Does low voltage mean high heat?
Does low voltage mean high heat?
Hey there, CPU: i7 4790k, Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK, Cooler: Hyper 212X (will be replaced with the Noctua NH-D15 in two days). I'm new to this so please wait a minute. I set my BIOS to default settings and noticed that the gigabyte board was boosting to 4.4 on all cores at 1.267 volts. I ran the OCCT v6.1.1 linpack test with these stock settings and the screen went black then the PC restarted. This happens about four seconds into the test. Aida64, intel burn test, cinebench ran well but got quite hot, around 83c after about ten minutes. So I manually locked the clock at 4.4 volts and voltage at 1.2 and ran intel burn test, aida64, cinebench and occt but not linpack, just large data sets and auto thread count and auto instruction set. I stopped the tests in about ten mins because I was still getting temperatures of 83c after about ten minutes even at the lower voltage. I'm guessing my cooler is being overwhelmed so I've ordered the Noctua NH-D15 however I am still confused as to why I'm getting black screen with stock values. I'm worried something else might be going on and my new cooler wouldn't fix it Note: package temp at idle is between 22c and 42c
Hey there, so for starters tests like AIDA, Prime95 or OCCT push your CPU to its max limits. In normal use like gaming or heavy apps you will never reach that zone anyway. Second if you are really serious about overclocking I would not look at the results with stock coolers, especially with Intel ones which are terrible. Thirdly cpu does not equal cpu, you might just have gotten yourself a unit that is super hot or has way too much power to handle voltage. For example my i7-8700k runs at 4,7ghz with 1,280v and if I try to push it higher the temperature jumps massively while I've seen people hit that same speed of 5ghz just with 1,225v. Just wait for Noctua to come out, since their cooler is really good even starting at a lower voltage like 1,200v and see how much you can squeeze out of it. If I may suggest anything do increase the testing time. At least run it for twenty minutes or go up thirty so that everything stabilizes before checking the numbers.
Thanks for your reply. I want to make it clear that the test wasn't done on a stock Intel cooler but instead on an AIDA64 Hyper212X. So do I need to run the Linpack test? Can I check stability just by using AIDA64 and OCCT's big data sets, or should I add Linpack too? I ran those two tests for 10 minutes before stopping them because both programs blacked out after about 4 seconds of running.
That sounds pretty bad for you. What's your airflow and how hot is it right now? From my own experience, I'd suggest using the OCCT default test or at least linkpack. Those tests include AVX instructions which basically mean a really heavy load on the CPU since there are no apps running in general use.
Probably like I said, it's just a really stubborn CPU (needs better cooling and more power). Other things coming to mind are the cooler and airflow. One more thing is the motherboard but Gigabyte hasn't let me down yet and Z chipsets work well at overclocking so I doubt that. Just remember that the cpu maker gives you no guarantee higher than stock, and if I'm right, they don't count turbo here either.
So I put the Noctua NH-D15 in, and it's giving me very good temperatures. I set the voltage to 1.225 with an overclock of 4.6. I've been running AIDA64 for about half an hour, but right now my temps are jumping around between 54 and 63 degrees Celsius. The highest number I've seen is 70 degrees Celsius. Can I say it's stable after playing this game or two hours?
Another big win for Noctua, just to wrap up things quickly 😉 You told me to wait for the new cooler and to ignore the old stock temperatures. About your question: yes, those temps look great to me. Normally thermal throttling happens after 90 degrees C, but since you're not hitting that at all in the stress test and there are no errors, it's an amazing result. I'd even say you could push it further!
Yeah, the Noctua cooler is doing a great job for sure. The computer's getting hot but not too much. I've been testing it for about two days now and I had to bump the voltage up to 1.25 because of some settings, even though I was only at around 4.6 volts on the CPU. The temperatures are still between 54 and 71 degrees Celsius. Hmm, actually, I'm starting to think maybe I shouldn't have turned that voltage up all that way. I haven't been stable in any stress tests yet, but this one with a heavy load really showed me how shaky things can get. Even at my normal stock settings, I wasn't staying steady on those tests. So now I'm not sure what's going on inside the PC. I have managed to run my simulators for hours without crashing just like when they were set up correctly before. For a few more days, maybe I'll take it back down and see if that helps. I actually think the best way to test this is just using my normal game or software with the PC. Just by the way, even though I'm showing 1.25 volts at full load on the CPU ID, my actual voltage reading is 1.260 when it's hitting max heat from the monitor and the power supply.
I use only the Aida64 and a big number set from OCCT. It took me ten minutes to finish these runs, but I turned them off because the OCCT Linpack program went dark after just four seconds.