Thursday, February 22nd 2024
Intel Core i9-13900K and i7-13700K Gaming Stability Issues Linked to Power Limit Unlocks
Users of Intel's 13th Gen unlocked K-series processors such as Core i9-13900K, i7-13700K, are reporting stability issues when gaming even at stock clock-speeds. Hassan Mujtaba of Wccftech and Tom's Hardware have isolated the issues to power limit unlocks. Most Z690 and Z790 chipset motherboards include BIOS-level unlocks for the power limits, particularly the Maximum Turbo Power (interchangeable with PL2). By default, the i9-13900K and i7-13700K come with a PL2 value of 253 W, but you can get the motherboard to unlock this to unlimited, which basically tells the processor that it has 4096 W of power on tap, so not technically a "stock" configuration anymore.
Of course, neither your PSU nor your CPU VRM are capable of delivering 4096 W, and so the processor tends to draw as much power as it needs, to maintain the best possible P-core boost frequencies, before running into thermal limits. At stock frequencies with stock boost bins, unlocked power limits can drive the power draw of i9-13900K as far high as 373 W under a multithreaded load, in our testing, when compared to 283 W with the power limits in place. It turns out, that unlocking the power limits can come with long-term costs, besides the literal cost of electricity—the processor's stability with gaming workloads can degrade with certain hardware combos and settings.
Wccftech's Hassan Mujtaba has a novel fix for this—to undervolt the processor. In his experience, undervolting the processor and restoring the stock power limits in the motherboard BIOS settings restored gaming stability. Meanwhile, Tom's Hardware suggests a slightly different approach besides restoring power limits—to reduce the P-core boost multiplier by 2.0x (i.e. reducing the maximum boost frequency by 200 MHz). Both these approaches are claimed to restore gaming performance stability for the i9-13900K and i7-13700K. Although there are no confirmed sightings of the issue in the wild for the newer 14th Gen chips, it stands to reason that even the 14th Gen i9-14900K and i7-14700K could be affected by this issue. We still don't know why it doesn't affect the 12th Gen chips, since they feature fundamentally the same power design as the 13th- and 14th Gen chips.
Sources:
Hassan Mujtaba (Twitter), Tom's Hardware
Of course, neither your PSU nor your CPU VRM are capable of delivering 4096 W, and so the processor tends to draw as much power as it needs, to maintain the best possible P-core boost frequencies, before running into thermal limits. At stock frequencies with stock boost bins, unlocked power limits can drive the power draw of i9-13900K as far high as 373 W under a multithreaded load, in our testing, when compared to 283 W with the power limits in place. It turns out, that unlocking the power limits can come with long-term costs, besides the literal cost of electricity—the processor's stability with gaming workloads can degrade with certain hardware combos and settings.
73 Comments on Intel Core i9-13900K and i7-13700K Gaming Stability Issues Linked to Power Limit Unlocks
Tbh. the customers who buy those pointless "Super Duper Overclocking" boards don't deserve any better. There is like nothing to gain in gaming performance nowadays with overclocking, you just burn money & power for nothing. While companies like ASUS you throw money at are pushing it over the safe limit & laughing all the way to the bank.
By the way, Intel "Recommended" that PL1 is 125 and PL2 is 188.
Just checked again I think Intel now support pl1=pl2, judging by this quote, but its deffo max 253w. The quote and 253w, is from the link in my post a few posts up.The same link also states 253w is only permissible in turbo clocks, when not in turbo clocks the spec is 125w.
Your link with the recommendations is interesting and I think no bios vendors bothered with it. But check my link above it does show a 'max' of 253w.
Probably the worst 2 bugs being gigabyte auto/bios optimised defaults failing to reset SOC voltage, and the 116C instead of 106C safety shutdown of X3D chips, really nasty bugs.
Intel Processor Instability Causing Oodle Decompression Failures (radgametools.com)
My 11th gen Asus TUF board (that was also criticised for unlocked power limits if I remember right), has Intel spec power limits by default, and unlocks them by enabling "Multi Core Enhancement". But when you hover over the function, the information panel tells you that it does exactly that, so 1. I don't understand the problem, and 2. You have to go into the BIOS to change this setting, so it's not default, right?
Every single Intel board that I've seen so far works in a similar way, including the Asus ROG Strix Z690-something that I used to build a rig for someone not long ago. So yeah, I don't see unlocked limits by default.
I mean it's a breeding ground for this kind of behavior when they risk not receiving review samples due to reviews of higher integrity and honesty that puts consumers concerns at the forefront rather than the companies hawking merchandise with questionable practices. Anyway it's a challenging dilemma overall to go around for both reviewers and consumers that in part rely upon them for insight.
In the end I'd say it's in part up to consumers being more vocal about their own concerns with these companies practices and holding them more accountable for them. We have the most leverage to make them take notice in the end, but just like the reviewers it involve as a certain amount of spine and integrity in part to stand up for what's right versus what is misguided.
The problem isn't that MB makers offer the flexibility to push the upper limits a bit nearly as much as it is about them actively doing just that at default and unaware consumers having a negative experience as a direct result of it. Many people aren't particularly tech savvy and those are the ones most vulnerable to these sorts of issues that crop up.
No one should settle for a "sort of stable" PC.
Any desktop PC should handle load for months without crashing, whether it's games, rendering, encoding or other loads, without any stability issue, otherwise it's defective. (of course assuming the system has a solid PSU, adequate cooling, etc.) There should be no need to undervolt the CPU, nor is it wise beyond a certain point. I would not tolerate new hardware working like described, and neither should you or him.
While I suspect most complaints to be user error (or bad default settings in BIOSes, if true), it is important that defective hardware is returned, as this serves as useful feedback to detect widespread defects.It doesn't surprise me.
Many have the misconception that if just some heavy workloads passes without any crash, then a system is perfectly stable over time, when the fact is that you can have lots of undefined behavior before it causes something critical enough to crash a program, driver or the system. Different applications can stress different parts of the CPU and cause different edge cases.
I've seen such behavior on overclocked systems; even when passing stresstests like Prime95, 3DMark and many games, running a fairly "minor" workload can still expose CPU or memory instability. Like running a medium sized code compilation will suddenly throw unexplained errors (just once every few hundred tries), and of course lots of random file corruption.
OCCT for CPU/System stability.
Overnight.
Motherboard power delivery, cooling, PSU (especially) all factors.
I suspect many prebuilt PCs that generally skimp on PSU and have crap BIOS settings, plus the population of amateur tuners, is the real background here (besides the known factor of MB makers simply having poor "stock" or "optimized" settings).
When Intel (and AMD) designs their CPUs, they've estimated safety margins to account for sample variation and degradation (under spec conditions) throughout the rated lifetime. That's why I'm saying if everything is set to stock (and there isn't any user error), and the system is clearly not stable, then it's defective.
Defective components happens, I've seen many cases;
Back when I built my server I used a server motherboard from Asus (P9D-C/ 4L). The first one was DoA, second one DoA, then third one has been working fine for 10 years.For sure, most prebuilt "home PCs", "gaming PCs" and even baseline "office PCs" have cut down PSUs and cooling to the bone.
I've had a few "mishaps" with poor PSUs in systems I've built too, even though I've seen enough to know better, like my old Haswell system having a bad PSU shorting out so bad that plugging the cable immediately triggered the fuse. That system was never stable again, even with a new PSU…
Since then I've gone "overkill" with PSUs, not in terms of wattage, but only using top quality stuff.
This doesn't rule out issues from the CPU side of things however, or other components.
For undervolting. The ONLY setting I messed with is the ACTUAL VRM core voltage. It will be necessary to put it in COMPENSATION MODE. The COMPENSATION MODE SIGNAL must be negative (-). Then enter a value, in 0.08000. I leave the rest of the changes in the following graphs. I want to thank the user (weidemanTV), from the Asus ROG forum, for his detailed guide. rog-forum.asus.com/t5/overclocking-tweaking/my-experience-undervolting-13900k-with-strix-z790-e/td-p/941755
Base voltage is there for a reason. It's just that motherboard tend to feed more voltage to the CPU so that it will be stable at higher frequencies and make the motherboard look ahead of the curve in benchmarks. That overvoltage you can easily do without. Going lower than that is usually about luck.
You can crash at idle voltages with an undervolt.