Adventure: Running 8/9th gen Coffee Lake CPUs on Z170 motherboard (ASUS Maximus VIII Ranger)

[itsakjt]

Ive used this guide now several times to upgrade old machines

THough every time I struggle with selecting the correct microcodes

According to your video, 'CPU-World.com' shows microcodes for cpus.. For example cpu i5 9400 has id SR3X5, when I search SR3X5 , I am not finding the microcodes

Isnt there a table that can be added to the guide to show which CPU's belong to each microcode?

506E3 - Skylake (6th gen)
906E9 - Kabylake (7th gen)
906EA/EB/EC/ED - Coffee Lake (8th and 9th gen).

906ED is for 9th gen R0 chips. 906EC is for 9th gen P0 chips. This is what I know.

 

[BobbyBoyGaming]

Ive used this guide now several times to upgrade old machines

THough every time I struggle with selecting the correct microcodes

According to your video, 'CPU-World.com' shows microcodes for cpus.. For example cpu i5 9400 has id SR3X5, when I search SR3X5 , I am not finding the microcodes

Isnt there a table that can be added to the guide to show which CPU's belong to each microcode?

[OFFER] Intel CPU Microcode Archives

This thread has now been closed. Please visit the new thread to access the microcode archive: [OFFER] Intel, AMD, VIA CPU Microcode Archives (1995-Present) Looking for a specific Intel microcode for a retail or ES/QS CPU? It could be here! intel_microcodes.zip The zip archive contains these...

winraid.level1techs.com

This is a good source of information, you can use this thread to find the microcodes available for your CPU based on CPU-Z information of the Family, Model, Stepping, Revision
Then this thread will allow you to see what the latest microcode version is. For 906ED it is "FA" I think.
Then you can go to https://github.com/platomav/CPUMicrocodes
And download it, and just rename it to one of the microcodes included in CoffeeTime to make the program work with the newer version. You just swap it in with the old microcode's filename in the program's directory.

 

[Kotello]

Hey @itsakjt ,

i am also currently running a 9700K on M8HA, but sometimes i get freezes and BSODs, mostly in idle and very randomly (just watching YT).
What voltages (overall) and settings would you suggest?
I have only changed IA AC Load Line and IA DC Load Line to 0.01 and LLC 4, and RAM to XMP

 

[itsakjt]

Hey @itsakjt ,

i am also currently running a 9700K on M8HA, but sometimes i get freezes and BSODs, mostly in idle and very randomly (just watching YT).
What voltages (overall) and settings would you suggest?
I have only changed IA AC Load Line and IA DC Load Line to 0.01 and LLC 4, and RAM to XMP

BSODs at idle means the idle voltage is too low for the switching during a heavier load (as in spikes).
To get around it, you need to increase the offset voltage a bit and play with IA AC Load Line and DC Load Line as well as LLC to find the right balance between the minimum voltage (idle voltage) and the maximum voltage (stress test).

Another way is to disable Enhanced C States or C1E which can help resolve this issue altogether at the cost of a very slight increase in idle power consumption. Power management features like Speedstep and Speed shift will still work.

Hope this helps and all the best.

 

[Kotello]

To get around it, you need to increase the offset voltage a bit and play with IA AC Load Line and DC Load Line as well as LLC to find the right balance between the minimum voltage (idle voltage) and the maximum voltage (stress test).

Ok, thank you. I will give it a try.
What would you generally prefer on an "almost stable system": give a CPU a bit more voltage or increase LLC (say from 4 to 5) instead?

 

[Kotello]

I also forgot to mention that this started to happen quite (more) often since i installed a 32 GB GSkill kit 3600@CL16 loaded as XMP profile. I had it already as a suspect, but on a overall unstable system is it hard to say what exactly causing that problems. The last few BSODs gave me WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR, so that XMP might be it...
Does (is?) the IMC in 9700K not able to handle those speeds?

 

[itsakjt]

Ok, thank you. I will give it a try.
What would you generally prefer on an "almost stable system": give a CPU a bit more voltage or increase LLC (say from 4 to 5) instead?

It depends on the kind of instabilty actually and the voltage difference. For a CPU that's unstable at load, I would give it more voltage at first. If I see that the offset needs to be increased by a lot (which will also increase idle voltages), then I will play with LLC until I get the desired voltage at load while keeping enough voltage during idle as well.

I also forgot to mention that this started to happen quite (more) often since i installed a 32 GB GSkill kit 3600@CL16 loaded as XMP profile. I had it already as a suspect, but on a overall unstable system is it hard to say what exactly causing that problems. The last few BSODs gave me WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR, so that XMP might be it...
Does (is?) the IMC in 9700K not able to handle those speeds?

It is mostly board related actually. The Maximus VIII series belong in the 1st generation DDR4 boards and the trace layout and timing optimizations (especially for newer, faster memory) are kind of responsible for it.
9700K should be able to run 3600 MHz without issue.
You can explore the DLLWbEn setting under timing config inside AITweaker. Set it to 3 or 4 and see if it helps with the stabilty.
Also, what voltages are you using for VccIO and VccSA?

 

[Kotello]

It depends on the kind of instabilty actually and the voltage difference. For a CPU that's unstable at load, I would give it more voltage at first. If I see that the offset needs to be increased by a lot (which will also increase idle voltages), then I will play with LLC until I get the desired voltage at load while keeping enough voltage during idle as well.

It is mostly board related actually. The Maximus VIII series belong in the 1st generation DDR4 boards and the trace layout and timing optimizations (especially for newer, faster memory) are kind of responsible for it.
9700K should be able to run 3600 MHz without issue.
You can explore the DLLWbEn setting under timing config inside AITweaker. Set it to 3 or 4 and see if it helps with the stabilty.
Also, what voltages are you using for VccIO and VccSA?

Ok buddy, i got it. Thank you!

My VccIO and VccSA both on Auto. What voltages should i set for them?

Also in order to eliminate RAM as an issue, i have removed those GSkill sticks and installed the old 2x8 GB Kingston kit known as very stable (used them before and had no problems whatsoever; however it was Skylake) and leave them on Auto running at 2666 MHz JEDEC, and guess what? After several hours system BSODed again with the error i have mentioned earlier (in idle watching YT).
So i am pretty sure the RAM isnt the issue here.

 

[itsakjt]

Ok buddy, i got it. Thank you!

My VccIO and VccSA both on Auto. What voltages should i set for them?

Also in order to eliminate RAM as an issue, i have removed those GSkill sticks and installed the old 2x8 GB Kingston kit known as very stable (used them before and had no problems whatsoever; however it was Skylake) and leave them on Auto running at 2666 MHz JEDEC, and guess what? After several hours system BSODed again with the error i have mentioned earlier (in idle watching YT).
So i am pretty sure the RAM isnt the issue here.

Try setting VccIO to 1.2 and VccSA to 1.15. Raise bit by bit if unstable. Do not go above 1.3.

And yeah, your BSODs are definitely because of idle voltage. Try disabling enhanced halt state or C1E under CPU config in Advanced menu.

 

[Kotello]

Ok, will do. Thank you!

I am kinda confused... Should i leave CPU voltage on Auto or find a sweat spot like in case of OC?
IA AC Load Line and IA DC Load Line should still stay 0.01? LLC?
Because if i leave Ai Overclock Tuner on Auto, it means Sync All Cores and the max speed is 4500 GHz, which is actually nothing. But if i put 46 or 47, its actually overclocking.
What am i doing here??

I dont wanna bother you that much, but could you please share your BIOS settings (you can save them on a USB stick as a text file). I would like to look into that, so some questions would resolve on its own. There is so many parameters you have to deal with, and i am completely new to Coffee mod Skylake on the other hand was not a problem at all. Sorry for my english btw

P.S. Some offtop: is it actually "normal" that the stock XMP is unstable??? I put mine to XMP a while ago, ran prime95 Large FFTs, and it started throwing errors almost immediately!

 

[itsakjt]

Ok, will do. Thank you!

I am kinda confused... Should i leave CPU voltage on Auto or find a sweat spot like in case of OC?
IA AC Load Line and IA DC Load Line should still stay 0.01? LLC?
Because if i leave Ai Overclock Tuner on Auto, it means Sync All Cores and the max speed is 4500 GHz, which is actually nothing. But if i put 46 or 47, its actually overclocking.
What am i doing here??

I dont wanna bother you that much, but could you please share your BIOS settings (you can save them on a USB stick as a text file). I would like to look into that, so some questions would resolve on its own. There is so many parameters you have to deal with, and i am completely new to Coffee mod Skylake on the other hand was not a problem at all. Sorry for my english btw

P.S. Some offtop: is it actually "normal" that the stock XMP is unstable??? I put mine to XMP a while ago, ran prime95 Large FFTs, and it started throwing errors almost immediately!

Hey man,

For CPU voltage, I won't recommend Auto as these boards often tend to set wrong CPU voltage because the boards do not "know" the CPU officially.
I would suggest setting it to a value which will result in 1.35 to 1.45V at full load.
As for the clock speed part, yeah that is a drawback. Since the board is programmed only to show up to 4 cores, you cannot set the clocks with a core wise value. In this case, use the Sync All Cores option and set it to 4.9 GHz. That way, you won't lose single thread performance and will be getting +200 MHz OC on all core load which is very easy to achieve with any 9700K.

As for the RAM, well they can never guarantee the XMP. It might need a lot of manual fiddling especially considering the Maximus VIII series boards' BIOSes are not properly optimized for newer RAMs.

 

[Kotello]

For CPU voltage, I won't recommend Auto as these boards often tend to set wrong CPU voltage because the boards do not "know" the CPU officially

Yeah i know. Thats why i put 0.01 to both IA AC Load Line and IA DC Load Line as recommended. In this case the Vcore wont get higher than 1.22 or so.

I would suggest setting it to a value which will result in 1.35 to 1.45V at full load

So if i fix the Vcore to ~1.35V, i can remove those 0.01 or just set to Auto, as they will have no meaning anymore, right? If so, then what about LLC? Where should i start at?

In this case, use the Sync All Cores option and set it to 4.9 GHz

This is exactly what i wanted to do. I am not a big fan at all setting different multipliers separately Per Core. So thats fine.

P.S. Speaking of 1.35 or even 1.45V... Man, that seems a little too high to me, isnt it?
Look at this:

http://imgur.com/CM0JZK2

This was prime95, 4.8GHz@1.28 LLC5. After about 7 minutes the program started throwing errors and i stooped the stress test.
The cooler is a be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5

Anyway thank you very much once again for your assistance!

 

[itsakjt]

Yeah i know. Thats why i put 0.01 to both IA AC Load Line and IA DC Load Line as recommended. In this case the Vcore wont get higher than 1.22 or so.


So if i fix the Vcore to ~1.35V, i can remove those 0.01 or just set to Auto, as they will have no meaning anymore, right? If so, then what about LLC? Where should i start at?


This is exactly what i wanted to do. I am not a big fan at all setting different multipliers separately Per Core. So thats fine.

P.S. Speaking of 1.35 or even 1.45V... Man, that seems a little too high to me, isnt it?
Look at this:

http://imgur.com/CM0JZK2

This was prime95, 4.8GHz@1.28 LLC5. After about 7 minutes the program started throwing errors and i stooped the stress test.
The cooler is a be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5

Anyway thank you very much once again for your assistance!

Actually, all the loadline settings will depend on the silicon.
But yeah, I will share you the BIOS settings. Right now, both my systems are packed due to home repair. Once it's done, I will share you the settings.

 

[jxdking]

So if i fix the Vcore to ~1.35V, i can remove those 0.01 or just set to Auto, as they will have no meaning anymore, right? If so, then what about LLC? Where should i start at?

I highly recommend to set AC/DC Load Line to 0.01 manually. Otherwise, ASUS will set it different value that you will not know. Usually, incorrect AC/DC Load Line results overvolt the cpu.
Also, don't leave VCore auto. I hardcode (manual voltage) to 1.28v with LLC Level 4. It works with my 9900K and also 9900KF that I have experienced.
You may have to lower "Current Limit Max". By default, ASUS puts 255 for max current. It was designed for 4C/8T cpus. The 8 core coffeelake is a different beast. I put 180A for the max current.

 

[Kotello]

Thank you, i will take it into account.
But as for now i just put VCCIO and VCCSA to 1.1V (x48 speed) and since then (3 days) there were no BSODs or whatever. Ofc its unstable thing cause as soon as i start prime95 it will crash, but there is no problems in games and under more or less heavy load. To get it more stable it will require more time.
Thank you guys

 

[itsakjt]

Thank you, i will take it into account.
But as for now i just put VCCIO and VCCSA to 1.1V (x48 speed) and since then (3 days) there were no BSODs or whatever. Ofc its unstable thing cause as soon as i start prime95 it will crash, but there is no problems in games and under more or less heavy load. To get it more stable it will require more time.
Thank you guys

Yeah so that means you are moving in the right direction. Set both to 1.15 to 1.175V and see if it is stable (both in idle and under load).
I don't use Prime95 as it puts an incredibly high load never achieved in real world scenarios. I use OCCT for stress test and of course benchmarks like AIDA64 and Cinebench.

 

[Kotello]

So i think i got it stable.
I left SA and IO at 1.1V, and put VCore to 0.955 Offset +0.08 @ 4.8GHz LLC4. About a week no problems: idle and prime95 small FFTs
Max Vcore is 1.264 and min idle is 0.688V

 

[itsakjt]

So i think i got it stable.
I left SA and IO at 1.1V, and put VCore to 0.955 Offset +0.08 @ 4.8GHz LLC4. About a week no problems: idle and prime95 small FFTs
Max Vcore is 1.264 and min idle is 0.688V

Excellent.
That means it's a great chip too.
If you don't want to lose performance on single thread (since 9700K boosts to 4.9 GHz), you can target 4.9 GHz also or more depending on your cooler.