Z97M Anniversity OC limit?

parsec wrote: Good luck man, did you get all the info you needed?

Got what I needed, yes thanks :)

Unfortunatly, you did predict correct before regarding not getting far oc'ing, as soon as I started raising vcore up towards 1.3v, it throttles down again. Haven't measured the vrm temps yet, but im guessing they are high. Only have small alu sinks glued on, and not a very hefty fan.

I think I might have to settle on 4.2ghz 1.25v and 4ghz cache for now, cpu also get mighty hot (80c+).

Maybe later I will try to get some better cooling solution on the vrms, and the cpu is actually delidded but running with the ihs on now as it whouldnt start without it. Guessing not enough pressure on that mount, but i'll get that running later on.

Will have to see tho, Im keeping my hopes up for all open AMD Zen :) After 2.gen i7 hit and baseclock oc'ing was out the door it kinda took the fun out of it for me with the whole "Z & K oc only"


Xaltar, custom built case eh? That sounds kind of interesting. Had the thought before, but never had the will power to actually start on it :P I saw someone (ncase maybe?) that have recently made a new matx case VERY small with watercooling in mind, but I think it was very expensive, and import to Norway is 25% extra added, so no go for me there.

The ocd I was born without, for me its just "get it working" hehe.

(Comment on the PC in the first pictures...)

IT LIVES!!!  IT LIVES!!!  

Not really ghetto at all, except for what appears to be a piece of duct tape on the front of the case.

My cable management OCD has me reaching at the monitor... must fix... must fix...

But it's the case itself that makes or breaks cable management, only so much can be done if the case will cooperate.

I'm 99.9% certain you had VRM throttling, given your description.

Plus how could that not happen in your situation, the classic liquid cooling side affect, little or zero air flow over the VRM chips and heat sink... if you have heat sinks, which you do now. I hope idle temperatures of the heat sinks were cool.

Ya know, now that I see you're not some kid wanting to OC with the stock Intel CPU cooler (exaggerating here), I'm changing my mind, sorry to be a cynic!   It's not crazy to use that board to OC, it's just a challenge!!

I hope you can OC like crazy, and the VRMs survive, things should be better now that they are being actively cooled. I want you to prove you can OC your CPU with a minimal VRM stage. I read a thread at OCN about the VRM chips being used in various boards, and how some users select boards based upon which VRM chips are being used, the basic circuit design, and even the VRM controllers being used. Meanwhile all the boards in question have 10 or 12 phase/chip designs, or even more.

Modern Intel processors don't use that much power, even when over clocked. Extreme OC with dry ice, etc, is another thing, with ultra high VCore, but at least the VRM chips are half frozen too!

Good luck man, did you get all the info you needed?




Edited by parsec - 13 Nov 2016 at 11:49pm

The OCD in me just blew a gasket 

Hahahaha, Like I said DO NOT touch them. Back in the Athlon XP days I left some seared skin on some hot sinks.

Dang guy. 90c is 194degF !!!

And yes. A fan style CPU cooler distributes air over the surrounding parts. Using a water cooler doesx zero zip zilch to cool these parts. If you look in the manual for your cooler it most likely states when installing the water cooler to place a fan over these parts.

Unfortunately, I'm with parsec on this boards 2+1 VRMs having not much chance to net you the OC you're hoping for. There just isn't the room for a decent spread of VRMs to accomplish much OC'ing on a micro-ATX motherboard.




Edited by wardog - 13 Nov 2016 at 7:08pm

TAMW wrote: I have a z97m anniversity and a i5 4670k on watercooling. The cpu oc's ok, but returns to stock after a while under prime95 etc do to some current limitation in the bios im guessing. I have turned off everything there is to turn off in the bios regarding limitations and power saving, but still this happens. What am I missing? Im running the latest bios p2.10. I have thermal glued heatsink on the VRMs, and they are nice and cool. Can you (asrock) or some handyman provide me a bios where the limits are totally disabled? I have voided the warranty anyway with gluing the sinks on, I just want som badass speeds on my 4670k ;)

OMGosh, seriously!?! On a 2 + 1 phase/component VRM design? I don't care how cool the heat sinks on the chips feel, you can still kill them with current draw. That the heat sinks are "nice and cool" tells me they are not working as well as you think they are.

I just ran a "wimpy" Intel IXTU stress test on my i5-6600K at 4.4GHz. The 12 phase VRM temperature was ~111° F, with three 140mm intake fans, two 140mm exhaust fans, and 120mm + 140mm fans on the CPU cooler. 111° F is warm to the touch, which I would not classify as "nice and cool", but that's just me.

Since you are asking how to potentially destroy your board, which you would eventually discover on your own I imagine (unless the UEFI protects it from destruction), I'll do that sooner than later. I have your documented request to kill your board preserved in this post.

But first my modified Disclaimer, borrowed from ASRock:


Have you configured these options in OC Tweaker to their maximum settings? Higher numbers are moar powah.

Long Duration Power Limit

Long Duration Maintained

Short Duration Power Limit

Primary Plane Current Limit

Of course you have disabled:

CPU Integrated VR Faults

CPU Integrated VR Efficiency Mode

Power Saving Mode

Another thing you can do is install Intel IXTU, where you might be able to modify all the Power Limits and Duration's beyond what is allowed in your UEFI. Sorry, the forums link tool chokes on URLs with a '?' in them, so highlight the link text below, left click on it and select an Open option:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-?product=66427

I'm not suggesting this as an over clocking tool (although it is actually very good, but not considered cool by some OC enthusiasts) but as a way to achieve what you want to do. It might also show you what is causing your OC to throttle to stock speeds.

The display on the Stress Test screen, on the lower right in blue, has many options not shown by default. Click on the blue wrench icon on the far right to reveal a list of everything that can be displayed and monitored. The parameters you should monitor include:

Thermal Throttling

Power Limit Throttling

Current Limit Throttling

Motheboard VR Thermal Throttling

If you see any of those displayed as Yes during stress testing, you've reached a limit.

How long is "after a while", when the CPU switches to stock clock speeds? Assuming your CPU temperature is below 100° C, then the following would explain the change in CPU speed.

If it is a short time, under one minute, that is a UEFI/system imposed power/current limit throttle.

If it takes longer than one minute, it is probably a VR (Voltage Regulator) over temperature power throttling.

Intel recently added a list of things that their newer processors will flag as Performance Limit Reasons. My Skylake processor has 31 different Performance Limit Reasons. I forget how many my Haswell processors have. Some are not applicable to an OC, but if you want to monitor those parameters, run the HWiNFO64 Sensor display.

The first and only time I ever had any CPU thermal throttle was my i5-4670K, on an ASRock Z87 Extreme6 board (12 Phase VRM.) Hit 100C running AIDA64 stress test with a Corsair AIO cooler in a minute or two. Haswell runs hot hot hot!!

There is Zero chance ASRock will provide a custom UEFI/BIOS to bypass any power limits that might be programmed into the UEFI. A 'Z' board should be wide open regarding power settings, but the ability of the board's VRMs to supply that power is a different situation, and certainly not a given for every board.