quick Skylake questions

[th3t1nk3r3r]

I just built a new system with the 6700K...

1) Does enabling XMP change any of the settings for my CPU, or just my RAM?

2) What is a safe voltage range for this CPU?

 

[Yuriman]

1) Get a second opinion, but I believe it can affect other voltages.

2) Most would probably tell you around 1.4v, but your guess is as good as mine. Stock CPUs are in excess of 1.3v sometimes.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It would depend on the chipset and processor generation with its BIOS as a matter of descriptive reference. But generally, I've found that there is a menu item offering "XMP" versus "Auto" and "Manual," another item for choosing among some two or three profiles programmed into the RAM, and there is another item for fixing the RAM speed at the target to avoid inadvertently overclocking the RAM as consequence of overclocking the CPU.

Once "XMP" and the XMP profile are chosen, you can still enter the RAM timings menu and manually tweak it. And you can tweak the relevant voltages.

That's the experience I'd had with Z68 and Z77 motherboards, anyway.

Just as an afterthought -- and this comes from exchange I had with G.SKILL tech-support, still applicable across all brands and makes: The XMP mode invokes more aggressive secondary timings in addition to the basic four spec values.

If you don't choose the XMP mode and options, and instead opt to set the timings and speed manually, the more aggressive XMP timings might not be used.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There are some boards that will auto-OC the CPU when you enable XMP in BIOS/UEFI. (Think mostly MCE - boosting the 4-core turbo to max turbo OC, and boost Vcore somewhat appropriately, although usually more than necessary.)