i5 3570k Voltage Stability

exdetonator

Honorable
Jun 20, 2012
23
0
10,510
So, I just built my first performance/gaming rig with an i5 3570k. Using the asus UEFI, I've managed to overclock. I have noticed that at 3.8 ghz, my voltage stabilizes at 1.1759 volts. So I have a few questions. Is that an overvoltage? What is the stock voltage for this cpu, so that I can tell whether or not my cpu is being overvolted. Also, how do I manually set voltage or maximum voltage in asus UEFI BIOS? E.G. voltage always stays at 1, or never goes above 1. Thanks!
 

DarkOutlaw

Distinguished
Jun 24, 2012
955
0
19,060
I am currently 4.5ghz @ 1.34v. I plan on trying to lower this but you are more than fine for volts. I dont really think 3.8 ghz is an overclock though. You should have some kind of overclocking tab in the bios. setting vcore to manual will let you set the voltage.
 

CoolBOBob1

Distinguished
Jul 17, 2009
45
0
18,540
The base voltage will actually change depending on the overclock. I used an ASUS Z77-Pro, it was actually very easy to overclock. I used the AI Suite to find a reliable overclock, and then changed the turbo value and voltage offset in the UEFI. I ended up at 4.6 ghz @ 1.32.

You want to make sure to use an offset, there's no point at being at max clock and voltage if you web browsing for example
 

DarkOutlaw

Distinguished
Jun 24, 2012
955
0
19,060


Correct. It always will but you can limit it by changing the LLC from 5 to 3 or 2 (with higher overclocks). 3 served me up to 4.4ghz, 4.5 i had to change to 2. It will always vary unless you turn off every single power saving feature (which i cannot even name half of them).
 

CoolBOBob1

Distinguished
Jul 17, 2009
45
0
18,540
LLC is Load Line Calibration, and it basically tries to prevent voltage from dropping when a load is presented. Vdroop is actually a design feature from preventing to much current rushing through the cpu, but if it drops too low will cause your computer to crash. So many mobo's now allow you to set how aggresively you want to prevent the vdroop. I'm not at home right now, but I used the 1 step up from normal.

An offset is used so that it'll add that amount of voltage to the base amount (Base amount varies with O/C), and is useful so that instead of always being (pulling numbers out of thin air) at 1.35v, it would be at 1.1v and add the offset of .25v when a load was presented.

I used the software to manually find a stable O/C because it was a bit faster, plus if it crashed I didn't have to worry about reseting the bios.

After you find the voltage, multiplier and temperature that you're comfortable. And doing a something like Prime95 for a few hours to see if its stable, you can use the Offset to get the voltage that you had used in the Asus software.

I put in the offset and use Prime95 to see if it equaled the voltage I was aiming for, because as I said before the base will actually be different for each clock.

So for my example the computer I built was normally at 1.6-1.9 ghz when I was web browsing and 4.6 ghz when I was gaming. Saving me power when I wasn't putting a heavy load on it