My 8700K is idling at an unusual average of 3.8-4.0GHz and 1.120-1.125v. I am running at 4.9Ghz in adaptive mode and have C-States enabled. Windows power plan is on balanced default min processor 5% max 100%. Right now it is pegged at at 4.9Ghz, 1.280v on the desktop, Im not sure what gives.. Adaptive and Speedstep are working as I get minimum clock speed of 799Mhz and voltage 0.710v but the average is as above. :/
8700K high idle core clock and voltage.
Astral85
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My 8700K is idling at an unusual average of 3.8-4.0GHz and 1.120-1.125v. I am running at 4.9Ghz in adaptive mode and have C-States enabled. Windows power plan is on balanced default min processor 5% max 100%. Right now it is pegged at at 4.9Ghz, 1.280v on the desktop, Im not sure what gives.. Adaptive and Speedstep are working as I get minimum clock speed of 799Mhz and voltage 0.710v but the average is as above. :/
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Hi white owl,
There's nothing running in the background that should warrant a constant 4500-4900Mhz, just a few light background apps and Chrome.
It's averaging that clock speed and voltage anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours, so in other words constantly.
C-States is changed from Auto to Enabled which opens up the various C-States. All of the C-States are on auto bar C7 state set to C7s.
"What in the BIOS is set to auto instead of manually?"
Any particular Bios settings your referring to because there a few..
Monitoring with HWiNFO. The clocks and voltage are occasionally dropping, in line with what you would expect from adaptive voltage and Speedstep but for the most part something is keeping the cores pinging unnecessarily high.
I will try resetting the Bios tomorrow, maybe there is a rogue setting.
There's nothing running in the background that should warrant a constant 4500-4900Mhz, just a few light background apps and Chrome.
It's averaging that clock speed and voltage anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours, so in other words constantly.
C-States is changed from Auto to Enabled which opens up the various C-States. All of the C-States are on auto bar C7 state set to C7s.
"What in the BIOS is set to auto instead of manually?"
Any particular Bios settings your referring to because there a few..
Monitoring with HWiNFO. The clocks and voltage are occasionally dropping, in line with what you would expect from adaptive voltage and Speedstep but for the most part something is keeping the cores pinging unnecessarily high.
I will try resetting the Bios tomorrow, maybe there is a rogue setting.
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I reset Bios to defaults and idle behavior is the same. The clock speeds are jumping around a lot indicating that Speedstep and adaptive voltage are working but for the most part they're staying very high, average 4.250Mhz - 1.170v. It seems like only the smallest amount of CPU activity is causing the CPU to ping very high frequency's. 1.170v on the desktop is not would I would call power saving. Here is screenshot of that idle behavior:
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So everything in the BIOS is set to default? That's weird. I figured that would do it.
Ok, do you have a drive large enough to back up your C drive?
You can use the windows utility to back up your C with a system image (there are other ways but this is how I do it).
After you have a back up do a clean install. I realize this is crap but it's definitely gotten me an answer before. If that fixes it, it's a Windows thing.
Alternatively you can take just the files you want to keep and store them somewhere (I use my HDD) then just tell Windows not to format it or mess with it during the install.
Before that maybe use resource monitor to start killing things till the clocks drop. Chrome may be a culprit there.
You might try a BIOS update if it's been a while.
I've had this issue on Haswell and on my GPU separately and together. Usually using DDU to clean install the GPU driver fixes the GPU clocks getting stuck. Usually toying with Windows will get the CPU down if I already changed the BIOS.
EDIT: Just looked at your minimums and can see you dropped to 800mhz at some point so that's normal but staying pegged isn't. Something running is causing this.
Ok, do you have a drive large enough to back up your C drive?
You can use the windows utility to back up your C with a system image (there are other ways but this is how I do it).
After you have a back up do a clean install. I realize this is crap but it's definitely gotten me an answer before. If that fixes it, it's a Windows thing.
Alternatively you can take just the files you want to keep and store them somewhere (I use my HDD) then just tell Windows not to format it or mess with it during the install.
Before that maybe use resource monitor to start killing things till the clocks drop. Chrome may be a culprit there.
You might try a BIOS update if it's been a while.
I've had this issue on Haswell and on my GPU separately and together. Usually using DDU to clean install the GPU driver fixes the GPU clocks getting stuck. Usually toying with Windows will get the CPU down if I already changed the BIOS.
EDIT: Just looked at your minimums and can see you dropped to 800mhz at some point so that's normal but staying pegged isn't. Something running is causing this.
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Apparently starting with Kabylake architecture some power saving things have changed, we now have Speedshift vs Speedstep. There may be other things happening that I don't yet understand. I can see that Speedstep is working, it is changing dynamically, it just appears that the CPU like's to ping at high clock speeds frequently for only small CPU loads leading to the high average of 4.0Ghz. Running a game download in the background keeps it nearly pretty pegged at 4.9Ghz. There is really no heavy CPU usage taking place to keep the clock speeds so high, average total CPU usage with a download running is 6.1%. I will keep investigating.
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Honestly if it's not hitting it with voltage it probably isn't going to degrade it in any substantial way but I would like to know why a PC with the basics running needs +4Ghz.
I still blame things running in the background. If it were my machine I'd want to see what a clean OS does to the clock speeds. Stuff just running bothers me.
My g.skill mouse utility will peg my CPU usage and clock speeds so I make changes by running it and keep it from starting on start up. You need to look at your resource monitor to see what is using your CPU so you can disable it or change it's behavior.
If something can't idle reasonably I'll find a way to live without it.
You could read the excellent overclocking guides here on OCN written by Darkwizzie to perhaps gain an understanding of why this may be happening if it's not related to Windows.
If you haven't removed the bloatware and disabled telemetry stuff I'd definitely recommend doing so but it won't likely help this exact situation.
I still blame things running in the background. If it were my machine I'd want to see what a clean OS does to the clock speeds. Stuff just running bothers me.
My g.skill mouse utility will peg my CPU usage and clock speeds so I make changes by running it and keep it from starting on start up. You need to look at your resource monitor to see what is using your CPU so you can disable it or change it's behavior.
If something can't idle reasonably I'll find a way to live without it.
You could read the excellent overclocking guides here on OCN written by Darkwizzie to perhaps gain an understanding of why this may be happening if it's not related to Windows.
If you haven't removed the bloatware and disabled telemetry stuff I'd definitely recommend doing so but it won't likely help this exact situation.
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Looking at your HWiNFO it looks like there is something running in the background. Intel has stated if there is a task to be processed the CPU clock speed will boost to the maximum to accomplished the task as fast as possible using less power with speed shift because the processor returns to idle faster. Clock speed change and dynamic voltage is all about saving power at the wall or batteries. Processors in the past that don't have power saving features still live strong till this day running stock 24/7 and are replaced because they are obsolete.
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I notice you have a ASUS board, random, but I noticed similar behavior on my 8700k build until I disabled something like AsROGAura..... basically something linked to ASUS Aura in Task manager. The dropped my CPU clock right down as expected. maby give that a shot? Did kill the lighting though until you restart.
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How long ago was this? I'm guessing it might have been an older Aura version compared to the current release? The current version Aura software (at least on my machine) does not start with Windows and run in the background, only when I manually run the software. Because this software lacks a minimize to tray option I usually make my lighting changes and then close the software. What does run constantly in the background is the Lighting Service. This seems to be Aura's service that keeps the lights running on the board. Neither the Lighting service or the Aura software show excessive CPU usage on my machine though so maybe this was an issue with an older version?
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That HWiNFO shot may have been with a download running.
I see, so this is the change that comes with Intel Speedshift - using maximum boost to to accomplish tasks faster while somehow using less power? I am only beginning to read articles on Speedshift but it is being described as more efficient to keep the CPU at a slightly higher frequency the entire time rather than spiking up and down repeatedly.Intel has stated if there is a task to be processed the CPU clock speed will boost to the maximum to accomplished the task as fast as possible using less power with speed shift because the processor returns to idle faster. Clock speed change and dynamic voltage is all about saving power at the wall or batteries. Processors in the past that don't have power saving features still live strong till this day running stock 24/7 and are replaced because they are obsolete.
I did manage to get the clocks averaging at around 2500Mhz today. Simply killing the apps with the highest CPU usage seemed to do the trick. In this case it was Corsair Link software but more so my Soundblaster software which uses a good constant 3%. At this point I had a handful of browser tabs open but really was just sitting there looking at the clocks. Right now I have 21 browser tabs open and I am idling at 3.8-4.0Ghz again! From what I've briefly learnt about Speedshift maybe this is by design to keep the cores up higher. I was running a good 8-10W lower at 2.5Ghz (average) but is that really going to matter?
I pulled my hair out about this too used task manager killed as many tasks that were possible still never at a 800mhz rest
I raised the issue in another thread I came to the conclusion it is a perceived issue and is normal
the sudden drop in clocks is when I killed the aura software but even then keeping CPU below 3% it still hit top clock
I played around in the bios and got a better OC still didn't touch c states but does hit 800Mhz a lot more I think it was the difference between adaptive and offset mode but I am not 100% sure
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Its the latest version of Aura. I should have added, I do not keep the application open either, nor does it open with Windows. Rather its the Lighting services you refer to. With that said, it does not seem to sadly stay as low as I thought. Looked like when I was initially messing around with it a while back, I only looked at it for a few mins after disabling Aura related services which seemed to drop the clock speeds for the short duration I was looking at it. Not enough to draw and conclusions. So running it over an hour or so this morning I got the enclosed readout.
The Orange Line shows when I disabled ASUS ROG GPU lighting. Red line shows when I disabled ASUS related stuff including lighting services. So while it does not rest steady really, there are points where it runs at base clock speeds much more. To be honest, it looks like even a tiny bit of activity with this CPU just gets it boosting and not too much else we can do. This build it ran on is brand new so nothing much on it as it is.
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There was a time where I'd disable speedstep to keep my CPU always at 4.7ghz while using C States to drop the voltage. I only changed it when I couldn't afford to game anymore.
My chip 3 years later still does 4.5ghz at 1.25v. I may start pushing it again now that I have a better GPU.
My chip 3 years later still does 4.5ghz at 1.25v. I may start pushing it again now that I have a better GPU.
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Speed step and Speed shift do the same thing increase clock speed from idle that was saving power. Speed shift is newer design to reduce lag when a program needs to finish completely as fast as possible. Example when using the web browser do you want it to run full speed quickly or do you wan't lag clicking on something with low clock speed. The way speed step and shift saves power, it take so many clock cycles to complete a task, so increasing the clock speed keeps full power for a shorter time then the processor is idle saving power when the task is done. Speed shift a more responsive processors: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9751/examining-intel-skylake-speed-shift-more-responsive-processors
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Same for me. CPU usage avg is 5.2% tonight and 4.15Ghz avg! This is with a few browser tabs open, listening to music and background apps I have not closed.
The change is that Speedshift is now built entirely into the CPU itself which makes the process of speedstepping much faster than the how the OS would do it. I don't how well current monitoring programs are reading this new type of speedstepping. It now happens at micro-second intervals and I am not sure if programs have been updated to be able to monitor that. I am still trying to make sense of it. It may be normal but we don't fully understand it.
I have heard that the Aura software and lighting service have seen excessive CPU usage on some CPU's and motherboards. I myself don't seem to be affected. Is that still an issue for you? What are your C-States currently on?
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It does not affect CPU usage at all or its so minuscule on my platforms, X99, X299 and z370. Only thing it does seem to do is have the frequency go up and down more consistently then if you disable it on z370. Don't see the same thing on X99 or X299 so really just suspect what is being seen is pretty typical behavior of z370 CPU's, regardless of Aura / Lighting services etc.
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