6700k Fixed Voltage Safe For Daily Use?

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clifford64

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May 18, 2014
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I have an i7 6700k with an asrock z170 k6 mobo. I have had this setup new for about a year. up until a couple months ago, I could run it at 4.5-4.6ghz at about 1.27v stable. Recently 4.6 is only stable at 1.36v+. I could probably still achieve 4.5ghz with about 1.29-1.3, but I have a few questions about doing this. At stock settings I see the voltage jump to about 1.38v. I have tried looking in the other forums, but I didn't see answers to the questions I wanted to ask. So I am sorry if some of you may think this is just a repeated thread.

1. It seems using constant voltage is the best way to make it stable. I leave my computer on for 15+ hours a day and sometimes 24/7 for a couple days. Would it be safe to run a fixed voltage of about 1.29-1.3 constantly. I have all the power saving features enabled, but it seems that with fixed voltage, the vcore will not lower. It will only lower in adaptive and then I have issues with stability. I do have a corsair h80i gt which seems to be fairly well at cooling it.

2. From anyone's past experiences, will overclocking like this with constant voltage cause the CPU to degrade so much that it pretty much becomes unusable within a couple of years? I plan on trying to keep the CPU for about 4-5 years.

2.
 
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jossrik
The biggest enemy here is heat, not necessarily voltage. If your processor is running 24/7 at full load, it's gonna degrade, however, if you're just running it 24/7 and gaming for a couple hours, downloading music or movies etc, it's not a worry. An H80i isn't the greatest cooler per se, but it should be adequate. If your full load temps stay under say 75C or so, you're probably all right for that processor to last quite a while, if you're hitting the 80s at all, that would be too high for me, I'd dial it back. I have a 6700K @ 4.6, adaptive, but I don't remember the settings off hand, not that it matters, every chip is different, but my temps peak around 71C but avg in the upper 60s at full load, I'm on a custom loop. What I did...
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jossrik

jossrik

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The biggest enemy here is heat, not necessarily voltage. If your processor is running 24/7 at full load, it's gonna degrade, however, if you're just running it 24/7 and gaming for a couple hours, downloading music or movies etc, it's not a worry. An H80i isn't the greatest cooler per se, but it should be adequate. If your full load temps stay under say 75C or so, you're probably all right for that processor to last quite a while, if you're hitting the 80s at all, that would be too high for me, I'd dial it back. I have a 6700K @ 4.6, adaptive, but I don't remember the settings off hand, not that it matters, every chip is different, but my temps peak around 71C but avg in the upper 60s at full load, I'm on a custom loop. What I did is set my multiplier, then dropped my voltage and slowly raised it until I was rock stable. It can take a day or more to get ideal settings, with mine I was in the .05 range slowly raising and running Realbench or Aida or Intel extreme tuning utility, and once I got close, just running programs and such for stability.
 
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clifford64

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So you're saying it's perfectly acceptable to run my computer with a fixed voltage of about 1.3-1.35 daily for 15+ hours a day? I don't really do heavy applications, mostly gaming for 4-5 hours and temps are generally in the 60s when doing that. Otherwise it pretty much idles when's I am web browsing or when I am not using it.

Do you think running it this way will give me problems? Like I would like it to last about 4-5 more years.
 
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jossrik

jossrik

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Ya, avg temps in the 60s under load you'll be fine at that voltage. As far as it lasting years, silicon lottery, even if you don't overclock it may last years or decades or months, you can never really tell when it's gonna die, especially this early in it's life. I think you'll be fine for years, traditionally, CPUs last a while, longer than the motherboard or HDDs, but like I said, you can't ever be certain.
 
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clifford64

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Ok, then let me ask it this way, do you think overclocking the cpu that way and staying in the 60s will have any effect on how long it lasts?

Say hypothetically, we knew it would last at a minimum 5 years on stock settings. If I overclocked it to 4.5ghz and 1.3v fixed voltage and temps only got into the 60s, do you think it would still last that 5 years in this hypothetical situation, or do you think the overclocks would degrade it enough to only last 3 or 4?
 
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jossrik

jossrik

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I don't want to tell you that it will or won't cause there's no way to tell, it's not that if it will last exactly 5 years at stock will it degrade enough to make it unusable if you overclock, look at it more this way. When you bought the chip, it may last say, 13 years at stock, heavily overclocked running temps in the upper 70s it may last say 11 years. Or, when you bought the chip, the time frame may be 7 years, in this case, even at stock, it will only last 7 years. There's just *NO* way to tell. The hotter you run it, the shorter the lifespan will be, but to put any kind of time on that is impossible.
 
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jossrik

jossrik

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Also, the more you run it, stock or not, the more voltage it will take over time to maintain stability, *BUT* this is also impossible to predict. You may run for your 5 years and not need a voltage adjust, you may run it a year and need that voltage adjust. I like to go by warranty, but again, the processor is usually good as long as nothing goes and takes the processor with it. You can have a motherboard fail easily and still have a good processor, processor and memory are the only parts that I will buy used, if I can help it, cause they're usually good for a while.
 
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