% though, this ASRock board keeps it rock steady at 100%.
 
Nenu said:
My mobo is the MSI gaming pro so its more of a general bug, not just Asus.
I'm running 1.37V which doesnt reduce at idle yet it did with Windows 10.

I'll leave it for now because I dont like this board anyway and have another one coming next week.
See how ASRock fare.
Click to expand...

From what I have seen if you have the power plan on HIgh Performance the CPU speed/voltage will not throttle down.. needs to be set on balanced power plan.
 
The motherboard didnt have a power plan.

If you mean the Windows power plan, note the post above yours where the exact same Windows installation with the ASRock board doesnt have the problem.
Same power plan.
 
Nenu said:
The motherboard didnt have a power plan.

If you mean the Windows power plan, note the post above yours where the exact same Windows installation with the ASRock board doesnt have the problem.
Same power plan.
Click to expand...

I was talking about the windows power plan.. make sure C1E etc are all enabled. Only time I had this issue between OS's is when I didn't have the windows power plan set to balanced. I never install any mobo software for my power plans.. I know Samsung's SSD Software likes to throw in it's own profile that is a High performance one and also stops the CPU from throttling.
 
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