Am I doing something totally wrong? No turbo, 8400?

AbRASiON

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
861
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I'm out of the game on this stuff of late but I'm baffled.
I got the 8400 with quite a good cooler on it and an AsRock board.
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z370M-ITXac/#osW1064
Z370M-ITX/ac

I never ever see the CPU exceed 2763mhz?

I went into the Asrock ITX bios some kind of turbo mode.
I don't see multi-core enhancement, I don't see a single core ever boost in any way?

The machine seems otherwise fine but I'm baffled, am I "missing out" or is this normal?
Went into advanced BIOS couldn't really see anything particular I need to change.

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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
Is your power plan set to High Performance? Might want to set it back to Balanced. (Have you messed with power plan settings, either on this rig, or a prior rig if you've migrated an installation of Windows?)
 
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Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
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Is Windows in high performance power settinng?

I have same motherboard with 8700, didn't need to change anything in BIOS for it to turbo.

EDIT: VirtualLarry beat me to it. :) I'm running in High Performance though.
 

AbRASiON

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
861
4
81
Is your power plan set to High Performance? Might want to set it back to Balanced. (Have you messed with power plan settings, either on this rig, or a prior rig if you've migrated an installation of Windows?)

I did set to high performance just out of habit (don't want PC shutting down)
Fresh Win10 install btw.
 

AbRASiON

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
861
4
81
Try changing the number of active workers in prime95 to one?
Tried that :( did nothing still 2763mhz
BLCK thingo is (was??) automatically set to 102.3 by Asrock, I guess that's good of them
Mind you, what the heck, 28x102.3 = 2864mhz not the 2763 I'm getting.
 

Charlie22911

Senior member
Mar 19, 2005
614
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Tried that :( did nothing still 2763mhz
BLCK thingo is (was??) automatically set to 102.3 by Asrock, I guess that's good of them
Mind you, what the heck, 28x102.3 = 2864mhz not the 2763 I'm getting.

Try clearing CMOS and setting things manually, try and get things as close to spec as you can (disable MCT and XMP for example). If that won't do the trick maybe try fiddling with any C state related settings.

The last thing I can think of is in advanced power settings in windows, you can control the minimum and maximum frequency under processor power managment. Maybe check there too (long shot).
 

AbRASiON

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
861
4
81
I found it - thanks for making me persist guys, darnit phew.

The AsRock auto overclock of the BLCK (?) made the CPU force itself to a 27 multiplier, why - I don't know.
As soon as I dropped this to 100 instead of 102.3, the bios unlocked 28x multiplier mode.

I've just checked prime95 and hwmonitor, cpuz etc and it's now performing at 3900mhz most of the time. Max heat is now 54c not 44 for example.
Highest frequency thus far is 4002mhz on one core.

(I really never did set the BLCK to 102.3, I just built the thing and fired it up)
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
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My point in mentioning the High Performance power plan, is, I believe that disables Turbo mode, you need to set Balanced, to get Turbo to work.

Also, the UEFI should NOT have defaulted to 102.3 BCLK. That's an error, and will lower your max multiplier, too. That should be set to AUTO or 100 (I forget which).

My experience with the same mobo, and an i3-8100, which is locked at 100 BCLK x 36 multi = 3.60Ghz. If I boosted the BCLK in UEFI to the max (102.7), I lost a multi off of the top, according to CPU-Z inside Windows 10. I was only able to clock up to multi 35 at that point. Resetting the UEFI, got me back to 100 BCLK and 36 max multi.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,501
136
Yeah, its weird BCLK was set higher. Mine was at 100 (99.7, or whatever the exact number is) stock. Saw same disabling of turbo when I tried the BCLK overclock.
 

PeterScott

Platinum Member
Jul 7, 2017
2,605
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Yeah, Intel seems to have gotten hyper aggressive shutting down BCLK overclocking.
 

Dufus

Senior member
Sep 20, 2010
675
119
101
Seems symptomatic of setting the flex ratio one below base ratio. It could just be the BIOS code doing that or could be PCODE (CPU) as there is a BIOS setting for 'pcode bclk awareness'.

Anyway all sorted I guess. :sweatsmile:
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
there is a BIOS setting for 'pcode bclk awareness'.
Specifically, in the ASRock Z370 ITX/ac board? I didn't see that. If you enable or disable that, can you change BLCK on a locked i3-8100 higher than 102.7? Will it cause the CPU to shutdown, or does it bypass that?
 

Dufus

Senior member
Sep 20, 2010
675
119
101
IIRC it was in the BIOS you were using and mentioned in one of the CFL threads, but it was quite a while ago so maybe I'm not remembering so well.

A lot of options tend to be hidden in the BIOS and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

We can see from Skylake that BCLK was limited and required pcode to not be initialized as part of the circumvention which is why there wasn't any AVX2, core temp readings and so on with that exploit. So it's connected but what that option specifically does needs to be verified. It may quite possibly not be helpful to the problem at all.
 

psolord

Golden Member
Sep 16, 2009
1,875
1,184
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Maybe? Packaging was all sealed though for the cables and what have you and it's otherwise behaved.
Seen 4002mhz now - a few things feel a bit snappier now - good times.
I saw the CPU get as low as 2watts! and up to 65.66 - pretty great.

Glad you solved it. I have a 8600k and I am waiting for my Asrock Exteme 4 to arrive. Any info I pick up is good.

Are you using Intel's Power Gadget for power draw readings or something else?
 
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