4790k never drops below 4.6ghz even with C states on?

[poohbear]

Hey all, my main rig at home needs to be on for almost 24/7 cause its the admin rig for home network, but i don't want the CPU at full throttle 24/7. I recall on my old 2500k i could see the cpu drop down to 1-1.5ghz range when not in use, but this setup its always @ 4.6ghz! I have all the C states on (C1-7) in the mobo bios, but it's still always displayed as 4.6ghz. Mobo is a OC Formula Z97

How do i ensure the energy saving options are enabled and running on this cpu? (even if overclocked) Thanks in advance!

 

[Burpo]

In bios is Performance mode set to auto?

 

[crashtech]

If Windows Power Management is set to High Performance, this will happen.

 

[poohbear]

The OC Formula has a lot of settings in bios, but i didn't specifically see a performance mode option. I am auto overclocking to 4.6ghz though, i thought that'd at least include throttling down to lower speeds when not used. Here are most of the settings in CPU section:

CPU Ratio,
All Core,
CPU non turbo Ratio,
CPU Cache Ratio,
BCLK boot frequency,
BCLK Eventual Frequency,
BCLK/PCIE Ratio,
BCLK Spread Spectrum,
CPU OC Fixed Mode,
Intel Speedstep Technology,
Intel Turbo Boost Technology,

All are on Auto or Enabled. Which one deals with letting the CPU drop when not under load?

Thanks again for any help.

 

[toyota]

did you see crashtech's post?

 

[poohbear]

If Windows Power Management is set to High Performance, this will happen.

yes as a desktop i have it on high performance. Is there an option in Windows power management that i need to turn off for CPU to drop in speeds? From what i'm seeing the main options are power saver, balanced, and high performance.

edit: Ah thank you, i see under advanced options & "processor power management" it has "minimum processor state", what should i set that too? currently set at 100%! This setting will only be applied when idle right? not when under load?

edit 2: ok thanks crashtech, i set it to 50% and now i see it fluctuating between 2.5ghz-4.6ghz. quick question though, will this ever cause stuttering or is it not perceivable? How low should i go with "minimum processor state"? is 30% is acceptable?

 

[crashtech]

Don't overthink this. The two main things are to set it to "Balanced," and set the hard drive to never turn off. The rest is personal preference.

 

[toyota]

just put minimum of 5 or 10% and it will idle properly

 

[poohbear]

ok thanks guys. i put it to minimum 10% and now seeing it drop down to 900mhz sometimes. sweet!

Last question and sorry to bother you with this, but when monitoring it in Argus, the CPU cores are constantly fluctuating from 900mhz to 4ghz, like 2-3 times a second! Is that normal? Intel/Windows 8.1 manages all this no probs?

 

[crashtech]

There is some task running that is demanding that kind of attention. It's not really typical but isn't a problem. You might look in the process list in Task Manager to see which thing is spiking the CPU usage like that; you want to at least make sure it's a process that you want to have running.

 

[poohbear]

Ok thank u. I have alot of background programs running....so guess its to be expected. Cheers.