Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K IPC & Overclocking Review @ [H]

Can I stress test my cpu in realbench if I have no discrete graphics card at the moment?
 
thanks. I thought it might blow up from handbrake with igpu :D
No, it will be fine. It might not overclock as well since the GPU causes the CPU to run a bit warmer. I've not actually tried that but this is what we were told when Skylake first came out.
 
Guys quick question,its normal for voltage to go up to 1,35 and even more when runing stock with turbo boost on?Voltage is all over the place,and sometimes goes higher.Should i just keep it manual at 1,28 or leave everything on auto and let it do its thing.I don't want to overclock just to have turbo boost on,but if its runing at 1,35 i might as well be overclocking and geting 4,5 or 4,6ghz.I have XMP setting in bios turned on to enhance cores also.Running corsair 3200 DDR memory.
thanks.
In the picture its only 1,328 but it went up to 1,38 just asking if this is normal on auto everything.
Capture_zpsmv9jhdkj.jpg
 
Guys quick question,its normal for voltage to go up to 1,35 and even more when runing stock with turbo boost on?Voltage is all over the place,and sometimes goes higher.Should i just keep it manual at 1,28 or leave everything on auto and let it do its thing.I don't want to overclock just to have turbo boost on,but if its runing at 1,35 i might as well be overclocking and geting 4,5 or 4,6ghz.I have XMP setting in bios turned on to enhance cores also.Running corsair 3200 DDR memory.
thanks.
In the picture its only 1,328 but it went up to 1,38 just asking if this is normal on auto everything.
Capture_zpsmv9jhdkj.jpg

Yes, auto Vcore will cause the voltage to rise when turboing to support the higher clocks.
What's your board? What are your C-state and LLC settings?
If you're on a Gigabyte board like me and want a good OC while maintaining auto Vcore drops when idle, then you're out of luck.
 
Guys quick question,its normal for voltage to go up to 1,35 and even more when runing stock with turbo boost on?Voltage is all over the place,and sometimes goes higher.Should i just keep it manual at 1,28 or leave everything on auto and let it do its thing.I don't want to overclock just to have turbo boost on,but if its runing at 1,35 i might as well be overclocking and geting 4,5 or 4,6ghz.I have XMP setting in bios turned on to enhance cores also.Running corsair 3200 DDR memory.
thanks.
In the picture its only 1,328 but it went up to 1,38 just asking if this is normal on auto everything.
Capture_zpsmv9jhdkj.jpg

I just did a 6700k Asus build and same thing. Why does it auto over lock to 4.2? Weird. Anyway yeah same experience. Use adaptive voltage and get it under control
 
On my 4790k board I was able to tame this stupid behaviour by setting the individual core coefficients manually (44, 44, 43, 42) instead of auto - didn't have to touch anything else. As a result my voltage and temps were much lower and when the 4 cores are under stress they boost to 4.2 as expected (instead of a constant 4.4 @ 1.3v which is a LOT of power and heat). On my board even disabling XMP doesn't cure it (it does lower the temps but we're still looking at 4.4 @ >1.3v constantly).

Maybe you could try that too rather than messing around with the voltage setting.
 


look what just showed up at work! thanks for the review [H], looking forward to seeing how well this overclocks.
 
look what just showed up at work! thanks for the review [H], looking forward to seeing how well this overclocks.

Nice man! Got mine up and running yesterday. Looks like we had the same idea :D. If it's not too much trouble, please let me know what BIOS settings you used once you get it overclocked. I've got mine running stable @ 4.6ghz so far but I'm an overclocking noob so I don't know if my values are ideal.


AIi Overlock Tuner: XMP
XMP: XMP DDR4-3200 16-16-16-36 @ 1.35V
Asus Multicore Enhancement: Disabled
CPU Core Ratio: Sync All Cores
1-Core Ratio Limit: 46

CPU Load-Line Calibration: Manual --> Level 6 (maybe this should be 5?)
VRM Spread Spectrum: Disabled

Intel(R) SpeedStep(tm): Enabled

CPU Core/Cache Current Limit Max: 255.00
Min. CPU Cache Ratio: 8
Max. CPU Cache Ratio: 41

CPU Core/Cache Voltage: Manual Mode
- CPU Core Voltage Override: 1.31
CPU VCCIO Voltage: 1.1
CPU System Agent Voltage: 1.1


My system idles at around 27*C and maxes out at 60*C under heavy/stress load. Not sure if those voltages are safe for long-term use since my only overclocking knowledge comes from googling random peoples settings and taking an average lol.
 
Have you tried adaptive. If you use manual core it won't reduce when idle

I haven't tried it yet since there seems to be a lot of people having trouble with adaptive mode and Asus boards although those threads were from late 2015. Maybe Asus fixed them by now so I'll have to try it out. Hopefully I don't blow anything up.
 
I'm still tinkering with mine. I have an Asus build and sometimes it won't boot properly. Still happened with offset mode so it's not adaptive. Need more debugging. Enjoy!
 
Let me know if you figure it out! Would be nice not to have the vcore running at max 24/7.
 
Nice man! Got mine up and running yesterday. Looks like we had the same idea :D. If it's not too much trouble, please let me know what BIOS settings you used once you get it overclocked. I've got mine running stable @ 4.6ghz so far but I'm an overclocking noob so I don't know if my values are ideal.

Thanks! Congrats on your new build too. I haven't overclocked yet. I only had time last night after work to tear down my old system (reusing cpu HSF, power supply, and gpu), install Windows, and upgrade to Win10. Hoping to find time Friday night to overclock a bit.
 
I went with the Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7, I liked the alpine ridge capabilities and dual m.2 x4. Not so much the Intel+Killer LAN. I'm just using the Intel, but being able to bridge would have been nice. XMP with a 3600C16 kit g.skill skill (on the QVL) went off without a hitch and is bomb stable.

I got the same MB. Did you buy your RAM for the Gigabyte memory support list??? I initially bought ram that wasn't on their support list and it was BSODing.
 
Nice F150. :)

ha nice eye. i just picked it up last month and so far i'm really happy with it.

6700K is running at 4.4 GHz at the moment with DDR4 at 3200 MHz. just a quick and dirty overclock since i haven't had time to tweak it. i'm guessing i can squeeze a little more out of it when i find time.
 
Only got my 6700k to a measly 4.7ghz.

Voltage had to be set to 1.4v for it become fully stable. Even with voltage set as high as 1.45, 4.8ghz is still not possible with my one...
 
Is there a consensus yet on a safe voltage for 24/7 use? Some people say 1.3v, 1.35v, and 1.4v so it's kind of all over the place. My new build has been running rock solid at 4.6ghz with 1.28v in adaptive mode with temperatures maxing out at 60*C for two weeks now without a hitch. I'm guessing I got a pretty good chip but still debating if it's worth trying to push it more.
 
1.45V under water, 1.4V on good air cooling.
An Asus engineer gave the above, cant find it now.

The hotter the chip the faster it will wear out, especially with high voltage.
If you dont want to do harm, keep it well below tjmax.

The cooler the chip, the higher the voltage it can take without excessive wear.
 
My 6700k seems to run warm. I have it at 1.36v @ 4600 and it's rock stable there but even with my TT water 3.0 240 with push pull I was hitting 81c with Prime v28 (which is the ultra torcher one with avx2 instruction sets) but no more than 70c with the Intel burn in test and rarely above 60c while gaming. While gaming it bounces around from 45 to 60c quite a bit though.. I guess that's fairly normal? I was thinking about reseating it with some GC extreme I got.
 
My 6700k seems to run warm. I have it at 1.36v @ 4600 and it's rock stable there but even with my TT water 3.0 240 with push pull I was hitting 81c with Prime v28 (which is the ultra torcher one with avx2 instruction sets) but no more than 70c with the Intel burn in test and rarely above 60c while gaming. While gaming it bounces around from 45 to 60c quite a bit though.. I guess that's fairly normal? I was thinking about reseating it with some GC extreme I got.

I think the temp bouncing is normal. Mine fluctuates between 30 and 45 pretty frequently with light usage.
 
Guys, what are you testing your stability with? I was using realbench before and looked like had a stable OC when I was running without a dedicated graphics card as I was passing several hour stress test without any trouble. I've got a gtx 1080 few days ago and now when I try to run realbench - first the Luxmark kind of freezes and it takes a while for that picture to load while realbench is running. Secondly - I had a driver restored message once during stress test and second time while playing witcher 3. I don't know whether it's GPU or nvidia drivers or it's CPU after all, but as i said - I was stress testing and not crashing or anything in Realbench for hours when it was just RAA and CPU without dedicated card. Can adding a gpu cause instability for cpu OC at all?
 
Guys, what are you testing your stability with? I was using realbench before and looked like had a stable OC when I was running without a dedicated graphics card as I was passing several hour stress test without any trouble. I've got a gtx 1080 few days ago and now when I try to run realbench - first the Luxmark kind of freezes and it takes a while for that picture to load while realbench is running. Secondly - I had a driver restored message once during stress test and second time while playing witcher 3. I don't know whether it's GPU or nvidia drivers or it's CPU after all, but as i said - I was stress testing and not crashing or anything in Realbench for hours when it was just RAA and CPU without dedicated card. Can adding a gpu cause instability for cpu OC at all?

Definitely GPU related from the looks of it, " driver restored message" especially while running an intense game just reinforces this even more. Adding a dedicated graphics shouldn't affect CPU stability at all.
 
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Guys, what are you testing your stability with? I was using realbench before and looked like had a stable OC when I was running without a dedicated graphics card as I was passing several hour stress test without any trouble. I've got a gtx 1080 few days ago and now when I try to run realbench - first the Luxmark kind of freezes and it takes a while for that picture to load while realbench is running. Secondly - I had a driver restored message once during stress test and second time while playing witcher 3. I don't know whether it's GPU or nvidia drivers or it's CPU after all, but as i said - I was stress testing and not crashing or anything in Realbench for hours when it was just RAA and CPU without dedicated card. Can adding a gpu cause instability for cpu OC at all?
Have you rebenched with the OC turned off? It could be something with the PCI-E clock if you used a BCLK OC. But chances are it's driver related because of the driver error message.
 
Have you rebenched with the OC turned off? It could be something with the PCI-E clock if you used a BCLK OC. But chances are it's driver related because of the driver error message.

Nope didn't use BCLK. It looks like my card needed some voltage to be completely stable. Didn't have drive restore messages or any crashes after that.
 
Hey, what speed ram did you get? How's your build going so far?

The ram is 3400 MHz but I'm running it at 3200 at the moment. I did a very quick overclock to 4.4 GHz (spent only minutes on it) and I haven't had a chance to go back and tweak it yet. I need to see how far I can properly overclock and also get my ram back up to 3400.
 
The ram is 3400 MHz but I'm running it at 3200 at the moment. I did a very quick overclock to 4.4 GHz (spent only minutes on it) and I haven't had a chance to go back and tweak it yet. I need to see how far I can properly overclock and also get my ram back up to 3400.

I'm using similar gear but went for the formula board and slightly faster memory. But it's gonna be a while till I get my stuff shipped, post july 4th slowness, grrr. I think I might get the 2 yr replacement from microcenter instead of the tuning plan since mc's coverage is better.
 
Just built out my skylake build. 4.6GHZ stable running alongside a trusty Titan X. Nice secondary rig if you ask me.
 
My board is ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING. Any recommend settings for adaptive voltage guys?

I'm @ 4.7ghz using 0.06v adaptive volts (just keep an eye one the voltage, you don't want to go much over 1.4v). This seems to be the maximum with the power saving functions enabled (I use this as a workstation rather than gaming system). I'm also playing around with the turbo boost (1 core 4.8 ratio). I reckon 4.8ghz is doing with some effort.

What cooling are you using?
 
I've just upgraded to the 1902 bios on my Maximus VIII Formula. CPU is 6700K. GPU is a Gigabyte Xtreme OC 980Ti set to factory OC.
x46 on all cores. Max x46 on cache ratio. Memory timing manually set to specs by manufacturor (Geil 3000-16-16-36).
Adaptive 1.305 offset 0.022. Running RealBench by Asus is stable. Using AIO H115i temp peaks at 86C with an ambient of 28C. Under gaming is rarely exceeds 73C.

Any thoughts wether this is a good OC setting?
 


look what just showed up at work! thanks for the review [H], looking forward to seeing how well this overclocks.
Isn't it cool seeing the products for the first time and building your own rig. Some vendors really know how to market and design their products.
 
I've just upgraded to the 1902 bios on my Maximus VIII Formula. CPU is 6700K. GPU is a Gigabyte Xtreme OC 980Ti set to factory OC.
x46 on all cores. Max x46 on cache ratio. Memory timing manually set to specs by manufacturor (Geil 3000-16-16-36).
Adaptive 1.305 offset 0.022. Running RealBench by Asus is stable. Using AIO H115i temp peaks at 86C with an ambient of 28C. Under gaming is rarely exceeds 73C.

Any thoughts wether this is a good OC setting?

Overclock seems about right for your cooling. I'm cruising along at 4.5@1.25v manual with a full loop. Max temp is roughly 60-62c under handbrake. I just moved to 1902 bios as well. The previous bios was too damn flaky for me.
 
Overclock seems about right for your cooling. I'm cruising along at 4.5@1.25v manual with a full loop. Max temp is roughly 60-62c under handbrake. I just moved to 1902 bios as well. The previous bios was too damn flaky for me.
I reverted back to the 1701 bios. Windows keeps reporting an unknown device. A motherboard that costed me € 360,- and all they mention in bios updates is improved stability. In my case the UEFI security prevented Windows 7 from booting and only later is read that i can turn that off wheres i didn't have to before. I could be an update from Microsoft causing it but it's all very flaky.
I'm now using manual mode 1.30V and manually set RAM to specs. It does 4.6GHz but cache ratio won't go x46.
 
I ended up delidding my 6700k out of curiosity and it dropped my load temps by 15c on my hottest core which was totally unexpected, it wasn't just Intel's bad paste job, part of the die didn't even have paste on it. Also the glue around the edges was thicker on one side. Max OC I reached on my 6700k was 4.9ghz at 1.38v, I tried 5ghz all the way up to 1.44v then stopped trying it was crashing on windows load. I feel comfortable doing 4.8ghz for 24/7 usage since it only needs 1.34v and tops out around 70c on IBT at 25c ambient.
Incase anyone was curious I just repasted it with Gelid GC Extreme and didn't reglue it.
 
I ended up delidding my 6700k out of curiosity and it dropped my load temps by 15c on my hottest core which was totally unexpected, it wasn't just Intel's bad paste job, part of the die didn't even have paste on it. Also the glue around the edges was thicker on one side. Max OC I reached on my 6700k was 4.9ghz at 1.38v, I tried 5ghz all the way up to 1.44v then stopped trying it was crashing on windows load. I feel comfortable doing 4.8ghz for 24/7 usage since it only needs 1.34v and tops out around 70c on IBT at 25c ambient.
Incase anyone was curious I just repasted it with Gelid GC Extreme and didn't reglue it.

Nice, grats on the delid. Did it lower your volt requirements for those clocks?
 
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