Skylake Pentium G4400 Overclocking

[TeknoBug]

For everyday use (web browsing, video playback etc) you wont even feel the difference between a Pentium and Core i3.

Oh dear lord.

Not quite sure why everyone thinks I should have paid 100% more for 30-40% more performance. It's not like the i3 is in a different class when it comes to overclocking. I'm not gaming on this rig, gaming isn't everything.

Gaming? If it was for gaming then i5 obviously, even an i3 6320 over an 6100. Nobody said anything about gaming.

 

[cbn]

Edit: Update. Now that the shoe has dropped, and ASRock released non-K OC BIOS for nearly (?) all of their Z170 boards, I decided to spend money that I don't really have, FOR SCIENCE! To get a cheap Z170 board. It didn't help that Newegg had a Z170 Pro4S on sale for $79.99. I also spent $39.99 on an 8GB kit of GSkill DDR4-2800 RAM.

What can I say, it's a budget board. But it OCs! (Downloaded the Beta BIOS already, for non-K "SKY OC".)
http://www.asrock.com/news/events/SkyOC/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157636

Nice board.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Larry, you are making progress. Congrats. Now you've got the right board at least :thumbsup:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry, you are making progress. Congrats. Now you've got the right board at least :thumbsup:

Nevermind that neither of us knew what the "right board" was, up until last night... after I placed my initial order.

Edit: Ok, so in total, I have these things ordered:
ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX mobo
Asus H110M-A mATX mobo (received)
Intel G4400 x2 (received x1)
Kingston 4GB DDR4-2133
GSkill 2x4GB DDR4-2800 (X99 was mentioned in title, I hope that they work for SKL)

Still waiting on the RAM and the Z170 mobo and one of the G4400 CPUs.

I also ended up ordering some 115x stock Intel HSF assemblies (new) off of ebay, that have copper cores.

The question is, should I use those (I think that they are the "short" ones, with copper cores), or if the stock HSF that comes with them is the "tall" all-Al one, should I use that one, or should I get some CoolerMaster T2 heatsinks for $20 or so ea, or should I get some Corsair AIO water coolers? (Cheapest one of those is like $60 though, before rebate, for the H50. Ouch!)

If the SKL CPUs max out around 4.3-4.4Ghz (as evidenced by the results mentioned on ASRock's "SKY OC" page), then what kind of cooling is required to achieve those OCs? Will they OC that high on the stock HSF? Copper-core HSF? Or requiring tower air or AIO water?

Edit: I ordered a BXTS15A (I think that's the model number), the Intel-designed, copper heatsink for OCing 1151 CPUs.

Edit: Ordered some Avexir (sp?) DDR4-2400 RAM. Was $34.99 for an 8GB kit. Got two kits. Cheapest DDR4 I've seen. (Plus, it lights up blue.)

Edit: Prices went back up, Friday Dec 18th 2015. I saved:
$30 on the Avexir RAM
$30 on the first Z170 Pro4S board
$42 on the second Z170 Pro4S board

 

[tenpole]

I wo7ld be interested to see how your new set up compares to the G3258.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, I've received the Asus H110M-A board, one G4400 Pentium CPU, and finally, the two 8GB kits of Avexir DDR4-2400. (Funny how the first DDR4 I ordered four days ago still hasn't shown up yet, but the RAM that I ordered yesterday did.)

I can build this rig, and run some benchmarks at stock, or I can wait, probably until Tues, and I should have the "SKY OC" Z170 boards, and possibly a heatsink.

Edit: I built the H110M-A and G4400 rig, 4GB DDR4-2133, all stock.

RealBench 2.41 results here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37817523&postcount=13

 

[cbn]

If the SKL CPUs max out around 4.3-4.4Ghz (as evidenced by the results mentioned on ASRock's "SKY OC" page), then what kind of cooling is required to achieve those OCs? Will they OC that high on the stock HSF? Copper-core HSF? Or requiring tower air or AIO water?

The copper core cooler should work.

But Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus is routinely on sale for $19.99 shipped AR. (On the rare occassion it will be $14.99 shipped AR)

So I guess it depends on how much the copper core cooler costs and/or if space inside the case is at a premium.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, my subjective impression so far of the Asus H110M and G4400 - I like it a lot. I somewhat even prefer it to my G3258 @ 4.0 w/7950. At the very least, scrolling with the HD 510 iGPU (even with single-channel DDR4-2133), is silky-smooth in Waterfox (I assume that the driver is double-buffering).

My G630 Sandy Bridge Pentium rig wasn't nearly this smooth, with the "HD" iGPU (HD 2000?) I had to add a GT430 128-bit DDR3 LP card to get really smooth scrolling.

Considering that SKL is 10% faster than HSW, therefore my 3.3Ghz G4400 is equal to a 3.63Ghz HSW Pentium. Which is pretty close to my G3258, which is somewhat choked by poor memory bandwidth, being limited to DDR3-1333.

Edit: I'm starting to see some limitations, scrolling Waterfox with several Newegg tabs open (lots of images), while on Skype. Some lag.

Also, some black lines on the tops of images in Waterfox. Unsure if that's just an immature SKL iGPU Win7 64-bit driver issue, or if my RAM is bad or something. Haven't had any BSODs though, or appcrashes.

Edit: Go to this link, it's the Lenovo IdeaPad 100s at BestBuy.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-...skuId=4475000&u1=ebs2d0d4767d1450675032288sbe

Click one of the images in the gallery, and hover your mouse over the larger image, and it will show a zoom window to the right.

With a few other tabs open in Waterfox, and Skype not in a video call, that zoom window updates buttery-smooth.

But with Skype running a video call, the zoom window updates quite laggy.

The CPU usage is only at 60-70% when moving around the zoom window, and Skype only takes 33% CPU time. Neither CPU appears to be pinned, according to the graphs in Task Manager in Win7 64-bit.

I'm wondering if this is an iGPU bandwidth limitation? I'm currently only running with single-channel DDR4-2133.

Edit: It seems it was Flash Player? I had a tab open to Newegg's homepage, as well as Biostar.com.tw's homepage. Between the flash animations on both of them, that seems to be what was causing the lag. I tested this, by closing those tabs, and then re-opening the BestBuy page, and using the zoom window, and now it seems smooth. Waterfox doesn't multi-task multiple windows with Flash Player going on very well. (I believe that this is the reason why I thought Newegg was a bit laggy, with multiple product page tabs open.)

Edit: Just got in a BXTS15A. For those that don't know what that is, it's basically a stock cooler... on massive copper steroids.

Edit: Power consumption, according to my UPS, is 60W running on the iGPU, with one CPU core doing BOINC. That number includes 25-30W for the 24" LCD HDTV monitor. UPS reads 49W steady when not running BOINC.

 

[LTC8K6]

Flash makes a 4790K laggy...

 

[TeknoBug]

Flash has gotten worse over time hence why more and more are trying to move to HTML5 (but too many Facebook games rely on flash), some pages with flash causes typing to lag behind, IGN and NCIX does that.

 

[Blue_Max]

I prefer jumping on used i3 processors when I see them in local ads. Can't overclock them so they just don't die and there's little fear of a dead chip. Cheap when used. $20-ish US.

That hyperthreading makes a notable difference, even in the day-to-day browsing, Youtube, etc.

 

[USER8000]

Not everywhere has cheap deals like in the US. The Z170 Pro4S costs £85 in the UK and the G4400 is £60. The Core i3 6100 costs £95. I would rather have the Core i3 6100 and a cheaper motherboard.

 

[tenpole]

Not everywhere has cheap deals like in the US. The Z170 Pro4S costs £85 in the UK and the G4400 is £60. The Core i3 6100 costs £95. I would rather have the Core i3 6100 and a cheaper motherboard.

Most of the forum users don't understand this nor understand what budget means. Still more than happy with my G3258 after 10 months.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Flash makes a 4790K laggy...

Not to drag out the "Newegg site is laggy" discussion too much, but I just did a fresh install of Windows 10 64-bit 1511 on a PC, with a 3.4Ghz Sandy Bridge i3 CPU, 8GB DDR3, a fresh new 1TB HDD (yes, no SSD), and a GTX750ti.

Win10 auto-installed whatever newest NV driver once I was connected to the net.

I installed Waterfox, Malwarebytes, etc.

Then I went to my internet radio page, had that playing, then I decided to surf Newegg for a little while. I was looking at their Wireless NICs. In particular, I had six Newegg tabs open, and one of them, on the Edimax USB3.0 AC1200 adaptor, was VERY laggy. I use the middle-button auto-scroll feature in Waterfox, and you can visually "feel" Waterfox's tab multi-tasking, as it will scroll (smoothly), and then PAUSE, then scroll, then PAUSE. It's really annoying. And it was doing that, badly. On an i3. I then even went and closed all of the other Newegg tabs but that one, and it was STILL doing that. So I reloaded the page, and of course, it loaded two DIFFERENT flash ads on the product page, and it wasn't nearly as bad.

So Newegg CAN be laggy, entirely dependent on which Flash Player ads load on the product page. Unless you use NoScript, which I normally do on my own machines.

VL, pickup a Skylake celeron on release if possible. I am curious how they tick along:
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/specs-skylake-celerons-g3900-and-g3920-have-surfaced.html

Will do. I noticed that my G4400 gets laggy, when I have two BOINC CPU tasks running (NumberFields@Home). Web browsing, opening new tabs, there's like a 1-2s delay.

Edit: Checked ebay for a G3900 CPU, no dice yet. Don't think that they've been released yet.

 

[escrow4]

I used a 4770 non K for a year and a half, then a G1850 for a month, then an i3 4170 for a few months, now I'm back on the G1850 with the rest sold off. Long story short, any of them work for web browsing and porn playback.

The 1850 does spike frequently to 80%+ CPU usage wise loading some web sites and Chrome's video decoder doesn't play nice with 60FPS youtube videos but its sufficient. Yes there is a clear (but slight) difference in loading and unloading tabs between them but it doesn't really matter. Its not something to jump up and down and say its slow.

VL, pickup a Skylake celeron on release if possible. I am curious how they tick along:

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/specs-skylake-celerons-g3900-and-g3920-have-surfaced.html

 

[lyssword]

"good enough for porn playback" well then, now you're talking in a language I can understand ^^

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, having some issues. I built my second G4400 / Z170 Pro4S board. I also installed some SM951 128GB M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 AHCI SSDs into each board, and installed Win7 64-bit UEFI boot mode onto each of them.

Anyways, I updated the BIOS to 2.90, installed Win7 at stock speeds, installed the drivers, Crimson 16.1 Hotfix for the 7950, Waterfox 40.1.0, and CPU-Z and GPU-Z (newest).

I then overclocked to the same settings as on my first G4400 / Z170 rig, 4.29Ghz / 130.0 BCLK, 1.300V.

However, after downloading some ISOs, doing Windows Update, listening to internet radio, and crunching in BOINC, it gave me a STOP 0x7F BSOD, which is "unexpected kernel trap".

When I would get BSODs on my first rig, due to not enough Vcore, they were always STOP 0x101 BSODs.

So, I'm wondering what's going on here. I hope it's not the SSD.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Whats the first parameter on your 0x7f?

 

[VirtualLarry]

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000007f (0x0000000000000008, 0x0000000080050033, 0x00000000000406f8, 0x000007fee628b736). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 011816-6380-01.

Edit: BTW, I installed Intel RST on both rigs. I thought it would help speed up my PCI-E 3.0 x4 AHCI SSD, but apparently, the Intel drivers only take over PCI-E M.2 SSDs, if you set the PCH SATA controller to RAID mode. Which sounds kind of weird to me. I don't need RAID mode on my SATA ports, I just want to use my M.2 port. Anyways, the current driver for the M.2 PCI-E AHCI is the Microsoft driver.

But I seem to recall issues with RST causing BSODs? Perhaps I should un-install it?

Edit: According this page, it was caused by a double-fault exception.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff559244(v=vs.85).aspx

 

[ShintaiDK]

A double fault. That can both be hardware and software.

In terms of hardware you can be hit with memory or storage faults.

 

[escrow4]

Ok, having some issues. I built my second G4400 / Z170 Pro4S board. I also installed some SM951 128GB M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 AHCI SSDs into each board, and installed Win7 64-bit UEFI boot mode onto each of them.

Anyways, I updated the BIOS to 2.90, installed Win7 at stock speeds, installed the drivers, Crimson 16.1 Hotfix for the 7950, Waterfox 40.1.0, and CPU-Z and GPU-Z (newest).

I then overclocked to the same settings as on my first G4400 / Z170 rig, 4.29Ghz / 130.0 BCLK, 1.300V.

However, after downloading some ISOs, doing Windows Update, listening to internet radio, and crunching in BOINC, it gave me a STOP 0x7F BSOD, which is "unexpected kernel trap".

When I would get BSODs on my first rig, due to not enough Vcore, they were always STOP 0x101 BSODs.

So, I'm wondering what's going on here. I hope it's not the SSD.

It just might be what Microsoft is recently going on about - you should be using 10 with Skylake not Win 7. Otherwise set everything back to stock.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It just might be what Microsoft is recently going on about - you should be using 10 with Skylake not Win 7. Otherwise set everything back to stock.

I ... doubt it? I mean, Intel supports Windows 7 with Skylake, at least in a somewhat limited fashion, as much as it can be supported. And other than the SGX extensions, which would necessarily not be supported in Windows 7, I can't think of any other CPU extensions / features that SKL has that wouldn't be supported in Windows 7.

I think that it's just bleeding-edge issues, or possibly, simply my overclock, although I would have expected to get STOP 0x101 BSODs like the first rig, if that were the case.

I'll keep my eyes on it. I'm crunching on BOINC on both SKL CPU cores, as well as the 7950, so I would expect to see further issues if my OC was unstable in any way. Those tasks generally hit the system pretty hard.

But Waterfox is running pretty snappy thus far, even with the crunching in the background.

Newegg pages are even ever-more-snappy with the PCI-E 3.0 x4 AHCI SSD. Something that I didn't really expect to see, I thought that I was limited by the speed of my internet connection. I guess SSD latency on heavy pages does matter.

Overall, though, I'm pretty happy, and if you can stand not being able to use the power-saving features of the CPU, and don't mind it being slammed into high gear all the time, then I could even recommend a "SKY OC" (BLCK OC).

Will be interesting if I get an i5-6400/6500 next month to play with. I do want to replace my 330W UPSs with something a bit more beefy though. Both of my current rigs, I have plugged into the "Surge Only" outlets, because the UPS can't handle them.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Larry, what about power consumption of this Pentium? idle/load stock vs idle/load oc? Preferably minus your monitor. Thanks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry, what about power consumption of this Pentium? idle/load stock vs idle/load oc? Preferably minus your monitor. Thanks.

Well, it would be a bit of a PITA to install the KAWs right now on those rigs, but here's some data from before:

1) G4400, stock, 4GB DDR4-2133, SP 240GB SSD, no DVD, Antec EarthWatts 500W, fully-loaded, with 24" Westinghouse HDTV monitor (approx 25-30W), 59-61W at the UPS.

2) G4400 @ 4.29Ghz, 1.300v BIOS, 2x4GB Avexir DDR4-2400 @ 2600, 7950 3GB, EVGA 600B, idle, with Auria 1920x1200 LCD monitor (approx 89W), 128W at the UPS.

 

[Abwx]

I'll keep my eyes on it. I'm crunching on BOINC on both SKL CPU cores, as well as the 7950, so I would expect to see further issues if my OC was unstable in any way. Those tasks generally hit the system pretty hard.

But Waterfox is running pretty snappy thus far, even with the crunching in the background.

Newegg pages are even ever-more-snappy with the PCI-E 3.0 x4 AHCI SSD. Something that I didn't really expect to see, I thought that I was limited by the speed of my internet connection. I guess SSD latency on heavy pages does matter.

Overall, though, I'm pretty happy, and if you can stand not being able to use the power-saving features of the CPU, and don't mind it being slammed into high gear all the time, then I could even recommend a "SKY OC" (BLCK OC).

Will be interesting if I get an i5-6400/6500 next month to play with. I do want to replace my 330W UPSs with something a bit more beefy though. Both of my current rigs, I have plugged into the "Surge Only" outlets, because the UPS can't handle them.

If BOINC use AVX2 it could be the problem, the CPU cant use AVX2 if overclocked for TDP reasons, ASUS Z170-A overclocking bios disable thoses instructions...

http://www.hardware.fr/focus/105/i5-6400-4-5-ghz-retour-oc-intel.html