Question Does this sound right for i7-7700k overclock?

Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
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I decided to try and up my overclock on my 7700k and bought a Noctua NH-D15. I've been trying to OC beyond the 4.6Ghz pre-set on my motherboard. I upped it to the 4.8Ghz pre-set and it seems stable but my temperatures are very high. I ran RealBench 15-minute stress test and at least one core will jump to 100C quite often and hold for 20-30 seconds before returning to mid-80s. My frequencies will also start to go all over the place (4.1, 4.2, 4.5, 4.6GHz for each core instead of holding 4.8GHz at 100% load) The other 3 cores will usually stay 75-85C. When gaming it will often spike to 95C+ and drop back to mid-70s. Most posts I read say that 4.8GHz should be easy with a NH-D15 and top out around 75C under load. I know delidding would give a significant temperature drop but I'm not sure I want to risk that. I set the BIOS back to the 4.6 pre-set and upped the fan speeds for the case to 100% but it still seems very hot. Did I lose the silicon lottery or does this sound off?
In case it matters, motherboard is a Gigabyte Aorus Z270 Gaming K5. I also have already re-applied thermal paste (large grain of rice CPU) and the previous paste looked like it covered the entire chip.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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You might need to delid that cpu if its running that hot for the settings you are pushing it.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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I left it on "auto" because when I tried to manually set it to 1.35V it crashed on startup. Most people report getting 4.8Ghz on 1.325 or less and only needing 1.5+ for 5.0GHz and up.

Yeah that's the problem. You're probably feeding too much voltage. I wouldn't recommend auto OC settings.
 

mopardude87

Diamond Member
Oct 22, 2018
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Wow another 7700k owner, color me shocked! Yeah idk about my 7700k, its simply a lemon on my motherboard with overclocking. Oddly after going back to stock settings, its stuck in a 4.5ghz boost overclock i guess? This is idle or fully loaded. Oddly a perfect limit too cause its hitting closer to 84cel with my Hyper 212 evo....

Not gonna bother trying anything else, getting a 3700x the second my stimulus comes in :) The 7700k will stay prob as such and go to friend on her 2500k which is stock. Funny story on that, i buy a H61 mobo and plan on a 2500 and the 2500k was cheaper! :D
 

Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
603
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I'll try messing with the voltages a bit more to see if that helps.

My reading on delidding has taught me that apparently Intel did a poor job with their thermal paste inside the chip with this generation. I'm wondering if some are just extremely bad compared to others because everything I read is how 4.8Ghz should almost be a default base line overclock with 70-80C max temps but even at 4.6Ghz I get 90C+ with the NH-D15 which is supposedly one of the better air coolers. I first thought I must be installing the cooler or paste wrong but I've watched videos, read the manual, and retried it and I always get the same result.

My idle temps are reasonable (28C in morning, 35C warmer afternoon) and all hover within +/- 1 degree C of each other. Under heavy load, it seems 2-3 cores will stay at a reasonable temperature (within 8C range) but it's always core #0 that skyrockets to Tj. I don't physically know what a core is inside the chip or how they interact thermally, but there is something weak about my cheap in this sense.
 

Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
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I'm trying some manual OC settings, but this Gigabyte board is not very intuitive. For some options, text entry boxes will popup (Enable, Disable, Auto, etc.) whereas other don't leaving me wondering how to even modify the setting. I think RAM is causing issues as well. I bought 3200 RAM but for some reason when I change the RAM multiplier to 32 (motherboard default multiplier is 21.33) it won't even POST.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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@Compnewbie01

The boxes that don't bring up text entry boxes probably expect a number. As for your RAM, if you just change the multiplier to 32, you're trying to run at DDR4-3200 using DDR4-2133 JEDEC timings, which is not going to be stable. You're going to have to enabled XMP or learn to tune by hand.
 
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Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
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This is what I have so I thought 3200 would work.

The text box thing is still strange to me because I can input numbers as you say for number entries but where it says enable/disable won't do anything when I click on it whereas some will. I guess I can try just typing the text in and see if it works.

Ultimately, maybe I just got a bad chip OC-wise and 4.6Ghz is what I should leave it at.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Your temps are high at 4.6 GHz. You need to learn how to OC Kabylake, plain and simple. And just use XMP on your RAM. It should work.
 

Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
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So I read in a guide that hyper threading creates significant heat. I switched that off and suddenly my temperatures have dropped 20C+ during stress testing. I even upped back up to 4.8GHz and it's still much MUCH cooler that before. The temperatures are also all more evenly matched +/- 5 degrees from each other and less spikes. It seems I don't really utilize software that would benefit from hyper threading so I'm inclined to leave it off and try for 5Ghz again.
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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So I read in a guide that hyper threading creates significant heat. I switched that off and suddenly my temperatures have dropped 20C+ during stress testing. I even upped back up to 4.8GHz and it's still much MUCH cooler that before. The temperatures are also all more evenly matched +/- 5 degrees from each other and less spikes. It seems I don't really utilize software that would benefit from hyper threading so I'm inclined to leave it off and try for 5Ghz again.
But does the software you use really benefit from the extra 100 - 200 Mhz you want to chase after? Quite a bit of software takes advantage of Hyper-Threading anymore, so I wouldn't discount that from being useful. You haven't mentioned what voltages you are using to achieve any of your attempts (earlier you just say you'll mess around with them a bit more).

Personally I'd be inclined to leave the Hyper-Threading enabled on a quad core CPU, and back off the overclock some.
 
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UsandThem

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May 4, 2000
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Also, Silicon Lottery's findings were that all of the 7700K CPUs they binned could do 4.8 Ghz at 1.4v (with a lower AVX clock). This of course were the results after they were delidded. If you're not willing to do that, the 7700K isn't known as being one of the best overclockers out there when left with factory stock TIM.

https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics

Intel.jpg
 

Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
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I currently have my Vcore set to 1.34V for 4.8GHz and can pass a 15 minute RealBench stress test. I know 15 minutes is probably not enough for a real test but I like it for just testing things out. I tried 1.325V and RealBench crashed within the first 2 minutes. I turned Hyper Threading back on and my temperatures peaked at 96C for Core #0 and mid-80s for the other three. Average temps throughout test were probably closer to 82C/70C for Core #0 and 1/2/3 respectively. Going away from auto OC settings definitely seems to help a bit with temperatures by about 5C.

I'm also curious on two things. Is Vcore in the BIOS setting accurate? I get wildly different values in CPUID. It often spiked to 1.4+ even with it set to 1.34 in the BIOS. I'm also wondering when people report temperatures if they are getting some average value because the only values I see in CPUID are Value, Min, and Max.

Maybe one day I'll buy a delidding tool and give it a shot. It just takes me a bit out of my comfort zone because if I screw up I'm out $300+. Though, from the videos I've seen it seems CPUs aren't as fragile as I once thought.
 

Compnewbie01

Senior member
Aug 8, 2005
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So I worked myself up to attempt a delid on my 7700k after convincing myself I could accept buying a new chip if it turned out poorly. I bought a used Rockit 88 kit and Thermalright Silver Knight liquid metal paste. After reading many comments I decided not to relid and just let the IHS sit freely.

I broke the IHS free and the existing TIM looked like it was more concentrated on one side leaving ~20% of the die with no TIM. I carefully cleaned and scraped all the old sealant off and applied nail polish over the 4 small gold contacts near the die. Applying the liquid metal was actually quite easy and as everyone else said, a little goes a LONG way. I gave a *very* thin coat to both the die and IHS before placing the CPU back in with the IHS on top. Re-installed Noctua NH-D15 with regular thermal paste and fired it up.

First thought was meh as my idle temps were nearly the same as before staying around 35C. Then I fired up RealBench and holy crap the temperature drop is dramatic. I'm now averaging low 60s for all 4 cores with rare spikes to mid 60s. So definitely a 10-20C drop from before which is consistent with most comments. The other good thing is my core temps all stay within 2-3C of each other throughout the test. I gamed for a little bit as well and the maximum temperature recorded was 58C on Core #3 which is funny because before it was usually the coolest of the 4 cores. Core #0 was 55C max which leads me to believe my factory TIM installation was bad because it was the core that always got HOT.

Overall, delidding is not as bad as I thought. Tomorrow I'm going to try and up it to 5.0GHz and see how the temperature behaves.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
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Glad your delid went well. You're lucky you got away with keeping the metal thin on your die. My last delid required a lot of TIM on the die to get any results due to the gap between the die and the IHS.