Need a bit of advice on my 8700k

[Starscream]

Hey everyone. It seems things have changed since my first overclock... an Intel Celeron 300 -> 450Mhz. Those were the days! My last OC was a 2500k @ 4.5 and that has been stable for the past couple of years.

Now there seems to be a lot more to it. Adaptive vs Manual, LLC, C-states enabled vs disabled. Etc. I could use some help, but I have done my research too.

First things first, I had some temp issues with XMP and MCE auto. I have a DeepCool AIO 240 and Maximus Hero X. I used Arctic Silver for the thermal paste. So, I disabled MCE and am just running XMP for the ram @3200MHz. I figure this should allow me to get a standard temp baseline.

I'm using BOINC projects for load... as that is what this PC will be doing most of the time. Once I get to a good place, I intend to run a more standard stress test.

So my first question: With only XMP enabled, the CPU should be at stock settings, yes? With BOINC running, my temps are CPU (PECI) 85C and CPU 75C. Vcore gets to 1.37 or so. This is according to HWiNFO64.

Is 1.37Vcore what it should be stock? Am I looking at the right temps? The CPU section reports the temp at 85C as well, so I suspect the other CPU temp of 75C is something different altogether.

I appreciate your feedback!!

[Starscream]

I bought some MX4... I forgot that AS5 has cure time. Besides, I should probably see how well I applied the first time since its been so long. AS5 isn't conductive, although it is slightly capacitive.

Other than that, my stable lower temps at stock now lead me to believe that I can achieve a higher synced core ratio, as long as I tune the voltage properly. Auto MCE is still a little too aggressive for my cooling capacity.

[Starscream]

@Raja

After some frustration, I decided to return to default settings.

I loaded defaults from bios exit screen and restarted. Then I chose XMP, but selected no to further enhance the system. I then disabled MCE.

When running 100% load, all CPUs were at 4300, then after about 20 seconds, were decreased to 4100 and HWinfo indicated I exceeded power limit on all cores.

What exactly do I have to do to set this up for stock CPU settings with just ram @ 3200?

[Starscream]

I think I figured it out. After resetting again, I selected yes after the xmp selection. Now everything appears stable @ 4300.

So now I suppose I can just creep each core towards 4700 and increase Vcore manually if required?

P.S. Sorry for all the posts... there are a lot of inter-dependencies to work though!

[Colifin]

If you're getting "power limit exceeded" errors, make sure that you turn up the "Long Term Package Power Limit" (or something similar, I don't remember the exact string) setting. By default the latest BIOS enforces the stock TDP limit on the processor, which will be exceeded when overclocking under load. Any value >150 should be fine.

[Starscream]

Thank you sir! As I mentioned, everything seemed to come to equilibrium after I selected "yes" post xmp selection. I will keep this in mind for my attempts at higher clocks.

[SherardG]

Hi Starscream,

I think the latest BIOS throttles boost at 4,3GHz. I am still using 0505 since my system is stable at most of the changes I've made. The 0802 is very conservative with stock voltage settings in comparison to 0505 which was very aggressive but responds better (for me) with manual tuning.

1,36V for stock clock is too high in my opinion, since I am able to run 5,0GHz @ 1,35V stable on a 280mm AIO.

Re: thermal grease: I did swap out my thermal grease from NT-H1 rev2 to CoolerMaster MasterGel Maker Nano, and have seen -14C improvements overall, though at idle it barely made a change (though I get 25C random drops, from previous 30C lowest, it still steady at 33C during idle) but at load, gaming from 55C stable CPU temps were reduced to 41C, while during stress testing, from max 84C to 70C. NT-H1 is a good paste, it's just that this one is better. I did do the pea drop method, contrary to the "spread the paste on IHS" according to the instructions.

Best of luck to your rig!

[Starscream]

I appreciate the insight! I'm pretty happy now to have stock clocks stable at a good temp for running BOINC projects. I'm going to apply mx4, and in the process, see how my initial application of Arctic Silver spread. Once confident there, I plan to increase the clocks manually to see how well I do. While I'm not confident in my AIOs cooling capabilities, I really love the aesthetics. In the future I will probably try my hand at an open loop cooler..so if I don't make much progress now, that's ok.

[morph_]

one generation back but I found this very useful and a great starting point like you I came from OCing a Sandy bridge.

https://rog.asus.com/articles/guides/the-kaby-lake-overclocking-guide/

[Starscream]

Hey thanks! That is a useful article and I will reference it once I get started.