Guide: How to set good power limits in the BIOS and reduce the CPU power draw

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By now, and not only since threads like these, many Intel users will have heard (or have found out) that a lot of Intel CPUs have a very high power draw that can really push the CPU cooling capabilities to the limit and beyond. There used to be a time where a cheap tower air cooler would be enough for any CPU available for that socket. That era pretty much ended with the i9-9900K, the first "monster", and then from 10th gen onwards, Intel really started pushing the higher-up CPU models to the absolute edge. Causing higher and higher power draw, which has now gotten ridiculously high with the 14th generation like the 14900K.

The way the i9 models behave nowadays, and even the latest i7, you would think you're working with a highly overclocked CPU. And in a way, that's true - overclocked from factory, to be able to compete with AMD's best offerings. A tower cooler is not sufficient at all sometimes, the insanely high power draw can even cause trouble for really good, large AIOs (water coolers). But not only i9 and i7 CPUs are this extreme nowadays, the lower models can also have a power draw that may be too much for the CPU cooler at hand.

When the power draw becomes too much for the cooling capabilities in your PC and it can no longer keep the CPU at reasonable temperatures under load, what happens? Thermal throttling. This is a mechanism that prevents the CPU from dying of overtemperature. It acts when the CPU temperature approaches 100°C and then tries save it from overheating, by (sometimes drastically) throttling the CPU, which reduces the voltages and thus the power draw and heat output, but also reduces the frequencies and thus the performance.

But it's not good to rely on that, because if it comes to that and your cooling is already maxed out (fans at high speed, good airflow through the system), it means the CPU generates more heat than the cooler can get rid of, so thermal throttling has to step in to prevent the worst. In essence, it's an emergency mechanism, not something that should be able to happen for daily use. You want power limit throttling to step in before thermal throttling ever has to. So you should 1) set power limits according to your cooling, and 2) try to reduce the CPU core voltage.

Because the high power draw comes partly from CPU voltages that are way higher than what would be required for stability. So if we can lower those voltages more to what the CPU actually needs (while still staying fully stable), everything will improve considerably. But we'll come to that in step 2).

These optimizations have become even more important when using the latest BIOS versions, as can be read here:
Explained: How the new BIOS versions are causing higher temperatures.


Before everything, i would always update the BIOS to the latest version, because it limits the potential for any CPU degradation. Update how-to:

1) Get the latest BIOS. It's the topmost one on the MSI support page for your board.
2) Extract the file and you will get a text file and the BIOS file. Put the BIOS file into the root folder of a USB stick/drive.
3) Enter the BIOS by pressing DEL during boot, go to "M-FLASH" in the BIOS.
4) Once M-Flash (the updater) is loaded, it will show a list of your drives. Select the USB stick and select the previously extracted BIOS file on there.
5) It will ask for confirmation and then update the BIOS. It's fully automatic from there, takes about two minutes.

After the update, upon first entering the BIOS again, it will show the revised cooler selection screen (which is really the power limit selection screen):

MSI_SnapShot_01 Intel Def.png


Usually you can choose the middle option, no matter if your CPU would natively want to draw more power (like an i9 would) or less power (like an i5 would). Because this middle option happens to have the maximum values i would allow for any CPU (even an i9), so it's a good basis to work off of, and lower the power limits if necessary. Meaning, if there is any thermal throttling with those limits, they have to be optimized to the individual cooling capabilities, which i will shortly explain.

MSI_SnapShot_03 MSI Performance.png


Note: The BIOS first has the values for the first option "Intel Default Settings" loaded. So after the middle option is selected, press F10 to save and exit, then the "MSI Performance Settings" are applied. Now there are 253W power limits set for the CPU (together with a 400A CPU Current limit), and in the first step, we now test what power limits are actually required for the temperatures to stay reasonable.


1) Test which power limits you need to set for your cooling. One way is to eyeball a number that your cooler might be able to handle comfortably (with a good tower cooler, we could say 180W for example), you set those power limits in the BIOS for a test, then you check how high the temperatures get under fully multithreaded load. If they are now in the mid-80°C range, that's good, you found your cooler's potential and you have some headroom left for higher ambient temperatures in the summer. If you still run into thermal throttling, you set the limits a bit lower.

To test the limits, check your sensors with HWinfo64 after ten minutes of full CPU load. Run HWinfo and open "Sensors", then expand all sensors by clicking on the little <--> arrows on the bottom, also expand the columns of the sensors a bit so everything can be read. Make it three big columns of sensors (or four, if the screen resolution is high enough). In the end, it should be a screenshot with all the sensors visible at once, like this:

yes.png


Always make sure your power plan in Windows is set to "Balanced", this is the only proper one. Leave the PC in idle for a a minute or two first to establish the "minimum" baselines for the values. Then, produce full CPU load with Cinebench (either R24 or the still-more-popular R23), Run the "CPU Multi" benchmark, and after completing a 10 minute run, when the CPU temperatures have stabilized at the highest level, check the score and the HWinfo sensor window.

CinebenchR23.jpg

Example of a Cinebench R23 run, leave HWinfo Sensors open in the background.

What are we looking at in HWinfo after the Cinebench run?
Mostly these values in the "Maximum" column (the highest recorded values during monitoring):

hwinfo_sensors.png


Now, this is from my own system, using one of the best air coolers around (Noctua NH-D15), and only using a i5-13500, which i managed to also lower the voltage (and thus power draw), we will come to that as well in step 2) below. The result is that, even under full load, i have a pretty quiet system, and in idle, i don't even hear if it's on or not. Also, it's staying well clear of any dangerous temperatures under full load, thanks to less than 110W of power draw. It doesn't get any better than that: The cooler is overkill for the CPU, so everything can be set to run very quietly, and there is no stress on anything whatsoever. I can leave the power limits maxed out in the BIOS (4096W), because the power draw is so low, and this is very far away from >90°C temperatures which would be thermal throttling territory.

But for most people it will look a bit different at first, especially with higher CPU models that draw more power. Once there's a 14th gen i7 or i9 in there, it will absolutely gulp down the electricity, we're talking 300+ Watts easily under full load (also see here). The power draw of the higher-end CPU models has gotten completely out of hand (quite similar to high-end GPUs).

So for a lot of CPUs, the power limits have to be set according to what your cooling can handle. Otherwise it may look like this:

hwinfo_sensors_2.png


This PC actually crashed after a couple seconds (in hindsight, surely having to do with the stability issues on 13th/14th gen), but just before it crashed, it managed to draw 322W and immediately cause thermal throttling from hell. Even a nice 360mm AIO cooler cannot deal with this kind of heat.

After setting 253W power limits and improving the cooling setup a bit, this was the result:

hwinfo_sensors_3.png


No thermal throttling anymore, but still too high temperatures, there should be some headroom for higher ambient temperatures. If the CPU temperature is mid-80°C, perfect. Above 90°C, you should reduce the power limits, below 80°C you can raise them if you want, of course it also depends on the noise you want to tolerate, that has to do with the fan curves. It's certainly worth checking if the fan curves are set properly (low fan speeds in idle, slowly ramping up with higher temperatures, full speed at around 90°C). I would try to stay away from the 90°C range CPU temperatures under full load, because as mentioned, that slowly enters thermal throttling territory. It is not good to rely on that, and when it's hot in the summer and the cooler has to work with warmer ambient air, it can more easily run into thermal throttling. So there needs to be some thermal headroom to account for that.

With a lot of CPU models, not much performance will be lost from setting power limits (unless they are very low). That is because above a certain power draw, the performance increase will be in the low- to mid-single-digits, while power draw will rise pretty much exponentially. So these last performance gains are to be dismissed anyway, they are highly ineffective "junk performance". You are improving the calculation efficiency by limiting the power draw a bit, because there will be less energy spent for the job to finish.

Furthermore, under gaming for example, the CPU is only at partial load, or full load only on a couple cores (usually games are happy with about six cores), so the CPU power draw will be well below the power limits. They only come into effect on fully multithreaded load like encoding, rendering and such, and there they prevent the temperatures from getting out of hand.

How to set power limits? You go here in the BIOS and enter a number in Watts for the Long and Short Duration Power Limit:

MSI_SnapShot_14.png


In the BIOS, first press F7 to switch to Advanced View, then go to "OC\Advanced CPU Configuration" and set the values. Then check in Windows if the temperatures under full load are ok. If not, lower the values until you stay away from the >90°C range. Then the cooling is protected and there is no dependence on thermal throttling.

If there is some seemingly random thermal throttling being registered by HWinfo, despite the temperatures not even getting into the 90°C range, it can potentially due to momentary single-core-boosting with CPU models that have this feature. In this case, there will be a BIOS setting on this same page, called "Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0", which you can try disabling. Yes, for single-threaded loads you may lose a very tiny bit of performance, but it's better to have the CPU running more safely. The days people could run an i9 completely unlimited are pretty much over. Today it's about managing the CPU and preserving its useful life.

A word about another limit, the "CPU Current Limit (A)" in the BIOS screenshot, aka "IccMax": This is somewhat related to the power limits, it limits the internal CPU current in Amperes. In light of the recent instability issues with 13th- and 14-gen CPU models, Intel recommended certain values there for different CPUs (latest Intel recommendations).

This Current limit can be additionally set, it can give a bit of extra security, for example 307A as a precaution (with power limits up to the lower 200W range), and when going up to power limits of 253W (the maximum i'd recommend), with good cooling on an i9 CPU, then you may also set up to 400A (but never higher). Once the power limits are set to the CPU cooling capabilities of the individual system - which most of the time means probably somewhere between 150-250W, depending on the cooler and the airflow in the case - then this current limit might not even come into action, because the power limits would act before the current limit can act.

Note that Intel also recommend certain power limits for different CPU models, but those are more or less arbitrary, they have nothing to do with your individual cooling capabilities. One thing i would say, there is no benefit in allowing more than ~250W for any CPU, not even a 14900KS. Because it will always make the CPU run more inefficiently from that point onwards (at the very latest, for other CPU models even earlier). That's then "junk power draw" or "junk performance", meaning the power draw still keeps increasing a lot, but only for minimal performance gains, it basically just ruins the efficiency. So even with a high-end 360mm AIO, you will not tend to see me recommending limits higher than 253W.

If short-term performance is of high importance, one could experiment with different values for the Short and Long Duration power limits. For example, set 220W Short, then 200W Long, if the cooling is good for a bit over 200W of heat. This way, thermal throttling with continuous full load could be avoided, while still allowing slightly higher power draw for the first minute of full load. But at such high limit, it doesn't make a big difference anymore, certainly not for games or any mid-load workloads, it would have to be full load on most or all cores.

With the power limits taken care of, we come to the next important step:


2) Lowering the "CPU Lite Load" mode, for lower voltages. That's a setting that has to be found out for each specific CPU by doing stability testing. By lowering it, you essentially shave off the generic headroom that MSI like to add on VCore (CPU core voltage), and adapt it to your specific CPU sample. This is a good way to lower power consumption in all load states. I have been recommending it for ages, and it has been proven to be highly efficient hundreds of times by now.

This is an example of CPU Lite Load on Auto setting (resulting in Mode 9 there, the grey value is the currently active one):

CPU Lite Load.png


It's on the same BIOS page as the power limits.

Short guide: Just manually set a lower mode for CPU Lite Load. Your only limit for lowering it would be the point where the CPU becomes unstable because the voltage becomes too low. Once you see instability in any CPU stress testing tool (i list a few further down below), or even in normal workloads like Cinebench already, then back off one step and test the next higher mode (so for example Mode 3 -> 4). Once you find the lowest stable mode (say if Mode 4 is stable), i recommend to actually set it one mode higher than that (Mode 5 in this example), to have stability headroom and not be on the edge of stability. If you see a big performance decrease from lowering the mode by a bunch of steps, then you need to disable the option "IA CEP" (it's on the same BIOS page as all the other options mentioned here). Done.

There's no need to change the power limits from what you determined before either, because those limits only have to do with your cooling capabilities, these don't change once you determined what your cooling can handle. But now, when you make the CPU draw a bit less power, it will also have to throttle less under full load (if the CPU model natively wants to draw more power than where you set the limits at), and it can thus boost the clocks a bit higher. This is the beauty of optimizing CPU Lite Load: When done correctly, it will not lower performance, it will actually increase it. Because within the power limits you set, when there's less voltage used for a given frequency, it can then boost higher than before. But it all has to be tested for stability.

Check the performance too:
Now, an important step for this is to first confirm that the performance remains roughly the same as before. Because on that "Advanced CPU Configuration" page in the BIOS, there can be a setting called "IA CEP Support", which is the "Current Excursion Protection" for the IA cores (= normal CPU cores). It wants to prevent any undercurrent or overcurrent from a narrow window that is expected for a CPU. Once it sees a break from the norm, it will work against it by also lowering performance a lot. With an active "IA CEP", when using a lower "CPU Lite Load" mode, the performance can massively decrease, depending on the configuration, similar to here. "IA CEP" then has to be disabled for the performance to get back to normal.

Why do i mention this "IA CEP" setting?
Because this is ideally checked before/during fine-tuning the CPU Lite Load mode. IA CEP on [Enabled] would not allow any instability, no matter how much you lower "CPU Lite Load", since it would also slow down the CPU to a crawl. So in the end, it's impossible to test for stability when it cannot become unstable (because IA CEP also lowers CPU performance accordingly). So if there is a huge performance loss when lowering CPU Lite Load, for example a much lower Cinebench score all of a sudden, then you have to first disable "IA CEP" to remove this overprotective mechanism and actually shave off the VCore you want while maintaining stability.

Is it safe to disable "IA CEP"?
Yes, because it is needlessly fighting the outcome of undervolting. By lowering the voltage, you are trying to do the best thing you can do to the way a CPU operates (as long as it stays stable), and IA CEP is working against it because it detects a deviation from a narrow "normal" range it tries to uphold. But we are know that lowering the voltage is not dangerous (quite the opposite), so we should not let IA CEP interfere in this instance. Furthermore, using an updated BIOS with the new 0x129 microcode will prevent the voltage spikes that can cause CPU degradation, so that's already the main line of defense. The recommendation to keep IA CEP enabled comes from a time way before BIOS updates with this new microcode were available, plus it was meant for default BIOS settings, not for hand-optimized settings. Here is more circumstantial evidence that disabling IA CEP should not cause the current to go crazy.

What to do when the option "IA CEP" is not available?
We know now, if IA CEP is available and you notice a severe performance drop (for example Cinebench score getting lower), then it has to be disabled, simple as that.
But what if IA CEP is not available as an option on your board? Then there's two possibilities, which you can't influence:
1) Performance stays the same when you lower CPU Lite Load (which is what you want, and is the case with my configuration), or:
2) Performance drops off a cliff once you lower CPU Lite Load enough, or otherwise try to lower the core voltage (bad, this would severely limit the undervolting capabilities).
If the option is not available and you notice a performance drop, then you either have to use the lowest CPU Lite Load mode that still keeps the full performance (often around Mode 9), or you have to use a more sophisticated undervolting method that tries to "dance around" IA CEP becoming active, using a combination of different settings. But that is beyond the scope of this guide.


Here is an example of what a user set for their specific configuration in the BIOS:

CPU.png


Now, this is just to illustrate where the settings are, this is not how everyone should set it! Everyone has to set their own values, because each cooling configuration can deal with a different amount of power draw (=heat) from the CPU before it starts getting into trouble. And each individual CPU has a different point at which it becomes unstable if you shave off too much core voltage. So never just apply other people's settings, good values for the power limits and CPU Lite Load always have to be found out through individual testing!

What stress tests are good? I would say, OCCT (up to an hour of CPU test, Linpack test), Prime95 Torture Test (20 minutes or so of Small FFTs), Cinebench R15 Extreme Edition mod (i have verified that this has been properly modded, also see here, and you'd run it at least a handful of times in quick succession), y-cruncher (you can search for guides on it), even running Geekbench a couple times in a row.

Conclusion about "CPU Lite Load": In my opinion, it is perhaps the best undervolting method on Intel MSI boards, because it's one of the easiest, it bundles everything in one simple setting. Stability has to be verified though, any undervolting can eventually lead to instability. Each step brings down VCore (the core voltage) for all load states a bit. Then the CPU can clock higher at the same power draw, making the performance with full load (at the power limit) improve, and of course it will also save power in all load states below the power limit. Limiting the power draw and reducing the voltages is a smart idea in general, but especially so when elevated voltages seem to be able to deteriorate 13th and 14th gen within a short time span sometimes.

Congratulations! You should now have a CPU that is running much more efficiently and won't overpower your cooling!


One final remark about taking over settings from other users that have the same CPU model as yours: This would only work if all CPUs of the same model also behave identically. But that is not the case, far from it. Within a CPU model, each individual CPU requires a different voltage for stability (lower-quality CPUs need a higher voltage and vice versa). This is basically the "silicon lottery". Here is a video showing the differences between CPUs of the same model (taking AMD as an example, but it's similar with Intel):


So, each CPU is completely individual. You can have one CPU that runs perfectly stable with CPU Lite Load mode 3, and the next one of the very same model needs mode 6 for stability. This is a difference in the silicon quality, the voltage it needs for stability. There can easily be a 100-200 mV difference (of voltage that is necessary to reach the highest boost frequency) between the highest- and lowest-quality samples of each CPU model. In the BIOS, they have to account for the lowest-quality CPUs (those that need the highest voltage). That's why, if your specific CPU is of higher quality than that (which usually is the case), you can immediately improve how it behaves when you lower CPU Lite Load down to its actual requirements.

CPU Lite Load is a sort of "additional CPU voltage" (additional VCore) from MSI, which aims to make all CPUs of varying silicon quality run stable. They have tested many different CPUs and determined a setting that will ensure stability, even if your individual CPU doesn't have a good quality and needs a higher VCore than other CPUs of the same model. Now, if you lower CPU Lite Load (while ensuring stability), you are fine-tuning it down to the exact VCore mapping that is sufficient for your specific CPU. You are taking off some of the additional VCore that MSI normally adds, because a lot of CPUs are still running 100% stable with less additional VCore than the high average value that MSI has determined.

But it also means, each CPU has to be tested individually. Just applying someone else's CPU Lite Load mode, because they happen to have the same CPU model, will rarely fit for your CPU. Either it becomes unstable because your CPU has a bit lower quality than that and needs a bit higher voltage, or you would have the potential to lower the mode more because your CPU has a bit higher quality. So better determine a good mode through your own testing (same goes for the power limits and such).


What about "Core / Core Ultra", like the Core Ultra 9 285K?

For the Z890 boards with Core Ultra, the BIOS looks a bit different, but it seems to have pretty much the same options at least, and i would assume CPU Lite Load works in a similar manner. However, due to the many architectural changes in Core Ultra, i cannot promise the same results, especially since the power draw reading in HWinfo (CPU Package Power) can be inaccurate due to the way Core Ultra is designed. It can be "calculated wrongly" depending on some other settings. So for now, i can only guarantee proper results up to 14th gen. Personally, i've used this CPU Lite Load setting all the way back from my old 9600K, generations in between, and up to my current 13th gen. Always the same procedure to optimize it.


My other guides:
RAM explained: Why two modules are better than four / single- vs. dual-rank / stability testing
Guide: How to set up a fan curve in the BIOS
Guide: How to find a good PSU


The following is for geeks only, others can stop reading :)


Addressing two minor criticisms of CPU Lite Load "Normal": Some people have pointed out before that this method of lowering CPU Lite Load "Normal" mode is not perfect in every way. This is not entirely false, but let me explain why i still think it's the best and easiest way.

The first criticism of tuning the CPU Lite Load "Normal" mode is that it picks its own value combination for AC Loadline and DC Loadline. AC Loadline is what actually influences the voltage, it's a voltage added by the BIOS to make up for electrical properties of the CPU socket and so on. The background is not so important to understand, the main thing is, the higher this value is, the more voltage is added. This not only takes into account the electrical properties of the board and the CPU socket, it also can make really bad CPU samples (when you lost the silicon lottery) run stable when set appropriately by default, or it can make CPUs be unstable from factory, if set too low by default. Lastly, if set too high by default, it will make the CPUs draw too much power and run too hot. The board makers have been going through various possibilities; Gigabyte at one time set the AC/DC Loadline way too high (equivalent to a high "CPU Lite Load" default mode on MSI), and even on MSI i recently saw one BIOS set Mode 22 which is among the highest possible, quite crazy. So they might have been trying to solve instability by adding more voltage, even though Intel now found that excessive voltage is what is causing problems.

For the DC Loadline, "CPU Lite Load" on Normal (just changing the mode) will pick some value which might not result in the correct power draw readings anymore. Apart from this one detail, the wrong value is not of much consequence. But if the cooling is such that power limits had to be set to prevent thermal throttling, then incorrect power draw readings will mess with the power limit throttling, it might set in too early or too late. That's where CPU Lite Load "Advanced" would come in.

In CPU Lite Load Advanced, you can select values for AC and DC Loadline seperately, without having some preset combination which can have the wrong DC Loadline value. So now you can set the DC Loadline so it results in the correct power draw numbers. Doing that involves using HWinfo Sensors, creating full CPU load, then looking at the CPU's VID requests (in the "current values" column), which is the voltage the CPU asks for from the board, and comparing it to the current VCore value (note that i don't mean current as in Amperes, i mean current as in, actual live values, not Min/Max/Avg). If those are near-identical, the correct DC Loadline value has been found. The correct DC Loadline value depends on the LLC mode, another setting which influences the voltage (and not to be confused with CPU Lite Load / CLL, completely different). A table of the AC/DC loadline values is here, but it's only a rough one, because each board model is built differently and would also need a bit different values, presumably.

But even if the reported power draw (CPU Package Power in HWinfo) is reported slightly wrong with CPU Lite Load "Normal", this doesn't affect us much, we can just go by the maximum CPU temperature to inform us if our power limits are properly dialed in, or if we still need to adjust them according to our cooling. Plus, explaining CPU Lite Load "Advanced" makes it more complicated, which means less people will do it. So i think CPU Lite Load "Normal" is a good compromise. More on this in my thread Explained: How the new BIOS versions are causing higher temperatures.

The second criticism: It has been said that CPU Lite Load sometimes cannot be lowered as much when you don't also tweak the LLC mode. That's because, when keeping LLC mode on Auto, it results in a big VDroop (VCore reduction under high CPU load, to prevent an overshoot when the high CPU load suddenly stops and the voltage regulator has trouble reacting fast enough, causing a voltage overshoot if VDroop was not applied). So with CPU Lite Load, when lowering the mode there, the VDroop also has to be taken into account. Let's say we have to stay at CPU Lite Load "Normal" Mode 5, because otherwise, together with the big VDroop, the voltage under load wouldn't be enough for stability. But when we then look at low- to mid-load scenarios, VCore might be slightly higher than necessary for stability, whereas without such big of a VDroop, it might've been stable on Mode 2 or so. So what has then been suggested is to also set the LLC to something more aggressive (starting from LLC Mode 8 and going up towards Mode 1, it gets more and more aggressive in preventing VDroop, but Mode 1 is far too aggressive, usually you'd never go beyond Mode 4 or 3).

What happens with tweaked LLC mode instead of Auto? Now the VDroop is (much) less, so under full load, the voltage drops less. And now in turn, CPU Lite Load (either Normal or Advanced) can be lowered further than with LLC on Auto, because since the VDroop is less (prevented more), a lower CPU Lite Load settings may result in the same voltage than before (with a higher CPU Lite Load mode and LLC on Auto). With the added benefit that, supposedly, low- to mid-load scenarios of CPU workload now also have lower voltages than before.

However, this last step doesn't quite pan out in my own recent testing on a PC i'm building for someone. Because even if i set CPU Lite Load "Advanced" AC Loadline to 1 (the lowest possible value) and select a mild LLC setting like Mode 7 (where the VDroop is still relatively big), i can't get anywhere near the low voltages and low power draw under full load that i can reach with just a lowered CPU Lite Load mode and keeping LLC on Auto. I'm talking a coupled dozen Watts difference here under full load, measured at the wall. In other words, lowered CPU Lite Load with LLC on Auto results in the lowest possible VCore and power draw under full load (while staying stable) in my testing, which is arguable one of the most important scenarios for which to keep the power draw low (to avoid cooling problems and improve the CPU's efficiency).
 
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Btw! Idk if anyone has watched this:


First he tries the intel profile and then he resets everything and does the intel recommendations manually enabling almost 1028272 things MSI has disabled by default, idk if this can help with voltage knowing intel default on cll gives you even more juice haha
 
Thing is: My current instinct is to stay away from any sort of OCing, given the situation with 13th/14th gen and the fact that the latest BIOS for my board that I can find is from April 2024 (Z690 Tomahawk DDR4). Should I just leave well enough alone for the moment or is it ok to try and squeeze a little more out of the CPU?

FlyingScot gave a good reply above, and you can deduct that all the "squeezing out" is done by Intel at the factory nowadays. Like most higher-up CPU models as of late, if you try to push it beyond what Intel already pushed it to, it's like squeezing a rock at that point. It will need substantially more voltage as soon as you try to crank it higher, but even that will only result in a slightly higher frequency and marginally better performance depending on the workload, but hugely increased power draw (it rises exponentially with higher VCore). The CPU will become very difficult to cool even with a nice water-cooling. This goes for all the i9 models as of late, but even for the 14700K, which is more extreme than any previous i7 model.

As has been mentioned, for your capable cooling, you're staying quite conservative (BTW, it would be better to see all the HWinfo sensors expanded with the <-> arrows, the Cinebench window isn't necessary to see, just the score as text). But this isn't a bad thing. Come mid- to late-August, the new BIOS should be out, then the cards are re-shuffled. I would leave it conservative for now, better safe than sorry.

As for the method of undervolting, lowering CPU Lite Load vs. negative Adaptive VCore offset, they basically work on the same thing. CPU Lite Load modifies the V/F-curve so it results in lower VCore, there is no need to combine different undervolting methods.


Btw! Idk if anyone has watched this:

That video is from almost three months ago, so it's outdated about this issue. It goes back to what i posted here: On May 9 when this video came out, all that was known was the first table with the initial Intel recommendations. Intel themselves didn't know the exact reason for the issues yet, they were just recommending certain limits to be set in order to decrease the risk as best they could, without killing performance in the process (well, one could argue that their proposed 125W Long Duration power limit for an i9 on the Performance profile would leave a bit too much on the table).

But once you optimize things like i describe in this guide, you don't need to overly concern yourself with most of those original recommendations, except maybe take them as an upper limit for added safety (not allowing more than 307A or 253W is probably not the worst idea, no matter how good your cooling is).
 
FlyingScot gave a good reply above, and you can deduct that all the "squeezing out" is done by Intel at the factory nowadays. Like most higher-up CPU models as of late, if you try to push it beyond what Intel already pushed it to, it's like squeezing a rock at that point. It will need substantially more voltage as soon as you try to crank it higher, but even that will only result in a slightly higher frequency and marginally better performance depending on the workload, but hugely increased power draw (it rises exponentially with higher VCore). The CPU will become very difficult to cool even with a nice water-cooling. This goes for all the i9 models as of late, but even for the 14700K, which is more extreme than any previous i7 model.

As has been mentioned, for your capable cooling, you're staying quite conservative (BTW, it would be better to see all the HWinfo sensors expanded with the <-> arrows, the Cinebench window isn't necessary to see, just the score as text). But this isn't a bad thing. Come mid- to late-August, the new BIOS should be out, then the cards are re-shuffled. I would leave it conservative for now, better safe than sorry.

As for the method of undervolting, lowering CPU Lite Load vs. negative Adaptive VCore offset, they basically work on the same thing. CPU Lite Load modifies the V/F-curve so it results in lower VCore, there is no need to combine different undervolting methods.




That video is from almost three months ago, so it's outdated about this issue. It goes back to what i posted here: On May 9 when this video came out, all that was known was the first table with the initial Intel recommendations. Intel themselves didn't know the exact reason for the issues yet, they were just recommending certain limits to be set in order to decrease the risk as best they could, without killing performance in the process (well, one could argue that their proposed 125W Long Duration power limit for an i9 on the Performance profile would leave a bit too much on the table).

But once you optimize things like i describe in this guide, you don't need to overly concern yourself with most of those original recommendations, except maybe take them as an upper limit for added safety (not allowing more than 307A or 253W is probably not the worst idea, no matter how good your cooling is).
Thanks mate!
 
Citay,
hi i have Intel 13900k i don't overclock I have the settings on default I still get current/EDP throttle limit On basic settings in bios from msi z790 carbon wifi bios is updated to
AMI BIOS7D89v1C3(Beta version)2024-06-199.68 MB
  • Description:
    - CPU uCode 0x125 updated.

I don't know how to fix that :( I looked at your listing, and I was perplexed.

Then I opened HWinfo64 to take some screenshots so you can see what needs to be changed.

then I did some before and after tests so you can see.

I also opened INTEL XTU and tested the speed optimizer before and after screenshots of that as well.

thank you for your time

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Well, the basic settings (with which you likely mean the Intel Default Settings) set a partly conservative, partly quite performance-oriented mix of power and current limits for your CPU. The CPU is allowed to draw 253W for about a minute, then it gets brought down hard to 125W for any high workload that goes on for longer.

Then what that Speed Optimizer in the Intel XTU does is set everything to way too high (and borderline dangerous) limits, which makes your CPU immediately overheat and enter thermal throttling. Clearly, none of those two approaches are the ideal one. The Intel XTU approach is downright foolish, with all we know now. But even before this whole CPU degradation issue, this wouldn't have been smart at all.

Let's look at the BIOS settings first, i assume when you select the Intel Default Settings. The latest Intel recommendations as far as BIOS settings are these. For a 13900K/14900K, it should have either 188W Short / 125W Long / 249A Current limit for the Baseline profile, or 253W/253W/307A for the Performance profile. With the note on the Performance Profile that the Long power limit is 125W as standard. So MSI went with that, 253W Short / 125W Long / 307A current limit (IccMax).

What happens with that? Well, once you start a high CPU load like Cinebench or the XTU test, the CPU is allowed to draw 253W of power and 307A of current (whichever is limiting first, the power draw or the internal CPU current) for just under a minute. After that, it's down to just 125W for the rest of time, which is then for sure the limiting factor. Note that this is completely not tuned to your cooling capabilities. It looks like your cooling could deal with the 253W/307A limit just fine (those are sensible limits even with high-end cooling that is more capable than that, just for safety's sake and because most performance gains above that point are "junk performance"). The 125W however that come into effect after a minute, those basically limit the performance to that of an i7 CPU.

Then the second approach is Intel XTU "Speed Optimizer". This should never be used anymore, in light of what can happen with these CPUs, and in light of the Intel BIOS recommendations. So they are basically violating their own recommendations heavily there (but Intel XTU is from before all this came out). With Speed Optimizer, they allow a crazy high 330W indefinitely (setting both power limits to that, Short and Long), and they top that off with allowing 425A internal CPU current, while Intel clearly state in their recommendations "ICCMAX (current limit) must never exceed 400A". So this is is completely out of the question to do.

What you should do instead is the following: Ditch Intel XTU, do everything in the BIOS. You have powerful monitoring available with HWinfo. In HWinfo, click the <-> arrow several times until you have more than two columns of sensors, so the space is used better. All the graphics card and drive sensors are not important for us.

What i saw on the sensors though is that your RAM is running at a catastrophically low DDR5-4000, this is terrible for RAM performance. No doubt because you are using four modules (4x 32 GB it looks like), bad idea to use four modules especially with DDR5, see my thread RAM explained: Why two modules are better than four / single- vs. dual-rank / stability testing. But that's for another day, maybe make a new topic about it, listing all your hardware. But this needs to be looked at too.

Back to the CPU: What you do is, run Cinebench to get a baseline performance and see what the temperatures are like. Now, i don't know what settings are active now, the BIOS ones or the Intel XTU ones, but they are both not very fitting, as we determined. So what you would do, you would eyeball power limits that your cooling may handle. In your case, it might just to well with the 253W number Intel mentioned, even though this number is completely arbitrary when it comes to the cooling performance, because they can't know what cooler you use. But it is a good upper limit in general, along with 307A current limit. So you enter that in the BIOS, i show two screenshots of that in the first post (well not those exact limits, but i show where in the BIOS the settings are, under OC \ Advanced CPU Configuration). Then press F10 to save and exit.

Do another Cinebench run with HWinfo sensors open in the background. Now we need to see how it does at 253W/253/307A as opposed to the BIOS defaults of 253W Short / 125W Long / 307A current limit. If the temperatures are ok (80°C range or even lower), we're done on that part.

Then we come to lowering the mode for "CPU Lite Load" in the second step of optimizing everything to your individual situation. There, you just lower the mode by a couple steps, then you run some stress tests like OCCT to see if it's still stable. You can continue to lower the mode in the BIOS until you start to see instability. No need to stress-test for hours on end, just 10-20 minutes and you usually get the idea if it's stable. So you raise the mode until you find the first stable one. And then you raise it by one more step for stability headroom. So then you're done in that step too.

Now your CPU is optimized individually. It will always stay cool enough, it will operate more efficiently, it will remain at full performance (if not, disable the option "IA CEP Support" in the BIOS as mentioned in the first post), and it will be at less risk of CPU degradation.

Hopefully i could explain it so it was understandable. I know, it's a bit of a complicated topic. But neither the BIOS nor that Intel XTU tool do it right on their own, they simply can't, it always has to be done manually once to find the ideal settings.

I guess Intel XTU would in theory have the means to do it somewhat correctly in an automated manner, but they would have to seriously change the algorithms to go for completely different goals. A 13th/14th gen i7/i9 shouldn't be overclocked whatsoever, because that's crazy with all the information we have. These CPUs are at the limit from factory, so when it tries to push them further, it is only causing problems and the calculation efficiency goes completely down the drain. And the higher voltages can aid in killing the CPU. So this "Speed Optimizer" belongs in the trash bin now, until they turn it into an "Efficiency Optimizer". These CPUs are already as fast as you can hope them to be from factory, if anything, you have to tone things down a bit because Intel took it too far.
 
Hello,
As Intel communication has changed, now I'm not sure if my CPU is safe or prone to degradation over time.
My setup :
13400 C0 (alder lake cores) / noctua U12S / MSI Z790i bios 1.70 / 2x16GB DDR5 6000

I thought that raptor core (B0 steping) where affected only but recent Intel statement tells that all 13/14th gen >= 65W are candidates to instability.
This CPU should have power limits PL1=65W and PL2=148W I think.
CPU Lite Load mode is set to 1, sadly tower cooler 288W/288W limit has always been set in BIOS :sick:
But in stress tests my CPU never exceeded 88W (p95 small FFTs) and 79W (CB) with temperature always < 62°C and low coreVID nonetheless. I thought it was OK but 88W sustained in test is more than the 65W limit...

What do you think about potential CPU damage ? Should I immediately update BIOS to last beta, set 65W limit or can I wait for the upcoming BIOS with intel new microcode fix ?

Here are CPU-Z and HWInfo captures:
 

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By now, and not only since threads like these, many Intel users will have heard (or have found out) that a lot of Intel CPUs can really push the CPU cooling capabilities to the limit and beyond.
Just wanted to quickly add my thanks to Citay as well bought a new pc with an i9 14900k in it and 2 days later found out about the issues and started looking for the brown trousers to wear! as I was getting thermal throttling issues and 100º temps.
Following your guide I've set power settings to 230w and dropped CPU lite load to 11 from Auto (16) it would go lower but this seriously affected the cinebench 23 score. With the settings now I'm getting a score of just over 32k and temps sit around the mid 80's. (It's also hot here in the UK at the moment) so I may have another tweak when the micro code comes out and the ambient temp in my office isn't sauna like. 😓
But thank you for giving such a good explanation of how it all works together and for putting my mind at rest.
 
ok i will do all that give me a day I will be back thank you

Sure. But please don't post such huge screenshots, make them a bit smaller or leave them as attachments only so there's just the thumbnail 😉

I thought that raptor core (B0 steping) where affected only but recent Intel statement tells that all 13/14th gen >= 65W are candidates to instability.

It is still unclear wether or not this is actually the case. I doubt it, and i will tell you why (but i may be wrong, i'm only human).

As a reminder, here is the release timeline:

Late 2021 - Alder Lake - 12th gen, Core i-12000 - Mainboards with 600-series chipset, Socket 1700 (new)
Late 2022 - Raptor Lake - 13th gen, Core i-13000 - Mainboards with 700-series chipset, Socket 1700
Late 2023 - Raptor Lake Refresh - 14th gen, Core i-14000 - Mainboards with 700-series chipset, Socket 1700
<--------- We are here
Late 2024 - Arrow Lake - 1st gen "Core" / "Core Ultra" - Mainboards with 800-series chipset, Socket 1851 (new)


For all we know (and this was the original information too), only true Raptor Lake dies are affected, but not Alder Lake. Neither in original Alder Lake form (12th gen) nor in rebranded form (13th/14th gen using 12th gen cores). For the rebranded Alder Lake ones, we're mainly talking about i5-13500/13600, i5-14500, as well as some i5-13400(F) and some i5-14400(F).

So, true Raptor Lake (+Refresh), meaning all 13th/14th gen K/KF/KS-models / all Core i7 and i9, we know they are affected due to a problem (presumably in silicon) leading to excessive voltages sometimes/somewhere in the CPU (that would be fixed soon in microcode), as well as an oxidation issue for some batches potentially due to wafer contamination in the factory.

Now, what is the scenario where it would be possible that Alder-Lake-rebranded-as-13th/14th-gen CPUs would be affected? Simple: If they somehow use the Raptor Lake microcode, and the problem was in the microcode. But there's not really a reason to use the Raptor Lake microcode for what are really Alder Lake CPUs that are rebranded. Nobody cared that some of those lower 13th and 14th gen models are Alder-Lake-based, and the performance was Alder-Lake-like, there is no scenario where Intel would have to use Raptor Lake microcode somehow.

Plus, and now we really come to the hard facts of the circumstantial evidence: There are no Alder-Lake-based CPUs becoming unstable. All the reports i've seen so far are about true Raptor Lake / Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs developing instability from early CPU degradation and/or oxidation. If for example my current i5-13500 (Alder-Lake-based) was also affected (which i guess it could be on the oxidation part, but most likely not from the degradation due to excessive voltage), shouldn't we have seen reports by now of people reporting instability with Unreal Engine games with such a CPU? But, absolutely nothing (to my knowledge, correct me if i'm wrong).

Therefore, i think we can be at ease about Alder Lake for now. Everything points to true 13th and 14th gen. If rebranded Alder Lake parts should be affected as well, it looks like a far slower progression of the issue, far less severe.

CPU Lite Load mode is set to 1, sadly tower cooler 288W/288W limit has always been set in BIOS :sick:

Don't worry about any power limits that are not even reached halfway. I have my limits set to 4096W in the BIOS (maxed out), because i don't even reach 150W under full load, so what should i care at what much higher point the limits are? They are irrelevant for me. You only have to worry about where the power limits are set if your CPU can actually reach them or if it reaches thermal throttling.

But in stress tests my CPU never exceeded 88W (p95 small FFTs) and 79W (CB) with temperature always < 62°C and low coreVID nonetheless. I thought it was OK but 88W sustained in test is more than the 65W limit...

This is completely uncritical. Also, do you run Prime95 Small FFTs daily as your hobby? If not, don't worry about its power draw. Cinebench is the toughest workload you can have in daily use.

And see above: It was ok and it is ok. The 65W are the PBP = Processor Base Power.

35-2160.52c47601.png


Here on the right would be how a 12900K behaves: 241W power draw indefinitely, because both power limits are at 241W.

The 65W figure is mostly useful for OEMs / system builders. They will radically hard-code those Intel numbers in the BIOS of the PCs they build for companies etc., so their cooling can cope with it. If this CPU is restricted to 65W (after some time), it guarantees one thing: That it can do its base frequency at that power draw, and for the system builders it guarantees that it can do so without overheating (because even their sometimes small coolers can deal with 65W rather easily).

So, the OEMs who want to make sure that their cooling can always handle it, for normal use with a good cooler it would be silly to set it that low. Well, with your CPU model, the 13400, we have a bit of a special case, in that it natively doesn't have that much higher of a power draw anyway. So even if you were to be paranoid and set a 65W Long Duration power limit, it would hardly be lowering the performance at all, even in fully multithreaded workloads like Cinebench. Unlike with something like a 14700(K) where such a low power limit would totally castrate it.

You can read here and follow the link there, maybe that explains it a bit more.

What do you think about potential CPU damage ? Should I immediately update BIOS to last beta, set 65W limit or can I wait for the upcoming BIOS with intel new microcode fix ?

I think that neither you nor i, with our rebranded Alder Lake parts, have much to fear here at all, especially not when we lowered our operating voltages already anyway. You have extremely low voltages, power draw and CPU temperatures. Your CPU probably won't degrade to the point of instability until decades from now, for all we know.

There is no pressing need to update to the current beta BIOS, you can wait it out until 2-3 weeks from now when the new BIOS is hopefully out. I then advise anyone to update their BIOS to that new version when it's out. There is a small chance that some of us might have to repeat the testing to find the lowest stable mode for "CPU Lite Load" (and then add one step for stability headroom), depending on how that microcode fix was implemented. But if my thinking is correct, then if anything, this would only be for the true Raptor Lake parts where the fix actually comes into play. And even there they might just hard-code some voltage limits for certain parts of the CPU, and not really affect the CPU Lite Load operation.

The power limits, you always determine by your cooling capabilities, and for the high-end CPUs, i would not really allow more than 253W even if the cooling could deal with more than that. If you have a lower CPU model that doesn't challenge your cooling, then the power limits don't matter, you can even leave them totally maxed out like i have done. They only become important when there is thermal throttling, and as a final limit of around 250W, because as i mentioned in the first post, anything above that tends to be "junk performance" which is bought with excessive rise in power draw for tiny additional performance gains.


Just wanted to quickly add my thanks to Citay as well bought a new pc with an i9 14900k in it and 2 days later found out about the issues and started looking for the brown trousers to wear! as I was getting thermal throttling issues and 100º temps.

Yep, the 14900K tends to do that when let off the leash, power draw goes off the charts, eats your cooling for breakfast. You can thank Intel for that. Well, the customer isn't completely innocent, such products that behave like highly overclocked CPUs from factory should not really be accepted like they have been (same goes for GeForce 4090 and the like). But i understand if people just want the fastest part and don't know or don't care much about the ins and outs on what exactly was done to achieve that benchmark-winning performance.

Following your guide I've set power settings to 230w and dropped CPU lite load to 11 from Auto (16) it would go lower but this seriously affected the cinebench 23 score.

Like i also mention further down in the guide, if the performance starts to drop off a cliff, you have to set "IA CEP Support" to [Disabled], it's on the same page of settings as the power limits and CPU Lite Load, just further below.

But thank you for giving such a good explanation of how it all works together and for putting my mind at rest.

Glad you found it useful!
 
if the performance starts to drop off a cliff, you have to set "IA CEP Support" to [Disabled]
I did read that, but thought to try in stages so I would know what was casuing any issues. Apart from CB23 the most demanding thing I do is run MSFS2020 with quite high settings not quite Ultra but high enough to make it all look more realistic. So far these settings have kept it all within acceptable limits, but like most I guess I'll start pushing for the extra bit of performance sooner or later:cool:
 
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For all we know (and this was the original information too), only true Raptor Lake dies are affected, but not Alder Lake. Neither in original Alder Lake form (12th gen) nor in rebranded form (13th/14th gen using 12th gen cores). For the rebranded Alder Lake ones, we're mainly talking about i5-13500/13600, i5-14500, as well as some i5-13400(F) and some i5-14400(F).

So, true Raptor Lake (+Refresh), meaning all 13th/14th gen K/KF/KS-models / all Core i7 and i9, we know they are affected due to a problem (presumably in silicon) leading to excessive voltages sometimes/somewhere in the CPU (that would be fixed soon in microcode), as well as an oxidation issue for some batches potentially due to wafer contamination in the factory.
Thank you citay for the summary. OK it looks like I should keep myself up to date on a more frequent basis
:biggthumbsup:
 
It can be difficult to keep up with the developments if you don't normally follow any tech news, so you can also just ask here on the forum what is best to do. One thing that will not change in the foreseeable future: Higher-up Intel CPU models have excessive power draw, which makes all the resulting heat very difficult to get rid of, even for good cooling solutions. This gives us the reason for step 1) in this guide, setting the power limits to what is actually appropriate for our individual situation.

Also, there will be additional voltage added by the BIOS, in order to account for CPUs of varying silicon quality. But when the BIOS adds too much voltage (high default mode for CPU Lite Load), yes all CPUs will be stable, but power draw goes through the roof even more than it already does. And if they choose to add very little voltage instead (low default mode for CPU Lite Load), the CPUs with slightly worse quality can already crash at default settings. So what do they do, they obviously choose to add more voltage on top, in order to prioritize stability. But then when your CPU is not such a bad sample, you have most of that voltage just driving up the power draw for no reason (since there is no "more stable than stable"). That gives us the reason for step 2) in this guide.

So even with everything dealt with in microcode, even with the next CPU generation that hopefully doesn't have any potential instability/deterioration issues, these steps will always stay useful. They are not perfect, they are not the solution for everything, there might be some settings soon that we also have to consider if we want an even better solution. But even these two settings alone can drastically improve the way almost any recent Intel system operates.
 
The latest Intel recommendations as far as BIOS settings are these.
On a side note: I'm currently watching Steve's/GN's latest video on the issue, which made me feel a little better about myself as it seems I'm not the only one who's confused by that table and the convoluted language Intel use in it. For starters: They don't label any of the profiles as "Default", but rather use that weird "Baseline"-term and then slap on a ton of asterisks and vague language like "not recommended - unless required for compatibility". Which smells a little of "legal said we need to cover our a$$es" to me.

I've simply opted to use the "Performance" settings from that table as this is what I *think* they recommend for the i7.

On another side note: One reason why I even started looking into this a bit deeper was that, after I had updated my BIOS to the most recent one a few days ago (April 2024, "1H", coming from "1F"), I encountered a BSOD during what seemed like a "no-to-light-load" scenario (watching a video on YT). This has never happened before on this system - neither with the i5-12600K I ran before nor with the i7 that's currently in there. The only other time I got freezes or BSODs was under certain high loads and when I was still running two identical but non-matched Corsair DDR4 kits - which I've long since replaced with a single G.Skill-kit that's on MSI's compatibility-list.

The error code for this crash contained a "Genuine Intel"-entry, and I did save the dump files, but I've no idea how to read or interpret those, so.... I did go back into the BIOS and raised my CPU Lite Load up by a step (4 to 5) and set PLs and ICCMax to those Intel recommendations - and so far the system has been running stable both under stress-loads, high loads (gaming and benchmarks) and while idling. One thing I did notice was that when I ran SFC after the crash, it did detect and repair faults - but I'm not sure if those were already there before the BSOD or if they were caused by the BSOD.


S.
 
I encountered a BSOD during what seemed like a "no-to-light-load" scenario (watching a video on YT).
If we go back in time to the pre-Raptor days, I would suspect a situation where voltage just dropped too low, and bumping it up a little (say 5-10mv) would have been my first course of action, which is essentially what you did. Hopefully, that will do the trick. If not, try a little more.

I wrote this long and winding post over here that is somewhat related to your other point, especially what I wrote for step 3 and 4. It might be related, but it might not. In your case, I’d consider the whole post more like a checklist for a pilot rather than trying to teach you the basics, which I’m sure you know already.
 
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The error code for this crash contained a "Genuine Intel"-entry, and I did save the dump files, but I've no idea how to read or interpret those, so....

The crash logs you can check with BlueScreenView (downloads are way on the bottom).

I did go back into the BIOS and raised my CPU Lite Load up by a step (4 to 5) and set PLs and ICCMax to those Intel recommendations - and so far the system has been running stable both under stress-loads, high loads (gaming and benchmarks) and while idling.

Yes, any inexplicable crash, if you lowered CPU Lite Load, it's a good idea to raise it by one step again, even if it was stress-test-stable before. And of course, during the initial tuning, go by the iron rule of finding the lowest stable mode, then setting it one mode higher anyway. Having such a stability headroom can be vital, you can't stress-test all possibilities, especially testing light- to mid-load properly is not that easy. Heck, you could even set it two modes higher if you want, one step more won't make the power consumption go through the roof yet.

One thing I did notice was that when I ran SFC after the crash, it did detect and repair faults - but I'm not sure if those were already there before the BSOD or if they were caused by the BSOD.

I have the feeling that you can run it on almost any PC you like and it tends to find something here and there. I ran it just now and it found this,

2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\BthA2dp.sys
2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\BthHfEnum.sys
2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\bthmodem.sys
2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\MsApoFxProxy.dll

Quick googling reveals lots of others have the same bunch of corrupt files. You can find problems even on a freshly installed Windows. Even errors in the event logs. I see it consistently. Windows is so complex and huge, there is no way to have it 100% error-free, i guess.
 
The crash logs you can check with BlueScreenView (downloads are way on the bottom).



Yes, any inexplicable crash, if you lowered CPU Lite Load, it's a good idea to raise it by one step again, even if it was stress-test-stable before. And of course, during the initial tuning, go by the iron rule of finding the lowest stable mode, then setting it one mode higher anyway. Having such a stability headroom can be vital, you can't stress-test all possibilities, especially testing light- to mid-load properly is not that easy. Heck, you could even set it two modes higher if you want, one step more won't make the power consumption go through the roof yet.



I have the feeling that you can run it on almost any PC you like and it tends to find something here and there. I ran it just now and it found this,

2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\BthA2dp.sys
2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\BthHfEnum.sys
2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\bthmodem.sys
2024-08-03 15:38:10, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\MsApoFxProxy.dll

Quick googling reveals lots of others have the same bunch of corrupt files. You can find problems even on a freshly installed Windows. Even errors in the event logs. I see it consistently. Windows is so complex and huge, there is no way to have it 100% error-free, i guess.
Yep I wouldn’t use whether SFC picks up corrupt data as a measurement of a failed undervolt / instability.

Equally, event viewer should only be used if you’ve had a problem and you’re trying to track it down.

Go into event viewer at any given time and you’ll find DCOM warnings, LSA warnings (relatively new issue), various errors that are of consequence. Often, Windows repairs or ignores these errors and you wouldn’t even know about it.
 
Yes. Event Viewer will log an error that Event Viewer logged an error! :bonk:
The only way to really make use of it is to create Custom Views for specific errors, assuming you can even find good info on what the error means, and its relative importance.
 
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Cool. We basically said the same thing.

It's never bad to have important and true things stated in different manners, this way it has more chances to "click" with the reader. For example when i notice that something i already explained in the first post of this thread was not fully understood by a user, i may also try to explain it differently again. Not changing the point in any way, just hopefully making it easier to understand. Sometimes i may also reply to others and basically state something similar in the end, this is not to make them look bad of course, this just reiterates and supports their point further. 👍
 
It's never bad to have important and true things stated in different manners, this way it has more chances to "click" with the reader. For example when i notice that something i already explained in the first post of this thread was not fully understood by a user, i may also try to explain it differently again. Not changing the point in any way, just hopefully making it easier to understand. Sometimes i may also reply to others and basically state something similar in the end, this is not to make them look bad of course, this just reiterates and supports their point further. 👍
Absolutely no worries, mate! Hey, we all need a little confirmation from time to time that we did not misunderstand something ourselves. I would be horrified to find out that I had mistakenly given someone bad advice. I see plenty of it in Reddit posts, like "1.6v for a 10900K is fine." I actually read that.
 
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