Help! my 4790k wont run at rated speed

[faxon]

So i have a Gigabyte Z97-SOC Force motherboard and a 4790k i just got. I have been running it fine with no problems for a while now and today it suddenly decided that it only wants to run at 800MHz no matter what! So what do I do? I reset the bios, i manually dial in the clock speed base and multipliers and everything and turn off all the bios power save functions and verify that windows is set to high power mode. this cpu is water cooled in a loop that i'm currently letting idle and it's sitting at a balmy 33c right now. it's showing this speed in windows and in bios and I was really looking forward to playing some BF4 tonight with my friends but my computer simply isn't fucking fast enough even with 8 threads running at maximum to get playable FPS on my monitor's native 2560x1440. I've yet to verify if there's some kind of hard switch on my motherboard that could be causing this to happen due to all the features crammed into it, but yet everything was working fine the last time i used it for gaming and everything and I havent touched anything inside the case since then to do any modifications either. I am so confused right now and at a loss as to how to get my cpu to perform properly

 

[Blain]

When you say you "reset the bios", do you mean you chose the "load defaults" mode?

 

[BSim500]

So i have a Gigabyte Z97-SOC Force motherboard and a 4790k i just got. I have been running it fine with no problems for a while now and today it suddenly decided that it only wants to run at 800MHz no matter what! So what do I do?

Sounds like you're locked in at the idle SpeedStep state. 800MHz is perfectly normal for idle, but if you're still seeing 800MHz under load (eg, Prime), go into Control Panel -> Power Options and in whatever active power plan you're using (either Balanced or High Performance), click "Change Plan Settings" -> "Advanced Power Settings", and in "Processor Power Management", make sure "Maximum Processor State" is 100% and not 5%.

Edit: If that and resetting the BIOS doesn't work, maybe try reflashing it?

 

[coffeejunkee]

"It suddenly decided"...so you didn't do any kind of overclocking/messing with settings whatsoever?

But it sound like it needs reflashing. Preferably using latest bios.

 

[tweakboy]

Because you have C1E or speed step. settings to OFF ,,,,and your multi stays same,, or whatever is OCing.

 

[faxon]

"It suddenly decided"...so you didn't do any kind of overclocking/messing with settings whatsoever?

But it sound like it needs reflashing. Preferably using latest bios.

Literally all I did before this happened was turn it off and install another radiator into my water cooling loop, the system has been running fine for a month now with stock settings at 4GHz, I haven't got around to overclocking the CPU yet because I'm having issues with getting enough air through the radiators I picked. No water was in the loop nor would any have gotten on the parts, and the last time my hands were inside the case other than to plug a USB panel header back in that came loose was to install that radiator. I havent touched the bios since I first set the system up other than today. The board has a "remove bios battery" button so i've tried both the bios reset button and hard removing the battery, and my windows power settings are set to high power. I'll try the trick someone posted about the advanced settings changing it to 100% but if that doesn't work then I'm gonna just flash to the latest bios I guess? I'm using OCCT to monitor the speed its at in windows but I don't think any software fix will help, simply because even in bios it insists at showing and only running at 800MHz when all power save state settings are disabled.

 

[faxon]

Sounds like you're locked in at the idle SpeedStep state. 800MHz is perfectly normal for idle, but if you're still seeing 800MHz under load (eg, Prime), go into Control Panel -> Power Options and in whatever active power plan you're using (either Balanced or High Performance), click "Change Plan Settings" -> "Advanced Power Settings", and in "Processor Power Management", make sure "Maximum Processor State" is 100% and not 5%.

Edit: If that and resetting the BIOS doesn't work, maybe try reflashing it?

Okay I'm looking right at the advanced settings> processor power management tree and the only thing there is > system cooling policy> dropdown menu ^active ^passive, with default set to active. The system is set to high performance as well. Im going to see if my SSD from my other system will boot in this system without moaning just to eliminate the OS as a culprit, and if that doesn't let me see it running at 4Ghz I'm gonna flip the dual bios switch on my motherboard and see if the other one wants to behave before flashing. It's POSSIBLE that this is exactly what happened, i kicked the switch to backup mode on accident while installing my radiator (the fan cabling was all up in that bitch until i cleaned it up), but before I went to flash bios I checked and it was still holding my custom settings and not the optimized defaults. I check, double check, and document every change I make and in what order I made them so I can avoid long troubleshooting runs like this for seemingly simple things to fix. I literally passed out lying in my bed fully clothed last night going over my build logs, i was so pissed. for the first time in over a month i had a full 9 other friends of mine online at the same time all night to play battlefield 4, and now one of them is leaving for Army National Guard ROTC as I type this

 

[faxon]

I went through, checked with my DMM to make sure the board was getting the right voltages from the PSU, manually removed the bios battery instead of using the button, tried the backup bios, and still nothing. even manually hard locking it to 40 multiplier in bios wont get it to un-throttle. I'm hesitant to flash the bios needlessly because it's already running the latest bios out of the box and switching to a separate backup bios still didnt help. I'm tempted to call Gigabyte phone support and see what if anything they come up with

 

[smakme7757]

My first reaction was power saving mode but it seems you have checked that.

What about:
Check for bent pins on the motherboard?
Try reseating the CPU?

 

[crashtech]

Boot with a live OS like Parted Magic, load the CPU with one of the included tools, and see what the frequency is there. This will allow us to differentiate between hardware and OS.

 

[Itchrelief]

I doubt this will help you, but I have a Gigabyte Gaming7 board and if I try to manually set the max wattage the processor won't go above 1600MHz. I have to leave it at auto. Just throwing stuff out there to maybe give you ideas. Hopefully you'll figure it out soon. Good luck.

 

[escrow4]

This is precisely why I only buy locked processors now for any build and have given up on OC. That said, that board has a bank of switches, one of which locks in settings, is that on or off? Also check for any other physical switch(es) on the mobo that may lock/adjust settings.

 

[MongGrel]

This is precisely why I only buy locked processors now for any build and have given up on OC. That said, that board has a bank of switches, one of which locks in settings, is that on or off? Also check for any other physical switch(es) on the mobo that may lock/adjust settings.

Locked CPU's ? You're no fun

 

[faxon]

This is precisely why I only buy locked processors now for any build and have given up on OC. That said, that board has a bank of switches, one of which locks in settings, is that on or off? Also check for any other physical switch(es) on the mobo that may lock/adjust settings.

I'm looking at the manual now to see which switch this is but I tried looking for that last night before I passed out as well to no avail (probably right before i got frustrated and lay down). Could you point me to which switch you're talking about in case I come back fruitless again? I was gonna go watch the gigabyte product demo video again if the manual didn't give me what I needed cause they went over the entire button/switch bar's functions there as well. I highly suspect the issue has something to do with this section of the board.

Also to the guy who mentioned the CPU wattage setting thank you for the heads up, I had actually thought about trying to muck with that because default was only 88 watts and my board is capable of delivering significantly more for overclocking (8+4 pin 12v connection), but I'll stay away from it for now

 

[faxon]

This is precisely why I only buy locked processors now for any build and have given up on OC. That said, that board has a bank of switches, one of which locks in settings, is that on or off? Also check for any other physical switch(es) on the mobo that may lock/adjust settings.

nevermind my last post, i found it, the trigger switch is what its called, it locks in the CPU at a low stable frequency so you can boot with an insane massive OC into OS stable to run that one benchmark, take a screenshot, and reboot (according to the manual), and it was set to the "safe" setting. reading comprehension is better in the middle of the day when you aren't exhausted, and the best part is I didn't even have to reboot to see the change take effect cause that's the whole purpose of the switch. its working fine now! you guys can all laugh at me all you want

 

[crashtech]

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Glad you fixed it!

 

[daveybrat]

At least the thread had a happy ending. Congrats!