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i5 13600k - Undervolting with CPU Lite Load / HWiNFO Results : intel
Main Post: i5 13600k - Undervolting with CPU Lite Load / HWiNFO Results : intel
Is HWiNFO64 safe
Main Post: Is HWiNFO64 safe
Top Comment: Yes it is. https://www.hwinfo.com/download/
[PSA] Do not trust HWINFO/other software tools to measure CPU voltage. Dont have an oscilloscope? Do this instead.
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As many know HWINFO64 and other tools expose a lot of sensor's information in your PC. The CPU is not an exception and as such you have a plethora of things to measure and track using such software. One of which is the VIDs for each CPU rail, the actual provided VCore, and on better motherboards, actual voltage for other rails too.
But people misunderstand these measurements. HWINFO has a polling rate by default of 2000ms and most sensors are instantaneous values. This means, HWINFO will show that sensor's value at the specific instant the polling happens.. Even if you lower the polling rate to say 100ms, data may seem to 'even out' as you multiplied the sampling by 20x, but this is not enough on processors that change PStates and VID requests at nanoseconds. Other values are weighed down, so the sensor already samples it internally and calculates an average before sending the value, so they cant be trusted either with this matter.
Because of this, I see lots of folks saying 'hey my Raptor Lake CPU doesnt go beyond 1.4v, so I am safe. NO, that is not how this works, your CPU may or may not go beyond that voltage and here is an example below
I have a stock 13600K, am on 107 microcode, no undervolt for now, ICCMax 260A, MCE disabled, IA CEP enabled, AC/DC LL to 1.1mOhms each. Only modification is a very tight PL1/PL2 just because my ITX cooler cannot handle more.
My VCore on HWINFO doesnt go beyond 1.3v, and VID just a little bit below at 1.29ish volts. So one would think I am on the safer side. But no. The actual way to know if your CPU hits a given voltage at any point in time is by using IA VR Voltage Limit* setting in your bios. This setting hard caps the voltage the VRM will feed to your VCore rail, and the neat part of it, is that HWINFO and other tools also track if performance is limited by this specific limit called IA: Electrical Design Point/Other (ICCMax, PL4, SVID, DDR RAPL). The other SoC domains have this sensor too (Ring, iGPU/GT)
After setting this value to 1.325v, I realized my CPU was constantly hitting 'Yes' on this limit while before it wasnt at all. Then I tried 1.35v, much less frequently but still hitting 'Yes' on this limit, specially on single core/light load workloads.
So my suggestion is this, for people that have HWINFO/other tools report under 1.4v peak VID/VCore at any given time:
- Check whether on lightly threaded scenarios it hits 'Yes'. Why lightly threaded? Because ICCMax is another cause of this limit triggering, as this value is projected and not actual Current. You can disable E Cores momentarily to rule ICCMax out if you want.
- (If it hits 'Yes') Check your ICCMax, if its still lowish and your VRM can handle it, increase it a little bit until the sensor goes 'No' at lightly threaded workloads (eg a single thread benchmark). Otherwise skip this step. If you are already on insanely high ICCMax, say >400A. Go for the bolded suggestion at the bottom of this post straight away and ignore steps 3-9
- (If it stays on 'No') Set your IA VR Voltage Limit To something barely above your highest reported VCore. In my case I was getting 1.3v, I set it to 1.325v. I would say anything below or equal 1.4v should be good, but no one knows for certain really.
- Save your changes and reboot.
- Repeat the workload you used to measure your peak VID/VCore.
- Check whether IA: Electrical Design Point/Other (ICCMax, PL4, SVID, DDR RAPL) changes to 'Yes', and how often it cycles between 'Yes' and 'No'
- (If it does frequently) Repeat steps 3 but with a little HIGHER voltage (always staying under 1.4v).
- (If it doesn't at all anymore) Repeat step 3 but with LOWER voltage.
- Repeat steps 4-6.
- (Optional) Track performance with benchmarks as the more you hit 'Yes' on this limit, the more limited boosting behavior will be, going for lower Pstates/clocks which will result in lower performance. I stopped checking when I felt I was hitting 'yes' very seldomly and single core performance was within 1% of my unlimited results.
People that are on values already higher than 1.4V can instead use this setting to hard cap your voltage to a safer value like 1.4v or below (no value is 100% safe, everything is conjecture as we dont know the design goals with this architecture, only Intel knows this). This will mean you will most likely lose performance, as you wont be able to reach the Boost PStates that required >1.4v at a given thermals/current as often. To regain the ability to hit these PStates again, you will most likely need to undervolt with IA CEP disabled to avoid clock stretching/losing performance
With this way, you will eventually narrow your actual peak VCore to a very small range, so you actually know for certain the CPU doesn't go beyond this value, in order to make better undervolting/RMA/etc decisions. Not everyone has oscilloscopes at home so I think this can help people out.
Top Comment: Just set the IA VR limit to 1.4v (or 1.45v if you want) and call it a day. This creates a safe buffer for even the worst transient spikes. You've added an unnecessary amount of complexity to something that's actually relatively straight forward.
PSA: STOP USING HWMONITOR. USE HWINFO64 AT ALL TIMES. REFER TO EFFECTIVE CLOCKS. That is all.
Main Post: PSA: STOP USING HWMONITOR. USE HWINFO64 AT ALL TIMES. REFER TO EFFECTIVE CLOCKS. That is all.
Top Comment: Interrupting this to point that both devs are single devs, and should deserve more praise than critics. The dev from cpu-z - hwmonitor is an absolute legend. Maintains cpu-z, hwmonitor, and while they aren't perfect (are there any ?), you're getting them for free, and you're getting a good chunk of info and features from them. Overclocking/monitoring devs are very few, and while criticism is always welcome, please keep it constructive. You all tend to view us like gifted, lazy devs. Did you know, for instance, we have all a hard time getting our hands on new CPUs before launch ? They reserve those few samples for press or YouTubers. Us ? While we're useful to many, we're afterthoughts at best, or we just wait for enthusiasts to keep up to date and test for us. There are exceptions - in my case, Cooler master, Nzxt and Asetek . I'll keep this short as this is turning into a rant, but I want to point, looking at some comments, that you should not act like you're entitled - calling free software shit when it's doing a good, not perfect, job is very questionable.
Is there any downsides to running HWinfo64, just... all the time? Does it cause any meaningful strain on hardware / resource usage? *Courtesy photo of cat attached*
Main Post: Is there any downsides to running HWinfo64, just... all the time? Does it cause any meaningful strain on hardware / resource usage? *Courtesy photo of cat attached*
Top Comment: no it just a monitor
What does the HWiNFO64 driver actually do?
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Hi, so I just installed HWiNFO64 on my new laptop, and was copying over my settings from my Desktop, when I looked at the "Driver Management" tab only to realize my Desktop never installed the HWiNFO driver... Yet HWiNFO seems to have worked fine for me for years?
I can't seem to find info anywhere on what the driver actually does, all I can find are posts from people not being able to install it. Does it improve sensor accuracy? Does it let HWiNFO run before login? Does it give access to more sensors or hardware information? And it says it automatically installs and uninstalls the driver unless "persistent driver" is selected, but I'm not sure if it's ever been installed on my systems?
Closest thing I can find to anyone else asking this question is another reddit post where someone asked what the Driver Management tab is for, but they never got any responses.
Top Comment: "Driver Management" tab where? My HWINFO64 doesn't have one.
How accurate is HWinfo?
Main Post:
I have here my SSD result from Original SSD manufaturer program, CrystalDiskInfo & HWinfo64
Hwinfo reports that my SSD life span is about 5% but it seem the other 2 program is saying the health is still good?.. and should I be worried?
Top Comment: with over 400tb written on a 240gb SSD, yeah, 5% life is about right lol
Do you leave any perf mon tools like HWINFO in the background during normal use?
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I usually leave HWINFO on all the time as I like to look at stats and make sure that my peak temps are fine when gaming (they always are). However, I can't help but once in a while, a microstutter could be caused by constantly monitoring so many variables, even though I reduced the polling rate to every 3 seconds. Any thoughts on this?
Top Comment: I run hwinfo64 at all times soon as I boot till I shut down my PC
How do I download hwinfo64?
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Sorry if this is a dumb question, but when I hover over the free download button, it pops up with scourgeforge, local, sac ftp, and old versions. Which one am I supposed to pick?
Edit: and what’s the difference between installer and portable? Which do I pick for that?
Top Comment: Just select the Installer version. After select location to download from. I just use Local. Then, click on downloaded file to install.
r/techsupport Guide: Troubleshooting with HWiNFO
Main Post: r/techsupport Guide: Troubleshooting with HWiNFO