Z170 Professional Gaming i7 OC Advice Please

Over clocking a CPU is not particularly dangerous, unless someone does some very crazy things, like set the CPU VCore at insane levels (which I have seen done occasionally.)

First I'll answer your main question about VCore, and then some comments about your system.

Sorry to say, but if you don't know how to set the VCore for the CPU, you are really starting from scratch at over clocking. You said you read some guides, but are still unsure about this? Ok... starting from square one...

No idea what OS version you are using. I'm assuming you don't know any of this, sorry if you do.

All of the following is in the UEFI (BIOS) User Interface. You get there by pressing the Del or F2 keys multiple times when the PC starts or restarts. If you see Windows booting, you missed it and must try again.

If you use Windows 8 - 10, you can install the Restart to UEFI program provided by ASRock. You run that program in Windows and if you set both options to On and click Apply, the PC will restart and go into the UEFI UI automatically. I use it all the time, a great little application.

Once in the UEFI UI, you need to change to Advanced Mode if you have not already done that. Easy Mode is the default, you must first select Advanced mode and then in Advanced Mode, set that as the default mode.

When in the UEFI UI, Advanced mode, go to the OC Tweaker screen. Find the Voltage Configuration entry, and click on that.

Once in the Voltage Configuration screen, find the CPU Vcore Voltage option. Set it to Manual. Below this option you should see a VCore Voltage option, set to Auto. Change it by pressing the '+' key, or by entering 1.35 manually.

If you're done in the UEFI UI, go to the Exit screen, and click on Save and Exit. That will save any changes you made, and restart the PC. Now you will see if 1.35V is enough for stock CPU clocks, which it should be. You may be able to get it down to 1.20V, or even less.

For some reason, Skylake i7-6700K processors have very high stock clock VIDs, of 1.4V or more, as you have seen. The absolute maximum VID for a Skylake CPU is 1.52V. Some boards have an option to bypass that limit, when over clocking using liquid nitrogen for cooling the CPU. I've never done that, and I imagine you aren't planning on doing that too.

A few quick but important points of information:

1. Core VID is not the same thing as the actual VCore voltage.

2. VID is not always equal to the actual VCore voltage. Most of the time they are not equal

3. Actual VCore is usually less than the VID. VCore can be greater than the VID when stress testing with AVX2 instructions.

4. There is a VID for each core, so four values. There is only ONE VCore voltage, based upon the highest VID.

5. The voltage you set in the UEFI is NOT a VID. It is the actual VCore voltage.

HWiNFO will show you the actual VCore voltage, but you aren't showing it in your screen shot. Its entry is in the section with your boards name, followed by Nuvoton NCT6791D, your board's sensor chip. It should be labeled Vcore by default.

Your HWiNFO screen shot (not from AIDA64 as you wrote) while running AIDA64 is useful.

You core temperatures a bit high for stock clocks, but that is likely caused by the high VCore. It should go down with the reduced VCore.

Your two video cards push heated air into the PC case. Depending upon your case fan configuration, that warm air may be used to cool the CPU, which of course does not work well.

I can see that may be true by your memory temperatures. My G.SKILL memory is at 32C, and my M.2 950 Pro SSD is 33C. But I don't use two video cards, which are either close to or covering your 850 Evo.

Those temperatures are not terrible, but something to watch if you OC the CPU.

So you are fine at the reduced core voltage?

The LLC set to Level 1 is unnecessary, but may only add a bit more to your CPU temperature. LLC maintains the CPU voltage that normally is known to "droop", which is not necessarily a bad thing. The CPU is designed to deal with that to a degree. Try level 2 or 3 for a test, but in the end use what works for you.

If you selected a manual voltage, and set it to 1.265V, the LLC set to 1 may be keeping it higher. You can see that in the VCore reading of 1.296V. Notice that is even beyond the VIDs shown. Are you using Adaptive, but set to a lower voltage. If so, that is fine, just asking.

Regardless, a good reduction of the VCore from over 1.4V. You might be able to go lower at stock clocks, but if AIDA64 stress testing fails, you know it's to low.

Your CPU temperature is not bad at all, quite low really. Cooling off the other components is another challenge.

"Spoon feeding" is not a pain if the recipient is actually trying to learn, and provides us with information, you qualify in both ways.

In your first post you wrote: "Below is a picture of the AIDA64 snapshot I took at the 6 minute mark during the AIDA64 stress test. I have moved the categories around a bit to keep on eye on the things...". You meant to write a HWiNFO snapshot, and I just pointed that out.

In AIDA64, if you click the Statistics tab, you'll see CPU core temperatures. You should also have a Temperatures tab/graph. If you click Preferences at the bottom, you can choose the temperatures available to show in the graph. OTOH, HWiNFO works just fine, that is what I use.

I was wondering if I saw, "Heh Heh Package", and I did.