# New build - need advice about temps, volts etc. using HWMON



## Gil80

Hi.

I got the following specs:


*Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3070 Master Graphics Card*
*Gigabyte AORUS Z590i Ultra motherboard*
*Intel Core i9 11900KF*
*Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB 3200Hz*
*Crucial 2TB M.2 SSD*
*CoolerMaster ML240R AIO Liquid Cooler - Radiator is side-mounted and fans are pulling air out.*
*CoolerMaster NR200P Case*
*CoolerMaster SFX V 850W Power Supply*
*CoolerMaster SF240R Top fans - Fans are pulling air out.*

BIOS and vBIOS are up to date.
PC is NOT overclocked and this time I don't intend to due to the limited cooling option for this small case.

I won this PC in a competition. I didn't choose the specs.

I'm not familiar with the current BIOS terminology for CPU and voltages. It's been years since I OC'd my PCs, so I'm out of touch. I'm also less familiar with Gigabyte BIOS.

Room ambient is 22c.

I'm not sure if the temps I'm seeing are normal or can be improved by undervolting. These are the following temps in idle:










If anyone can please help out or even have a one-on-one chat to help me out with my BIOS setting to optimise for performance and cooling as best as possibly can with my rig, I'd buy you a beer, or two 

Thank you!


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## Gil80

anyone?


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## maltamonk

OC your ram and that's about it imo


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## Gil80

maltamonk said:


> OC your ram and that's about it imo


I'm looking to improve my temps. I don't think I'll gain much by OC of RAM. Besides, I don't know how to OC RAM


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## kairi_zeroblade

Gil80 said:


> I'm looking to improve my temps. I don't think I'll gain much by OC of RAM. Besides, I don't know how to OC RAM


Load your XMP profile..its a pretty straightforward menu with XMP on it..your temps are abit off given you use a 240mm AIO..you can try checking if there is a good contact between the coldplate of the cooler and the IHS die..if all else is good then you might want to change your thermal paste..


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## Gil80

kairi_zeroblade said:


> Load your XMP profile..its a pretty straightforward menu with XMP on it..your temps are abit off given you use a 240mm AIO..you can try checking if there is a good contact between the coldplate of the cooler and the IHS die..if all else is good then you might want to change your thermal paste..


Ok, XMP I already did. thanks.

As for CPU temps: Using Prime95, I hit 100c very quickly. I was told that the Core i9 11900K does get hot, but I didn't expect to hit these temps.

I believe there's a good contact because I cannot screw the pump bracket any further.

Does intel continue to use cheap thermal paste between the chip and the IHS? I'm thinking that if it's a cheap thermal paste, then I'll delid it and use my LiquiUltra Pro thermal paste between the die and IHS.

As for the thermal paste I use between the cold plate and IHS, it's Gelid GC-3.

EDIT: Is it possible to under-volt the CPU a bit?


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## kairi_zeroblade

Gil80 said:


> Does intel continue to use cheap thermal paste between the chip and the IHS? I'm thinking that if it's a cheap thermal paste, then I'll delid it and use my LiquiUltra Pro thermal paste between the die and IHS.


They already went back to soldered ones..



Gil80 said:


> As for the thermal paste I use between the cold plate and IHS, it's Gelid GC-3.


is it a new application?? maybe needs curing for good results to appear..may take a while but mostly 24hrs bake should do..

your ambient is kinda low and given its an ITX build a delta of 4-6 degrees should be the least I was expecting...also its an AIO..the 11900K sure is hot but I think your AIO should handle it well..


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## Gil80

kairi_zeroblade said:


> They already went back to soldered ones..
> 
> 
> 
> is it a new application?? maybe needs curing for good results to appear..may take a while but mostly 24hrs bake should do..
> 
> your ambient is kinda low and given its an ITX build a delta of 4-6 degrees should be the least I was expecting...also its an AIO..the 11900K sure is hot but I think your AIO should handle it well..


It's a new application from last week that I applied.
ambient might be low, but having only outtake fans because it's ITX build, means I don't pull in cold air. Kind makes sense for this build.

I still think something is wrong here. Intel does mention that for this CPU the minimal recommended is 240 water cooling.
I'm just thinking how else can I improve water cooling in such a small case.
Mind you, I won this PC in a competition. I love this case, but would like to keep it while investing in better water cooling.
The problem is that I cannot fit rad+fans on the top, that is if I try a 2nd rad.


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## T.Sharp

Gil80 said:


> As for CPU temps: Using Prime95, I hit 100c very quickly. I was told that the Core i9 11900K does get hot, but I didn't expect to hit these temps.


Disable AVX


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## Gil80

T.Sharp said:


> Disable AVX


Isn’t AVX required for the CPU boosts under certain conditions?


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## T.Sharp

Gil80 said:


> Isn’t AVX required for the CPU boosts under certain conditions?


AVX is an instruction set that's used by quite a few applications and games these days, but not to the extreme that P95 uses it. You can overheat most modern Intel chips even at reasonable voltages and with good cooling if you run P95 with AVX, because it draws such a ridiculous amount of power. A better test for real world AVX stability is OCCT large data set AVX2 extreme. For thermal testing, P95 small FFT non-AVX is fine, but you can also do the same thing with OCCT small data set SSE.

Not sure what you mean by AVX being required for CPU boost. You can apply an AVX offset in bios that will downclock the CPU when an AVX workload is started, but it's better to leave it at 0 afaic. That way your chip runs the same speed in any workload or game. 

Granted I don't know specifics about 11th gen chips.


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## Gil80

T.Sharp said:


> AVX is an instruction set that's used by quite a few applications and games these days, but not to the extreme that P95 uses it. You can overheat most modern Intel chips even at reasonable voltages and with good cooling if you run P95 with AVX, because it draws such a ridiculous amount of power. A better test for real world AVX stability is OCCT large data set AVX2 extreme. For thermal testing, P95 small FFT non-AVX is fine, but you can also do the same thing with OCCT small data set SSE.
> 
> Not sure what you mean by AVX being required for CPU boost. You can apply an AVX offset in bios that will downclock the CPU when an AVX workload is started, but it's better to leave it at 0 afaic. That way your chip runs the same speed in any workload or game.
> 
> Granted I don't know specifics about 11th gen chips.


Thank you for explaining.
What prompted me to investigate this is yesterday I ran Battlefield 1 and alt+tab to check temps with GPUZ and saw CPU reaching max 86 but averaging at 81.
I assume the cores ran hotter.

I believe these are not safe temps even in gaming. So I’m worried.
I want to try and under volt the CPU without underclocking.

do you think it can be done?


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## T.Sharp

Gil80 said:


> Thank you for explaining.
> What prompted me to investigate this is yesterday I ran Battlefield 1 and alt+tab to check temps with GPUZ and saw CPU reaching max 86 but averaging at 81.
> I assume the cores ran hotter.
> 
> I believe these are not safe temps even in gaming. So I’m worried.
> I want to try and under volt the CPU without underclocking.
> 
> do you think it can be done?


Yeah, that seems hot for a game. You can definitely undervolt, I just don't know the best way to go about it with gigabyte Z590 boards. I know the Z490 boards have something called "override" for Vcore, that has better regulation than the standard Vcore control. Don't remember specifics since it doesn't apply to my Z390. Buildzoid has a video about it - 




One thing I'd recommend is using HWiNFO for monitoring. I assume the Z590 still has the die sense voltage reading (VR VOUT), which should be the most accurate voltage reading.


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## Gil80

T.Sharp said:


> Yeah, that seems hot for a game. You can definitely undervolt, I just don't know the best way to go about it with gigabyte Z590 boards. I know the Z490 boards have something called "override" for Vcore, that has better regulation than the standard Vcore control. Don't remember specifics since it doesn't apply to my Z390. Buildzoid has a video about it -
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One thing I'd recommend is using HWiNFO for monitoring. I assume the Z590 still has the die sense voltage reading (VR VOUT), which should be the most accurate voltage reading.


Thanks heaps for the help!
I’ll check it out and hopefully I can take this CPU temps. I’ll also try to explore options for outside mounted pump+res combo and super slim fans and rad fro top mount.


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## Gil80

Had a chance to look at the video and try something but it doesn't seem to work well for me. I can't underclock well.
I posted in Intel Motherboards thread but no reply yet.


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## Slaughtahouse

If you have the NR200’P’, does this mean you have the radiator mounted against the glass panel?

Can you share a few photos of your system? Thanks.


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## Gil80

Slaughtahouse said:


> If you have the NR200’P’, does this mean you have the radiator mounted against the glass panel?
> 
> Can you share a few photos of your system? Thanks.


oh hell no! 
I use the grill panel, not the glass.


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## Arni90

Gil80 said:


> As for CPU temps: Using Prime95, I hit 100c very quickly. I was told that the Core i9 11900K does get hot, but I didn't expect to hit these temps.
> 
> EDIT: Is it possible to under-volt the CPU a bit?


You can choke the power consumption and clock speeds with _Turbo Power Limits_:
Package Power Limit 1 to 200W
Package Power Limit 2 to 200W

_Or_ you can adjust _Active turbo ratios_:
5 and 6 core active boost to 48x
7 and 8 core active boost to 45x

Undervolting can be achieved with the _Adaptive VCore_ setting, though Intel has binned these chips quite hard and you're unlikely to be able to run a big offset on V/F Point 4, 5 and 6


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## Gil80

Arni90 said:


> You can choke the power consumption and clock speeds with _Turbo Power Limits_:
> Package Power Limit 1 to 200W
> Package Power Limit 2 to 200W
> 
> _Or_ you can adjust _Active turbo ratios_:
> 5 and 6 core active boost to 48x
> 7 and 8 core active boost to 45x
> 
> Undervolting can be achieved with the _Adaptive VCore_ setting, though Intel has binned these chips quite hard and you're unlikely to be able to run a big offset on V/F Point 4, 5 and 6


Hi Arni.
Thanks for the info.

I'm not sure how to do all that.
I remember using my Asus MB from 2012, I was able to overclock and use offset voltage.
I'm trying to do the same now but I'm not successful.
I don't know why an offset of -0.001v will fail prime95.
I don't know how to limit package power or active turbo ratios.


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## Arni90

Gil80 said:


> I don't know how to limit package power or active turbo ratios.


Look through the BIOS options under the tweaker menu


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## Gil80

Arni90 said:


> Look through the BIOS options under the tweaker menu


I ran Cinebench R23 multicore test.
Max Vcore stock settings = 1.368v
Max core clocks stock settings = 4.9Ghz
Some cores reached 90+ degrees

Before making any changes, this is my current setting:


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## qwertymac93

Prime95 is too stressful with AVX to be realistic, and not thorough enough without it. What you need is a realistic load that uses memory, floating point(AVX) and integer instructions to give a well rounded stress test. For 11th gen, you'll want something that uses at least a little AVX512 to ensure complete stability. In my own testing, with power limiters effectively disabled, my 11400 averaged around 125w with Cinebench R23, 153w with Blender(customized BMW scene, Intel denoiser enabled), and 162w with FFMPEG(2 instances, 1080p VPX encode).

FFMPEG sprinkles in a bit of AVX512 so it really stresses the CPU. Intel's OpenImageDenoiser may also use AVX512 as I saw spikes to ~167w when enabling it in Blender, but these were infrequent and only lasted a second at a time, unlike FFMPEG which pretty consistently stayed at 162w throughout.

Unfortunately, FFMPEG is a bit too much and even with no power limit, the CPU will throttle down several hundred mhz due to the AVX512 offset. Because of this, I think it is best to stick to Blender(WITH OpenImageDenoise on) for stability testing since it stays at max turbo more consistently while still giving bursts of intense load.

This data was collected with HWinfo64's "CPU Package Power" sensor.

As far as getting temperatures under control, try playing with the dynamic vcore feature. Start at -50mv(-0.05v) and work you way further in the negative if stable, and closer to 0 if unstable. That might shave a few watts of power off and drop temps a degree or two. Beyond that, set a power limit to where your cooler can maintain 90c or less.

Here is the blender file I modified to use for stress testing.
Blender BMW Stress Animation.zip
Just open the .blend file and hit CTRL+F12 to start the test. It'll render a 120 frame 4k animation, which should take all night to finish.

Edit: I re-uploaded the file since I accidentally posted the wrong one. Also, it looks like your UEFI has AVX512 disabled! Switch that because while it will make overclocking trickier, it improves performance and at the end of the day, if a 4.2ghz chip is faster than a 4.9ghz chip then use the 4.2ghz chip!


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## Gil80

qwertymac93 said:


> Prime95 is too stressful with AVX to be realistic, and not thorough enough without it. What you need is a realistic load that uses memory, floating point(AVX) and integer instructions to give a well rounded stress test. For 11th gen, you'll want something that uses at least a little AVX512 to ensure complete stability. In my own testing, with power limiters effectively disabled, my 11400 averaged around 125w with Cinebench R23, 153w with Blender(customized BMW scene, Intel denoiser enabled), and 162w with FFMPEG(2 instances, 1080p VPX encode).
> 
> FFMPEG sprinkles in a bit of AVX512 so it really stresses the CPU. Intel's OpenImageDenoiser may also use AVX512 as I saw spikes to ~167w when enabling it in Blender, but these were infrequent and only lasted a second at a time, unlike FFMPEG which pretty consistently stayed at 162w throughout.
> 
> Unfortunately, FFMPEG is a bit too much and even with no power limit, the CPU will throttle down several hundred mhz due to the AVX512 offset. Because of this, I think it is best to stick to Blender(WITH OpenImageDenoise on) for stability testing since it stays at max turbo more consistently while still giving bursts of intense load.
> 
> This data was collected with HWinfo64's "CPU Package Power" sensor.
> 
> As far as getting temperatures under control, try playing with the dynamic vcore feature. Start at -50mv(-0.05v) and work you way further in the negative if stable, and closer to 0 if unstable. That might shave a few watts of power off and drop temps a degree or two. Beyond that, set a power limit to where your cooler can maintain 90c or less.
> 
> Here is the blender file I modified to use for stress testing.
> Blender BMW Stress Animation.zip
> Just open the .blend file and hit CTRL+F12 to start the test. It'll render a 120 frame 4k animation, which should take all night to finish.
> 
> Edit: I re-uploaded the file since I accidentally posted the wrong one. Also, it looks like your UEFI has AVX512 disabled! Switch that because while it will make overclocking trickier, it improves performance and at the end of the day, if a 4.2ghz chip is faster than a 4.9ghz chip then use the 4.2ghz chip!
> View attachment 2490682


Thanks for the detailed info.
I'll enable AVX.
But I'm not sure I have a setting for a power limit, as you mentioned "set a power limit to where your cooler can maintain 90c or less".


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## qwertymac93

Gil80 said:


> Thanks for the detailed info.
> I'll enable AVX.
> But I'm not sure I have a setting for a power limit, as you mentioned "set a power limit to where your cooler can maintain 90c or less".


I think it's the "Turbo Power Limits" option in the "advanced CPU settings" menu.


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## Gil80

qwertymac93 said:


> I think it's the "Turbo Power Limits" option in the "advanced CPU settings" menu.


I took some screenshots of my bios again, and oh boy... very confused.

Here I used the Adaptive Vcore instead of Override Vcore. I was told Override is better/smarter but I don't know how to use it without screwing things up.
I set the *Internal CPU Vcore *to *Normal*
and then *Internal CPU Vcore Offset* to *-0.050V*
You can see on the right side that the voltage is *1.356v *but I know from HWMonitor_x64 that under stress it goes up to *1.368v*












*Turbo Power Limits* - What the hell do I do here?  
How can I know which setting I should change to keep thermals at 90 max?











I think I enabled AVX this time. The terminology of double negatives is a bit confusing. Is this ok?


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## Gil80

These are some of the readings I get with stock settings (no voltage changes, no clock changes) after over 4 minutes of run.
Vcore=1.260v
VRout=1.206v
Core VIDs=1.289v
CPU Package power = 213w


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## qwertymac93

Don't feel bad for being confused, that UEFI needs a simplified view or something because there are just too many options on each page. My MSI board seems better organized in comparison. At least there are descriptions of the currently selected option at the bottom of the screen.

Have you tried any testing with the negative voltage offset? -0.05v is probably going to be unstable now that I think about it, try -0.02 first. Keep track of the idle and load "VR VOUT" and adjust downward. Also keep track of the package power figure; it should go down slightly as you adjust voltage.

Once you dial in the voltage you can look into power limits. Package power limit1 (TDP) would be the one you'd want to start with. Try 200w. Package power limit 2 (time) should be something short, like 8 seconds.


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