R23 remains steady yet lacks consistent performance during play.
R23 remains steady yet lacks consistent performance during play.
I once mistakenly cooked two Xeon E5 2690 v3 processors at 100°C for 16 hours due to a broken cooling fan. They shut down completely and then restarted, but remained fully intact. Operating a contemporary CPU at its highest temperature doesn’t cause damage or harm, because of built-in thermal safeguards, so you should be perfectly okay running Prime95 briefly.
Happened with a 13600k before the BIOS update. It ran smoothly at 1.2v 5.4Ecore and 4.4Ecore, but after updating it would crash. I lowered it to 5.3 and 4.3, thinking everything was fine with Prime95 and R23. When I started Horizon Forbidden West, things stopped working. I had to tweak the vCore a bit more and it functioned properly now. Stress tests aren’t the whole picture—test in real-world conditions that match your setup and run some standard industry tests.
Various tasks place different demands on specific components. Your discomfort with Prime95 illustrates this point. You must demonstrate reliability when running actual applications. In the past, Prime95 has posed significant challenges for Intel processors, frequently serving as a demanding stress scenario in power usage. With AMD chips before Zen 2, it wasn't a major concern, but after Zen 2 they matched or surpassed Intel while managing power more efficiently through finer clock adjustments.
Here’s a clearer version of your message:
I appreciate the advice you gave me. I thought it might be useful to know you had similar situations. It looks like I should lower the undervolt a bit before testing. The P cores run at 100Mhz over stock, while the E cores are 200Mhz over stock. It seems the E cores might be struggling because they share the same vCore. I’ll keep adjusting until it stabilizes. I’d run it at stock voltage but want to prevent any voltage spikes. Right now I’m using the latest BIOS for my laptop, which performs best. I’m also capping the CPU usage at 230W—perhaps that’s related since sometimes POWER settings trigger ThrottleStop to help stabilize performance. The BIOS shows no spikes during boot, and ThrottleStop activates afterward. Thanks again!
It’s typical for a CPU to require higher voltage to maintain game stability than for Cinebench to run smoothly. That’s why Cinebench sets a minimal standard and isn’t ideal for testing stability. It seems modern games affect different CPU components compared to Cinebench, leaving little room for improvement. A BSOD during undervolting usually signals the CPU has exceeded its safe limits. Increasing voltage is necessary to keep performance stable. Power throttling can lead to frequent speed changes, making it harder to stay within safe bounds. Thermal or power limits cause rapid adjustments to avoid overheating. When throttling, the CPU often shifts speed and voltage hundreds of times per second to stay just below its threshold. A small extra voltage during throttling helps with stability, especially when trying to undervolt aggressively. Some users find success with mV Boost set between 150 and 200. Many laptops with 14900HX chips struggle to reach low temperatures, often staying in the 30K range due to cooling issues.
Ah super reputable source. Thanks for this. I'm figuring it out slowly. I'm suspecting that E cores are clocked too high and causing instability. Tried 270W limit and -120 everywhere and that wasn't enough for stability. Have to keep going down to like probably -50 or even -30, but ran out of time need to check tomorrow