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I am using a core i5 4690k, and I decided it was overclocking time. But, because I don’t have the best cooler in the world, and I have a SFF case, I decided to ramp up the turbo boost frequency so that it won’t run overclocked all the time.
Unfortunately this has led to some problems. I am unsure if it was doing this before I turned up the turbo boost, or if my cooler was just able to handle it, but I started to see notifications from psensor that my CPU temperature was going above 70°C.
I looked at i7z and lscpu, and both seemed to be telling me that my cpu was turboing to 4.1GHz (I set the turbo frequencies to 4.2 for 1 core, 4.1 for 2 cores, etc.) indicating that my CPU was under heavy load. Contrary to this, no applications were running, and the system monitor only stated a use of 0-4% on each core. After more investigating, it seems to run at 4.1GHz the vast majority of the time, while occasionally jumping down to lower frequencies then slowly ramping up again.
Now my question is: Did I do a bad thing by increasing the max turbo speed? is this caused by another setting in the BIOS, like the ones that tell the CPU to slow down when idling? Did my CPU get offended by the notion that it wasn’t good enough for me the way it was?
Ben
Posted 2015-09-03T13:31:42.407
Reputation: 141
If your CPU temperature is reaching above 70'c at idle, you have a broken cooler or it isn't idle. What clockspeed it's at when idling makes very little difference, it generates no heat while idling either way. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T15:30:50.660
It isn't idling, but it shouldn't be engaging turbo boost all the time. It idles at about 45-50*C in a warm room. I use a Zalman cnps8900q cooler, so it should be fine. It should be at 3.5GHz instead of 4.1, which is generating more heat. In fact, it should be decreasing it's clock speed because it has no work to do. – Ben – 2015-09-03T15:41:01.813
If it has no work to do, it is idling. The clockspeed is controlled by your OS (within BIOS/CPU preset limits). – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T15:43:36.883
Try doing
grep . /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/*to see what the available CPU speeds being reported to the OS are. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T15:48:45.193So Mint is telling my CPU to turbo? How do I fix this? Is there a command I can run to set the clock speed manually? If that is the case I could write a script that sets the clock speed based on CPU usage. – Ben – 2015-09-03T15:48:53.910
Anything you set will be overridden by the kernel CPU governor. You should fix the cause, not the symptom. Plus, doesn't overclocking the CPU then setting the speed lower completely defeat the point of overclocking? – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T15:50:46.720
What I want is for the clock speed to only be increased when it needs to be, not all the time so as to not generate extra heat. Basically I want to make the CPU dynamically overclock itself as long as it needs to and is at a safe temperature. – Ben – 2015-09-03T15:58:09.067
As I stated, it does not generate extra heat if it is not doing anything regardless of what speed it is running at. As I stated you need to run the above command to figure out the cause, instead of dealing with the symptom. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T16:02:11.757
Oh, sorry. I didn't see that post. The output is here: http://pastebin.com/QXeHT4Vq
– Ben – 2015-09-03T16:05:00.267Curious, can you also do
grep . /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpuidle/state*/*andgrep . /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/*please? – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T16:14:15.280First command: http://pastebin.com/zG70tY5a The second command returns a no such file or directory error.
– Ben – 2015-09-03T16:17:37.243I looked using nemo and there is no "stats" folder in cpufreq, but there are a few files. – Ben – 2015-09-03T16:26:41.870
Yeah, it seems to be missing when using the intel_pstate driver. I suspect it's a BIOS setting - you mention "ones that tell the CPU to slow down when idling" can you please list what those settings are exactly and what they're set to? Things like speedstep, c-state, and so on should be enabled. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-03T16:29:43.147
There's CPU advanced halt, C3 state support, C6/C7 state support, and CPU EIST function, which are all set to "enabled" as opposed to "auto" or "disabled". – Ben – 2015-09-03T16:34:08.923
@qasdfdsaq Have you figured out anything? – Ben – 2015-09-04T12:46:01.887
Sorry, forgot to check my Asus board yesterday, will do so later today. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-04T15:30:05.150
Sorry again. Everything looks fine. The settings on mine are named differently - but SpeedStep and Turbo ON, C-State support Auto, and CFG lock OFF and Asus multicore-turbo optimization off. I can't see anything wrong. FWIW, your pastebin shows it isn't running at full turbo but slightly lower, so it doesn't look like it's running at full all the time anyway – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-10T12:31:17.167
Yea, I dunno. I just really want this guy to last a long time, and if he's just gonna go and turbo up, increasing the voltage and increasing the heat, this relationship just won work. We can be friends if he likes the hot tub and I like the ice bath. – Ben – 2015-09-11T21:18:42.637
I have never seen a CPU that died of old age. I have been running a 2.6Ghz CPU overclocked to 4.0Ghz for six years, and it's still perfectly fine. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-14T15:01:02.137
Won't being at a constantly high temperature make it die really quickly though? – Ben – 2015-09-14T18:58:06.460
Only if it was constantly 110'c. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-09-14T19:30:35.940
Well, I guess it doesn't matter then. – Ben – 2015-09-14T21:29:27.013
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– bwDraco – 2015-09-16T21:12:06.950