Newbie OC'r - Voltage Question

[garmcqui]

Hi all,

I 've just built myself a new system and I'm trying my hand at overclocking, since I'm told it's easy on these Ivy Bridge chips.

My Rig:

• Intel i5-3570k
• Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Motherboard
• 8Gb Crucial Ballistix Sport PC3-12800 (9-9-9-24)
• Coolermaster Hyper-212 Evo (1 Fan)
• OCZ Vertex 4 128Gb SSD
• Corsair 650W PSU

However, I've been playing around with the overclock and I've had it up as high as 4.6Ghz, but the voltages are confusing me.

Right now I have it stable at 4.3Ghz. I've set the VCore setting to "Normal" and the Dynamic VCore to +0.000. The setting I'm using can be seen in these bios shots:

However, when I run CPU-Z the voltage is significautly different during stress testing (using Intel Burn Test). Core temp shows another voltage again!

@ Idle:

At Max Stress:

As you can see, during stress testing CPU-Z reports the voltage as over 1.3v, well above my settings. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Gareth

 

[SickBeast]

Honestly, you can get a lot out of these chips at stock voltage, and really that's the way I prefer to do it.

If you do want to overvolt, you can either directly raise it, or use "offset". Offset is better because it allows your chip to dynamically undervolt if it's not under load, which saves you on energy and makes your CPU last longer. Basically you're going to use a "+" offset, and just add a very minor bump at a time until you obtain stability.

 

[Idontcare]

Welcome to the forums Gareth :thumbsup:

What you are seeing with the voltage is absolutely normal. The CPU tells the bios what voltage it needs based on the loadings and clockspeed, this is called the CPU's VID and it varies with clockspeed, and the BIOS responds by changing the voltage accordingly.

It is all perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, and the voltage value itself (1.272V) is well within the range of acceptable numbers while overclocking.

Depending on your ambient (room) temperatures and the cpu cooler you are using, you may find that your CPU is stable at the same clockspeed with an even lower voltage (which would then result in lower temperatures and lower power-consumption, plus longer CPU lifespan).

To see if that is the case you will need to lower the CPU voltage by setting the DVID (dynamic Vcore) to a small negative value, say -0.05V (or perhaps even more if you have good cooling).

Play around with it, going lower in voltage is not dangerous to the CPU, going higher in voltage can be dangerous if the volts get above 1.4V or so.

 

[rgallant]

- it takes some time to understand bios names then relate it to what it does.
so most forums are chip \mb by model \ maker
-I have a asus board so my bios is in a different lay out
-here a gigabyte forum you read [40xx] posts
http://www.overclock.net/t/1239993/...support-thread-and-club-ud5h-ud3h-d3h-and-all

 

[garmcqui]

Thanks for the replies.

I would like to keep the voltage as low as possible. I thought that by setting the vcore at "normal" and a dynamic vcore of 0.00 it would keep it at the stock voltage (1.175v)?

Otherwise I might just as we'll keep Vcore set to "auto"?

Should I turn off the setting for internal PLL overvoltage?

 

[Idontcare]

I would like to keep the voltage as low as possible. I thought that by setting the vcore at "normal" and a dynamic vcore of 0.00 it would keep it at the stock voltage (1.175v)?

Otherwise I might just as we'll keep Vcore set to "auto"?

If you set the CPU voltage to "manual" then you can lock in the voltage, but it won't go down when the CPU is idle (it will be fixed for all time, regardless whether the CPU is loaded or idle). So your power consumption will actually go up, but only slightly because of something called power-gating.

Try it out, seriously, you got to get your hands dirty here if you really want to learn about your computer. You aren't going to hurt anything, just make sure you have your personal files of importance stored on another hard-drive while you mess around with OC'ing. Don't want to lose those photos and bank account files from data corruption with a bad OC.

If you want the CPU to be able to reduce the voltage when it is idle, for power-savings, then leave the CPU voltage to auto and set the offset value (the DVID value) to a negative value (keep reducing it until you find the minimum for stability at a give clockspeed).

Should I turn off the setting for internal PLL overvoltage?

Leave that to Auto. It doesn't hurt anything when set to auto, but if you OC to high values (>4.6GHz) then the system will need to enable the PLL overvoltage to prevent the system from hanging on boot.

The downside, if it is enabled, is that your computer won't resume from sleep properly so you'll need to disable the sleep feature in windows (but only if you notice it hangs when trying to come out of sleep, otherwise you are fine, it is hit and miss per cpu and mobo).