X99 Adaptive Voltage

coccosoids wrote: What can I do to put some more steam into this thread? :)

Put a pot of water to boil on the VRMs

I have two Define S cases, so I know them well.

I'm surprised the CPU VRMs are that hot, but as wardog said when using liquid cooling the amount of air movement in the VRM heatsink area is minimal.

I don't have an X99 Taichi board, so don't know if it has a VRM temperature sensor. If it does the monitoring programs that would show it would be HWiNFO64 or AIDA64.

https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

Imagine all the heat from the CPU cooler's radiator being sent into the PC case. Where does it go? How is it exhausted? Given your VRMs are hot, I assume all of the vents on the top of the case are blocked by their covers. At least remove one of the covers from the top, above the VRM area.

You said one exhaust fan, is that the 140mm Fractal fan at the top, rear of the case? Even with the Fractal fan at 100% speed (no idea how it is configured) it has no chance of exhausting all the heat inside the PC case. Plus it is pulling the heated air up into the VRM area in general. First thing I do with the Define S is replace their junk fan with a fan that actually moves some air. I have a 12V power supply I use to test fans mounted in the PC case during the build process. The Fractal 140mm fan provided with the Define S has zero chance of keeping up with even one of the fans on your EKWB CPU cooler. A fan exhausting air above the VRM area should help. I say exhaust instead of blowing on the VRMs as explained below.

If all of the Define S's vent covers are in place, you have a very positive pressure fan configuration. The three fans on the EKWB cooler are fighting that pressure trying to push air into the case. If you will stay with the CPU cooler blowing air into the PC case, you need to let that air out. I remove all of the PCIe slot covers on the back of the case, which allows air to escape much better than the vents in the covers. PC case cooling is best done by experimentation, so for example remove all of the top vent covers and see what the result is regarding temperatures.

So called "Blower" video cards, unless the enclosure around the video card is completely sealed up (and it isn't) cannot push all their heated air out its rear vent. The vent is too small. So heat from the video card is dumped into the PC case. Again, where does it go?

I wonder what the mother board temperature reading is? That will also give you a great idea of the case ventilation. If it's over 30簞 C, heat is stagnating in the case.

Yes, the UEFI will automatically disable some of the C States when you increase the CPU multiplier. But that is not permanent, you simply reset them to enabled and they'll stay enabled. Just enable C1E and C6, and leave C3 disabled.

Fan speed settings may also be changed when an OC is applied. Again, not permanent. Are you creating a custom fan/pump speed profiles in HW Monitoring?

Setting offset voltage must be done by experimentation. "Safe" can only be verified by monitoring the VCore in actual use. Select Offset and leave the Offset voltage value on Auto, and see what you get starting a stress test. You don't need to run it for long, it will reach its max value quickly. All CPUs are different, even of the same model, a simple recipe for setting the exact voltage does not exist. I would say a VCore of 1.3V is the safe limit for your processor. If stress testing at 4.4GHz fails, the VCCIN/CPU Input can be increased to 1.9V, as it must be at least 0.6V above the max VCore.

VCCSA is System Agent.

CPU IO is VCCIO.

How did you feel about the CPU cooler water block mounting? How much TIM did you use? Too much is usually the situation, a minimal amount is best, but then even coverage becomes the challenge. CPU Package temperature consistently reads higher than the core temperatures. You never said what you are using to monitor the CPU temperature in Windows.

What version of Windows are you using? Windows 10 has changed the Advanced Power Plan Processor power management options, depending on the version/updates you have.

You clearly have work to do with the PC case cooling, and part of it might be the pump and fan speed configuration. High performance and quiet is difficult to achieve regardless of the CPU cooler. The challenge with liquid cooling is radiator configuration, intake or exhaust, and getting air into and out of the PC case. You must have both, not just one or the other. Compensating for the lack of air movement in the CPU area with liquid cooling is the main drawback of liquid cooling.