CPU was overvolted

Wow wow wow, I didn't mean to be snarking at you, reading my post again I can see how you would interpret it that way, my mistake, apologies.

I'm running 4.4 at 1.23, so you're not far off, and CPUs having variable levels of performance at certain voltages, this falls in the margin of error.

TLDR: Yeah, or however low you can get it while remaining stable or up the clockspeed until it's not stable anymore. It's a balancing act. Most people have a certain voltage goal, never let it go above that, see how far they can overclock until it's unstable, and then take your highest overclock and back off the voltage so it's stable at the lowest voltage for that OC.

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Your CPU speedsteps, meaning it'll take your highest clockspeed (baseclock * multiplier) for full performance, and then certain percentages for every "step", until the lowest step (it will use when idling).

The idea for the offset setting is that the higher the clockspeed, the higher the voltage needs to be to get it stable, but it's not linear. At the top of your processors ability it will need way larger voltage increases for way smaller overclocks. So, if you were to set a manual voltage, it would use a percentage of said voltage for each step (down), but if you need a larger voltage increase (than linear progression would), this means all your lower speedsteps are now overvolted. Which isn't dangerous, but it's high temperatures you don't need and energy wasted. That's why you set an offset.

This way it will still use a percentage of the base voltage for every step, but only add the offset amount, and that number (should be /) will be smaller than a percentage of the voltage the highest step requires.

So if you'd want to really fine tune your system, you could overclock it as far as it will go, and then find out the lowest base voltage (plus offset to arrive at the stable voltage for the highest step) you need to keep the lowest step stable.

If you get that, you use the least amount of energy (voltage / wattage) required for every step, while still having a stable machine.


Now, I haven't optimized my system like that. I had it on adaptive (as it comes out of the box, always a little too much) and checked for fan noise, and when it increased to the point I could hear the fan, I stopped, checked the voltage at max load (which was 1.25V), found out the overclock I could get with that (which was 4.4GHz, 4.5 would crash after ten minutes of stress testing), dailed in that overclock and found the lowest stable voltage (1.225V). Then I just put the stock voltage (1.2V for the 6700K) as the base voltage and set the multiplier to .025V to get 1.225V. The motherboard always has a error margin, so it's closer to 1.23V than 1.225, but that's no biggie.

/rant