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Overclocking 4790k GA Z97X-UD3H GTX950 Bios Setting

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Jan 5, 2014
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Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390M Gaming
CPU
i9-9900K
Graphics
RX 590
Mac
  1. MacBook Air
  2. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Overclock 4790k GA Z97X-UD3H Easy Bios Settings

Many people have this setup so I thought it would be interesting to have a thread to post our settings on. I am a casual clocker. I just want a stable clock speed to run without hassle on a daily basis with everything working right. My other rig is a 2600k 3.4 which I clocked to a stable 4.6. It is still running at that after 5 years or so.

The standard 4790 clocks in at 3.6GHz. And the K at 4 GHz. Having played around with the 4790K for a few days it seems pretty good. Intel marketing made a smart move here. I think they feel they gave away the 2600K too cheaply.

I tried many different ways to get this chip to 5 GHz and my best was 4.8, but I could only get this using the Base Clock and it was not stable. I really thought I had cracked it, and used it for a few hours but then found it would not wake from sleep.

With the Gigabite GA Z97X-UD3H it is very easy to clock to a stable 4.7GHz. With the usual Hackintosh settings in place, here are the bios settings I am using.

frequency
CPU Clock 4.0
Advanced CPU Core Settings
Turbo Cores all set to 4.7

voltage
CPU Vcore 1.35

ram
Profile 1
Performance Enhanced
Multiplier 2133

Of course, when going for the highest CPU it may be best to leave off the RAM profile and set to more stability.

Temps are idle 29C Load 80C Ambient 20C.

Always check your Vcore voltage in HWmonitor. You don't want it going much over 1.4v and the board will always up that setting a bit with all the the auto settings. Make sure your CPU Opt fan is set to full speed in PC health bios, if you are using a liquid cooler.

I hope this will help some beginners to unleash a bit more power. Also, if you have some good setting for 4790k GA Z97X-UD3H, please post on this thread.

  • :D
 
I was using MacPro 3.2 with Multibeast 7.5 and Yosemite. But when I switched to Multibeast 8, it automatically put in iMac 14.2. This is apparently more in tune with modern machines. I did have to do a bit of messing around to get USB 3.0 and Audio working right. I am hoping this will be fixed in future Multibeast releases.
 
I was using MacPro 3.2 with Multibeast 7.5 and Yosemite. But when I switched to Multibeast 8, it automatically put in iMac 14.2. This is apparently more in tune with modern machines. I did have to do a bit of messing around to get USB 3.0 and Audio working right. I am hoping this will be fixed in future Multibeast releases.

I was using the newest Multibeast 8 and it automatically picked Mac Pro 3,2 for me. I didn't want to change it since I heard it crashes the system sometimes. I guess apart from the graphics card your system seems almost identical to mine. Maybe I could try the iMac definition too but on the other hand everything (except for audio after waking from sleep :confused:) works actually.

When I installed OS X I also didn't have working USB 3.0 but I found a how-to somewhere on this forum* and within minutes I got it to work. I am actually quite surprised (in a good way) that everything worked that well for me. :D

*EDIT: I found the how-to which helped me in case someone comes across this thread and wonders how I did it :D
I just did step 1-3 of this post: http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capitan-desktop-support/179056-usb-fixes.html#post1152921
 
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Okay, I was playing around with the system definitions and it turns out that iMac 15,1 despite identical chipset and CPU would show a black screen during booting while iMac 14,2 works just like the Mac Pro standard setting, maybe even a little bit better.

I experimented with overclocking and I set it a little less aggressive than you at 4.7 GHz for single-core, 4.6 GHz for dual-core and 4.5 GHz for triple- and quad-core tasks (all at around 1.35V, 1.34V according to the BIOS). Before I had it at 4.7 GHz for all @1.35V (according to BIOS) and it got a little hot at around 82°C. I am not sure how good that is, which is why I lowered it to the mentioned settings.
Right now I am running HandBrake with its "High Profile" preset and the temps stay around 79°C.
How hot would you say is safe for a CPU or how hot would be fine to have the CPU last longer than its warranty? ;)

If I didn't mention that already, I am running a 120mm all-in-one water cooler. Maybe if I would upgrade that to a 240/280mm or even do a custom water cooling solution, I could reach higher speeds, but so far I am more than happy. Also, everything seems to be stable, which is nice :D
 
I've got a similar board (GA-Z97X-Gaming 7) and the same processor. With an AIO water cooler like the H100i or a custom water cooling loop you should be able to get temps down and speed up. I had my 4790k up to 5.0GHz at 1.36Vcore but it wasn't exactly stable (couple hours on prime95 in Windows but extremely high temps ~95C). I Was able to settle on 4.8GHz with 1.25Vcore (+0.1V offset) with temps ~72C. The thermal cutoff for these processors is 100C before it starts throttling. The rule of thumb is to keep temps below 90C. Personally I don't like the fact my processor can turn a drop of water on the bare die into steam, so the lower the temp the better.

I used Multibeast 8 post-install on El Capitan and I selected MacPro3,1 with no problems and speed stepping/turbo works just fine. I did some reading about the black screen after boot on some system definitions and at least for the MacPro6,1 definition it sees GPU 0 (the first GPU in the system) as a connection-less discrete GPU so it "disables" the outputs but keeps the GPU on for acceleration. There is a thread in the forum that talks about this and has a patched kext to get around it. This might also be affecting some other system definitions with multiple discrete graphics cards, not sure about iMac definitions.
 
I've got a similar board (GA-Z97X-Gaming 7) and the same processor. With an AIO water cooler like the H100i or a custom water cooling loop you should be able to get temps down and speed up. I had my 4790k up to 5.0GHz at 1.36Vcore but it wasn't exactly stable (couple hours on prime95 in Windows but extremely high temps ~95C). I Was able to settle on 4.8GHz with 1.25Vcore (+0.1V offset) with temps ~72C. The thermal cutoff for these processors is 100C before it starts throttling. The rule of thumb is to keep temps below 90C. Personally I don't like the fact my processor can turn a drop of water on the bare die into steam, so the lower the temp the better.

I am rather new to this whole overclocking business and I am still not sure why you need to increase the voltage and what voltage is good for what I am trying to achieve. Also HWMonitor seems to show a different voltage than what I set in BIOS. I see about 0.01V more there than what is set in BIOS.

I am also a little bit confused with what exactly 100% CPU load is, since I can created very different work loads in prime95 that all show as 100% CPU load in Activity Monitor but cause very different power usage and temperatures. If I run the "Blend" torture test, I get temperatures at around 79-80°C with my current settings (4.7, 4.6, 4.5, 4.5 as turbo boost steps). But if I run the "In-place large FFTs" torture test (it says "maximum heat"), I get way higher temperatures around 93°C right after starting the test and I am sure it would probably rise further after a few minutes.
I realize that these torture tests and benchmarks don't reflect real-world scenarios but I also want to feel comfortable that my CPU could do whatever it wants without burning out. ;)

PS: I am using this AIO water-cooler, which I think is quite similar to the H100i.

liquid_freezer_120_g01_1.jpg
Arctic Liquid Freezer 120
 
What version of Prime95 are you using? If it's one of the newer v28.x versions, they updated it to include AVX instruction support. This causes Haswell processors to overvolt and run very hot. The processor supports AVX instructions but they are very intense on the processor. Look for an older version of Prime95 like v26.6 that doesn't have AVX instruction support and you'll have a better idea of stability and thermal load on your overclock.
 
What version of Prime95 are you using? If it's one of the newer v28.x versions, they updated it to include AVX instruction support. This causes Haswell processors to overvolt and run very hot. The processor supports AVX instructions but they are very intense on the processor. Look for an older version of Prime95 like v26.6 that doesn't have AVX instruction support and you'll have a better idea of stability and thermal load on your overclock.

I have the version 28.7.
But does that make sense, since any application I run could use those instructions as well?

Btw: the reported CPU voltage in HWMonitor stays the same when I run the extreme test in prime95 or what do you mean by overvolting?
 
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