# i7 3930K 4.5Ghz Voltage Questions?



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

Hey Guys got some questions on my new setup....

First off Specs...
i7 3930K
Asus X79 Pro
G.skill 1866 Mhz 16Ghz
XFX 1020 Watt Pro
EVGA GTX Titan
2x Intel 80GB SSD RAID 0
2x Western Digital 500GB 

I am overclocked @
x45 Multi
Vcore Offset - 0.015 = Max Load Vcore 1.35
DRAM Voltage = 1.50
VCSSA = 0.95
CPU VTT = Auto
C-States Enabled
CPU LLC = High (50%)

Questions I have is this a high Vcore? Or is this normal? I ask because I am coming from a i7 3770K which has a naturally low Vcore (Even when overclocked) and maybe it just seems really high coming from a lower Nano-meter CPU. 

I haven't been able to find a consistent answer when googling the question. I have found some .... saying between 1.35 - 1.38 is normal other say... 1.24 to 1.30. It's spread out. My memory tells me that when overclocking my i7 2600K 1.31 was normal for 4.5ghz however this is a 6 core CPU and a little different.

Also anyone here use CPU Strap to overclock? I was always taught that SB and IB Bclock is off limits. Then I get a i7 3930k and I find out this is not exactly true. It is possible to overclock using CPU Strap and Bclock as long as you keep the PCI controller between 90 and 110.

How safe is this style of overclocking and can you still use Offset or does it need to be a static setting?

Thanks


----------



## OneMoar (May 17, 2013)

1.35 is fine tho it is getting up there


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

OneMoar said:


> 1.35 is fine tho it is getting up there



I am on water so I have got some room..... but is that voltage standard "Average" for that speed on this CPU or is that above average?

(I know every CPU is different) Trying to get an understanding of what everybody else was seeing. To get an understanding if I have more tinkering to do? Or if this is right were I should expect to be?


----------



## OneMoar (May 17, 2013)

20mmrain said:


> I am on water so I have got some room..... but is that voltage standard "Average" for that speed on this CPU or is that above average?
> 
> (I know every CPU is different)



its a little bit higher then the Average-voltage for 4.5Ghz but still well within limits for being under water

http://ark.intel.com/products/63697
you aren't even over-volting it forget about it its fine maby a little voltage hungry but that could just be the nature of that chip


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

OneMoar said:


> its a little bit higher then the Average for 4.5 but still well within limits for being under water



Sorry bud don't mean to seem stupid here but I think I am miss-understanding you..... 4.5 Ghz is a higher clock than most were seeing? Or 1.35 Volts is a little higher than most were seeing?


----------



## OneMoar (May 17, 2013)

20mmrain said:


> Sorry bud don't mean to seem stupid here but I think I am miss-understanding you..... 4.5 Ghz is a higher clock than most were seeing? Or 1.35 Volts is a little higher than most were seeing?



see my above reply


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

OneMoar said:


> see my above reply



LOL Thanks I don't know why I didn't think to look there.... Jeezz I feel dumb. Thanks bud


----------



## drdeathx (May 17, 2013)

If your on water, you could push the voltage higher. I used 1.44 volts at 5Ghz on water.


----------



## Kast (May 17, 2013)

I need the exact same voltage for 4.5 on my 3930K.


----------



## radrok (May 17, 2013)

You don't need strap to overclock your CPU it's unlocked, forget it.

You may need it to fine tune your system to a frequency but for 4,5Ghz don't use strap.

Anyway I've been running 1.5v on my 3930k for a year and it's still fine so voltage thresholds are something to take with a grain of salt.


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> If your on water, you could push the voltage higher. I used 1.44 volts at 5Ghz on water.



Nice.... you remember your volts on any other clocks? Any special settings you noticed or combos that helped you reach your desired affect or lower voltages at certain speeds?



> You don't need strap to overclock your CPU it's unlocked, forget it.
> 
> You may need it to fine tune your system to a frequency but for 4,5Ghz don't use strap.
> 
> Anyway I've been running 1.5v on my 3930k for a year and it's still fine so voltage thresholds are something to take with a grain of salt.



I plan on going higher if I can that is why I am asking.... possibly shooting for 5ghz eventually.


----------



## Kast (May 17, 2013)

radrok said:


> You don't need strap to overclock your CPU it's unlocked, forget it.
> 
> You may need it to fine tune your system to a frequency but for 4,5Ghz don't use strap.
> 
> Anyway I've been running 1.5v on my 3930k for a year and it's still fine so voltage thresholds are something to take with a grain of salt.



What are your temps like ?


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

Kast said:


> What are your temps like ?



58c to 60c on hottest core after 20 runs on LinX w 4096MB RAM Room temp about 70F


----------



## drdeathx (May 17, 2013)

20mmrain said:


> Nice.... you remember your volts on any other clocks? Any special settings you noticed or combos that helped you reach your desired affect or lower voltages at certain speeds?
> 
> 
> 
> I plan on going higher if I can that is why I am asking.... possibly shooting for 5ghz eventually.



Every chip is different....... go to 4.7GHz and slowly raise voltage till its stable. keep the load temps under 80 and your golden. You have a lot of headroom


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> Every chip is different....... go to 4.7GHz and slowly raise voltage till its stable. keep the load temps under 80 and your golden. You have a lot of headroom



Thanks Man... I appreciate the advice. That Vcore for some reason just seemed high to me.... and if I remember correctly I thought Voltage not temperature was the enemy with SB. But you are right I probably shouldn't be concerned.... my temps are golden!


----------



## OneMoar (May 17, 2013)

20mmrain said:


> Thanks Man... I appreciate the advice. That Vcore for some reason just seemed high to me.... and if I remember correctly I thought Voltage not temperature was the enemy with SB. But you are right I probably shouldn't be concerned.... my temps are golden!



Its LGA 2011 those chips are made to clock I would't be surprised if you could get 5Ghz at ~1.38v


----------



## the54thvoid (May 17, 2013)

My motherboard automatically loads on voltage.  I was running at 1.36v at 4.2GHz.  I had to offset by a -ve amount to get a lower voltage.  Happy to hear the <80 and as high as 1.4v is seemingly okay.  Might overclock my cpu (same as 20mmrain) a bit more now.


----------



## drdeathx (May 17, 2013)

the54thvoid said:


> My motherboard automatically loads on voltage.  I was running at 1.36v at 4.2GHz.  I had to offset by a -ve amount to get a lower voltage.  Happy to hear the <80 and as high as 1.4v is seemingly okay.  Might overclock my cpu (same as 20mmrain) a bit more now.



Those are not always stable


----------



## drdeathx (May 17, 2013)

OneMoar said:


> Its LGA 2011 those chips are made to clock I would't be surprised if you could get 5Ghz at ~1.38v



Neg. for me. I don't have a great chip and need voltage


----------



## 20mmrain (May 17, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> Neg. for me. I don't have a great chip and need voltage



yeah i have been seeing most people need 1.4v+ for 5 ghz. I doubt i will hit that high at only 1.38v. I'm with you... I think I will need a little more voltage for my chip.


Still wondering how many people Here have messed with the CPU strap on these cpu's? Is it worth it to achieve lower Voltages? Is it safe also if offest is able to be used along with it.


----------



## Aquinus (May 17, 2013)

I used to run 1.45v on air. As long as your cooler is half decent you should be able to pump it up to 1.5v without a problem. With is not IVB, this isn't even SB. SB-E is a different animal. Now how high the CPU goes is highly dependent on your motherboard. I suspect many of the people commenting here probably haven't used a P9X79 or any of its variants and for a smaller group, haven't even touched SB-E either. I can say from personal experience with my P9X79 Deluxe that it needs more voltage than other boards to achieve the same overclock as say an ROG board or the Extreme11. Not to say that it's a bad board but you don't overclock nearly as well as say other boards for skt2011.

My 3820 does not hit 5Ghz on my P9X79 Deluxe, even with 1.54v. With a lot of tweaking it will post and boot, but it is never stable. The highest stable overclock I was able to achieve was 4.92Ghz at 1.52-1.53v (1.49-1.5v, extreme LLC) but I would never leave it at that.

I would say just set it at 1.45v and work from there, I would suspect that you might start running into a limitation at about 4.75ghz+, but let us know; give it a try.

Also, your VCCSA feels a bit low to me.



20mmrain said:


> Still wondering how many people Here have messed with the CPU strap on these cpu's? Is it worth it to achieve lower Voltages? Is it safe also if offest is able to be used along with it.



Check out my specs.


> Processor: Intel Core i7 3820 @ 4.37Ghz (128.6x34) 1.384-1.395v (LLC)


128.6Mhz BCLK gives one of my memory multipliers a perfect 2400Mhz, which is why I use the 125Mhz strap + 3.6Mhz. I also need the strap for any overclock over 4.2Ghz since the 3820 is partially locked.

It's very important to remember that you don't just set the BCLK to 125Mhz, you change the strap first which will bump it up to 125Mhz, then you work from there. You still are stuck with the 5-8Mhz limits outside the strapped bclk though. The strap just lets you run higher base clocks without impacting the PCI-E controller, DMI, and such.


----------



## radrok (May 17, 2013)

Let me clear a few things 

Full stability on a SB-E 6 core with less than 1.48v? 

You'll need a golden chip for that, trust me or you need to disable HT (not guaranted it'll give you more than 100 Mhz at same voltage).

Very few can do 5Ghz with less than 1.48v, far less can do 5,2Ghz AT ALL.

I binned two chips, one was a complete dud, not even posting with 1.6v at 5Ghz and the other one does 5,2Ghz at 1,55v.


I'm anxious to see if IVB-E can do 5,3Ghz+ reliably.





Kast said:


> What are your temps like ?




Max 70c full load on IBT AVX enabled. Rendering is like 5c less.

Keeping it at 4,7-4,9 Ghz. CPU pulls upwards of 350w when pumped with 1.55v+ lol.


----------



## drdeathx (May 17, 2013)

radrok said:


> Let me clear a few things
> 
> Full stability on a SB-E 6 core with less than 1.48v?
> 
> ...



I was staying quiet on that one. You are correct


----------



## radrok (May 17, 2013)

For gaming Intel quads are so much better.

A delidded 3770k can run easily at 5,2 Ghz with proper cooling and it trumps any SB-E CPU due to increased IPC and obvious frequency advantage.


----------



## 20mmrain (May 18, 2013)

radrok said:


> For gaming Intel quads are so much better.
> 
> A delidded 3770k can run easily at 5,2 Ghz with proper cooling and it trumps any SB-E CPU due to increased IPC and obvious frequency advantage.



Key word with proper cooling and possible removal of IHS. I have owned a i7 2600K, i7 2700K, i7 3770K, i7 3570K and now an i7 3930K. All were water cooled.... and so far from my experience... My current CPU is the best performing and so far the most fun.

The fun part is just an opinion... and that is because of the extra settings available for overclocking. So far it feels more like an enthusiast CPU.

But in terms of performance I am scoring a superior score in benchmarks @ 4.5 ghz over other CPU's that were clocked at 5.0ghz.

For gaming performance I have not run the numbers yet to compare my old i7 3770K to my new i7 3930K. However if I am loosing any performance it is not noticeable and it must only be a frame or two. 

In terms of IVB @ 5.2Ghz trumping a SB-E CPU are you comparing overclock vs stock? Correct??


----------



## Kast (May 18, 2013)

When running 3dmark 2013 my 3770k at 5.0 scored higher than my 3930k at 4.5 on ice storm, cloudgate and im pretty sure if the crossfire issue was fixed at the time it would've scored higher on firestrike too. I'd like to do more benches between the 2 at those clocks but unfortunately I sold my 3770.


----------



## drdeathx (May 18, 2013)

Kast said:


> When running 3dmark 2013 my 3770k at 5.0 scored higher than my 3930k at 4.5 on ice storm, cloudgate and im pretty sure if the crossfire issue was fixed at the time it would've scored higher on firestrike too. I'd like to do more benches between the 2 at those clocks but unfortunately I sold my 3770.



Synthetic benchmark.


----------



## radrok (May 18, 2013)

20mmrain said:


> In terms of IVB @ 5.2Ghz trumping a SB-E CPU are you comparing overclock vs stock? Correct??



I'm just saying that IVB generally clocks higher and if there is no use for the two additional cores that SB-E provides the gain in frequency are absurdly better.

It's very hard to find a good clocking SB-E chip.


----------



## FR@NK (May 18, 2013)

Right now mine is 1.32v underload @ 4.5GHz on Air with temps in the 70C range.



radrok said:


> the two additional cores that SB-E provides the gain in frequency are absurdly better



Its more then just the 2 extra cores:
SBe has more cache, twice the memory bandwidth, and 40 PCI-E lanes. To me its worth the hit to max clock speed.


----------



## radrok (May 18, 2013)

FR@NK said:


> Its more then just the 2 extra cores:



Yes I do agree, I was just ranting about the absolute frequency 

There is no doubt SB-E is much better than SB-Ivy and probably Haswell.

90% of my tasks can use more than 6 cores so it's a no brainer, one rendering can take up to 40GB of memory if set up with a big bucket size so memory bandwidth is welcomed too.

I was just randomly ranting that it's harder to find a good clocking SB-E but if you find it (like I sorta did 5,2Ghz 1.55v) there is no match 

But enough I derailed, sorry I'll be back on topic


----------



## Glitch01 (Oct 8, 2013)

*Lower vcore*

Might want to play with your multiplier and bclk frequency a bit to lower the vcore voltage.
I'm running 4420 Mhz with vcore set at 1.280v.
Full load on prime95x64 for 6 hours and cpu temps are solid at 54 degrees C.
Vcore mosfets are at 76 degrees C
Room temp is 75 degrees F.

Reason you want to lower vcore voltage is to keep mosfets temps down.  Water cooling will keeping temps on your cpu in check, but unless you have a water block for you mosfets as well you will begin to shorten the life of your motherboard.  1.300v vcore will set your mosfets at around 80 degrees C which is the recommended max temp.  I'm guessing 1.35v will run you up to about 84 degrees C in the short and 86-87 degrees C for anything longer than 10 minutes on all 6 cores.

Sabertooth x79/Intel 3930k/Corsair H110 water cooling


----------



## Vario (Oct 8, 2013)

Its a safe voltage but I've read tales of degradation at anything over 1.3, if that matters at all.  I've never had it happen to me.


----------



## FreedomEclipse (Oct 9, 2013)

Vario said:


> Its a safe voltage but I've read tales of degradation at anything over 1.3, if that matters at all.  I've never had it happen to me.



I was told to stay under 1.4v, though I did use about 3 or 4 different OC guides located all over the internets, 

Many OC'ers say to OC cores individually for better speeds - for instance Have 2 or 3 cores running at 4.8Ghz while the rest runs at 4.5Ghz or lower. Obviously theres a lot more fuss involved when doing that but the CPU runs cooler that way.


----------



## buildzoid (Oct 9, 2013)

I ran my chip at around 1.725v when benching and from that I can tell you that anything upto 1.55v is not going to cause any serious degradation above 1.7v the degradation starts to show up after about a few hours  but I ran 1.525v(I now use 1.53 because of those hours at 1.725 when benching) for a year with no issues. 
As for strap there is no bonus other than potential for lowering the pll voltage because vcore applies to the transistors in the cores and those require x voltage for y frequency regardless of how the frequency is achieved.
BTW ASUS recommends staying under 1.45v guru3d recommends sub 1.55v.
Also what LLC do you use because most LLC settings above medium cause voltage overshoot.


----------

