- 2 Posts
- 4 Comments
Thanks, everyone!
Believe it or not, but in over 20 years of PC-gaming, this is my first venture into higher end CPUs (never went above i5-levels before this 14700KF), so I need to do some reading up, I think.
Re the AiO: I’m pretty sure it was one of the more popular HW-channels (GN, perhaps?) who had tested both 360s and 240s using a load of 250W. The Lian Li 240 I have was up there with larger ones in their ranking, so I thought I’d be good.
Having just checked real world performance in Baldur’s Gate 3, Act III (which is pretty CPU-intensive), it seems to have worked, so far. The CPU (well, one or two P-cores) did boost up to 5.6 GHz plus performance in the city was markedly improved. Load on individual cores was a lot lower whereas with the 12600 I was on the mid 90%s at times on one or two cores.
Plus the GPU now boosted higher (I have it OCed, but before it never went all the way to the maximum frequency I set) and my FPS (once I took the limiter off) were quite a bit higher and more stable, too. Before it was still very smooth, mind you, but they were dipping below 60 at times, now they were always above 60 and went up into triple digit territory, even while walking around the city with “dynamic crowds” enabled. CPU drew a little more power than the 12600, but that’s to be expected.
Temps while gaming were totally fine and not any higher than with the 12600 - in fact, I’m pretty sure they were actually a tad lower.
This is still with the 288/285W limit set in the BIOS, BTW… I’ll reboot and change to the lowest setting once I’m done typing here.
Besides that, I should probably also check the Turbo Boost/Duration settings in the advanced CPU config screen and make sure they match Intel specs.
This board doesn’t have “detailed” settings for the cooling solution. Like I said earlier: There are just three “generic” ones (“stock cooler”/~250W, “tower cooler”/~285W and "liquid cooler/~4096W).
From what I just read on the MSI-forum, these motherboards generally seem to be set pretty aggressively out of the box. On mine for example, it’s set to the liquid cooler option by default - not sure about individual PL1/2 settings, though.
Not a huge issue with the 12600K, I suppose, since that thing at stock speeds can’t draw near enough power to cause super high temps. But it seems the i7 is a bit more greedy when it comes to juice … :)
S.
Thanks!
It’s not really called MCE in an MSI BIOS, I think - not sure what it’s called, but the three options/labels you can set are, basically, three different generic cooling solutions (think they call them “CPU Cooler”, “Tower Cooler” and “Liquid Cooler” … or something along those lines.
I did go back into the BIOS and changed the setting from “Liquid” (which is 4000-something W) to “Tower” which is… err… 288? 285W? Did another run in Cinebench 24 and let it finish this time. CPU never drew more than the value I had set in the BIOS. I’d say with that setting, my AiO is at the upper limit of what it can reliably cool … like 250 to 270W. Beyond that, it gets a bit overwhelmed.
CPU didn’t boost any higher than 5.5 GHz this time, either and three of the P-cores did hit 100°C again, but only for fractions of a second. Since I won’t be running this thing at constant “all-core 100% loads”, I *think* I should be good - but perhaps I’ll just set it to the lowest settings (255W IIRC), just to be safe. At least until I can scrounge up the cash to get a 360mm AiO… :)
Although I do wonder whether even a 360mm could keep temps truly in check in Cinebench24 - especially with the “no limits” MCE-setting. I hadn’t used that latest version of it before today and it seems to be quite a bit more demanding than the version I had used before.
Neither Time Spy (go figure :D ) nor 3DMark’s CPU Profile pushed the CPU as hard as CB24 did - not even by a long shot.
I did see slightly higher peak power during some of the CPU-tests in Passmark’s performance test. Think it went up to 340 W for a second or so… yikes!
Still: None of this explains why the CPU will hit these high power-draws when it’s not even boosting to its stock max turbo frequency. I mean… 300+W and the P-cores didn’t even go up to 5.6 GHz for even a second.
*shrug*
:)
S.
MCE on?
Yup.
Why are you ‘scared’? Once hitting 100 the CPU will just throttle and reduce turbo clocks to a sustainable level, if you want a score, leave it for 10 minutes.
Well… I wasn’t quite sure about the thermal limits of these things and you gotta admit… this does look a bit scary, doesn’t it? :D
It also weirded me out that the CPU would hit that high of a power-draw without even boosting to its stock max - when Intel claim ~50 W less peak turbo-draw.
S.
Odd.
I changed quite a lot of the HW on this system in the past few months and other than Windows prompting me to re-activate my license, nothing really happened. I think that was when I completely swapped my RAM (4x8GB to 2x16GB). Changing GPUs didn’t cause Windows to freak out (as it shouldn’t) but even when I upgraded my CPU from 12th to 14th gen, I didn’t have to do anything. And that’s with a Win 11 Pro license I bought from one of those “Their prices are so low, I can’t believe their legit”-vendors. :D
In any case: Thanks everyone for the clarification. I guess something must’ve changed with this ME-update then because when I updated my MSI board’s BIOS the last time it was with a BIOS that did enable 13th gen support - and there was no separate ME-update. Also pretty sure this most recent one I grabbed wasn’t the first to support 14th gen, so maybe this has something to do with that new APO-function Intel just introduced for 14th gen?
Not sure… but updating ME first (using the files from MSI’s support page) then flashing the BIOS worked fine for me.
S.