Gigabyte Z170X F20 BIOSes overvolting Kaby Lake

[Ocellaris]

I have a Gigabyte Z170 Gaming 3 board which I've been pretty happy with since Skylake launch. I had a early issue with my RAM running XMP profiles however they fixed that with a quick BIOS update. It ran my i5 6500 perfectly fine. When the Kaby Lake CPUs launched, I decided to upgrade to an i7 7700K. Gigabyte added support for Kaby lake CPUs many weeks ago so I figured everything would work fine with their F20 BIOS.

Once I installed the 7700K I notice it was running real hot in stress tests. Like just under 90C hot using a H60 cooler. I tried to make the H60 work better with little success, the CPU was going over 80C running Prime 95 with AVX. I ended up replacing the cooler and every single fan in the PC with Noctua gear. This bought my P95 temps barely under 80C most of the time and Real Bench temps were right at 70C. Prime 95 temps were over 80C if the GPU was I use. Also I removed all of the dust collecting mesh so the PC was as open as possible. I noticed that P95 was causing the CPU to draw 130W of power, yikes!

Overall I was really frustrated and finally started looking into which delid block to buy. Yesterday I noticed a new F21 BIOS update with the following notes:

1. V core Voltage adjust

I updated to this BIOS and my temps are massively down. The chip is running less voltage and now maxes out around 1.176V.

Old F20 BIOS
Real Bench: 70C max
Prime 95 w/AVX: 80C+
Max power draw: 130W

New F21 BIOS
Real Bench: 60C max (1 hour)
Prime 95 w/AVX: 68C max (2 hour run with small FFTs)
Max power draw: 100W

I am pretty impressed Gigabyte screwed up this bad with initial Kaby Lake support. I pity anyone who was trying to overclock with a GB Z170 + Kaby board when the board was just dumping way too much voltage into the chip.

Cliff notes: If you are running Kaby Lake on a Z170 board, check for BIOS updates

 

[ir0nw0lf]

Er, I must be missing the part where you show kaby lake CPUs actually getting fried? Or am I reading too far into the thread title?

 

[Ocellaris]

Er, I must be missing the part where you show kaby lake CPUs actually getting fried? Or am I reading too far into the thread title?

Updated it to say overvolting. Though I would saying running a CPU close to 90C due to a voltage isssue is close to being considered frying

 

[Pillars]

Gigabyte pumps the voltage anyways... My Gaming 7/6700K/D15 runs about as hot as my 7700K/Asus 270i/NH-L12 both at 4.6Ghz both delidded. Can't make a scientific comparison on that too many variables but.. yeah.