Getting Sick of Haswell Extreme (4940MX)

Hello,
I bought an Alienware 18 recently and Im quite happy to what this machine is capable of; however, I decided to go for 4940MX over 4910MQ as the price difference is negligable. Anyways, Ive followed Mr. Fox's overclocking guide and I could get my chip to run consistently @4x4.2 Ghz & @1.205v-1.21v with a temp range of 85C -90C under heavy load and stress tests. My target is to run the chip @ 4.3Ghz -4.5 Ghz, unfortunately, my chip goes berserk if the core voltage is above 1.25v. All my core temp become above 95C under benchmarking for some reason. Its quite possible that I lost the silicon lottery as always, or Im doing something very wrong.

On a side note, I applied CLU TIM on that CPU, it could be a lousy job there, but then I wouldnt get such temp @ 4.2Ghz.

Please share your thoughts and sorry for my garbage English.

 

I hate to say this but Haswell normally run very hot. I only have a 4900mq but from reading other people's post and owning a 4900mq, these generation of intel processors run very hot.

 

Which temperatures do you get during a Cinebench 11.5 and Wprime 1024 stability test with 4.2ghz and 4.3ghz? And how high are the score's? You run 1.205v-1.21v with 4.2ghz; But how high volts with 4.3ghz? There is a big variation on these Hotwell processors, some need little while others need higher voltage for them to run stable during high overclock. Which bios version are you using? Some say that you should use A09 which might have a better fan profile. What ambient temperature have you at home? Ambient temperature also determines how high the temperature is on the processor under heavy load.
Also read this thread... http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/apply-liquid-ultra-on-cpu-heatsink.773640/

 

Dont know how to fix quoting...

 

You must use liquid ultra also on the heatsink... Can you run wprime 1024(8 tread) stress test version 1.55 and monitor temperature with Hwinfo64 or similar software ? I also use Cinebench 11.5 test for testing of the processor. Most people test with this version and not Cinebench version 15. Use Fan's on full speed if you run benchmark tests. You can manually run all fan's on max speed with Hwinfo64.

 

will do when i go back home

 

can you share a screenshot of your XTU settings on how you get a 4.2 GHz stable overclock on 4.2? Mine can't go stable even on 4.1 under heavy load despite me using Liquid Ultra.

Also share our BIOS screen settings of the overclock please

PS: when I say stable, I mean the system should be able to run wPRIME stability test with 8 threads/ 4 cores only then to me a system is stable as that simulates a heavy workload under stress

 

heck my attachment.

1.18v 4.2Ghz This is my score on this bloody chip, this is why alienware went to BGA, this is why alienware 18 was removed from store its because of this stupid haswell. Can you imagine how many units were returned cuz of this chip! how many millions dell lost cuz of this chip!? I wonder why they didnt drop a message on their site stating that 4940MX-4930MX is a total ********, this is why Im buying AMD products next time, I dont care about performance anymore, I want intel to lose percentage of market share. Intel should never scam us again.

 

Rep added! thanks a lot

what about your cache frequency settings / voltage in XTU. Can you please post a screenshot of that?

 

I set the cache @ 4.2 GHz without changing any other parameter like voltage or anything.... here are the results / temps......what do you think? is it good or too high of a temp?

When I'm not benching the temp is 50C

 

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Your temperature seems fine, my CPU idling temp is around 50C as shown below, your voltage settings are wrong, click on static tab in XTU, and please include core voltages in your next post. Make sure your voltages is static and not adaptive.

My cache volt & settings are set to defaults @ 4.0 Ghz; however, I tried to run it @42ghz and it increased the temp. If your system is stable, there is no need to pump the cache voltage. Anyways, you can add 25mv adaptavle volt as shown in the pic. You can also get a more stable system by disabling the following options:

1- Processor Integrated VR Fault.
2- Processor Integrated VR Efficiency Mode.

You should run XTU stress test for 12 hours or so to confirm that your system is fully stable.

Note:
The performance gain from oc ucore (cache frequency) is not that much. I recommend setting it to defaults. You would get less temp for sure.

 

Thanks a lotttttttttttt man! I can't thank you enough! I feel like I just bought a new laptop thanks to you with this stable OC! thanks for the reminder about the voltage I had it on Adaptive before as shown in the screenshot below but no I changed it to static and disabled the Processor Integrated VR Fault / Efficiency Mode.

Temps are very cool @ 4.2 GHz cache clock if I notice them being too high for my liking then I will take them back to 4.0 GHz. but let me run this like this for a while.....






BTW, these are my temps while typing this and just surfing the net and have 1 torrent downloading in the background:

 

Click on static, your core still running @ 1.25v, you dont want that for 42 Ghz



Run stability tests, Intel XTU is a decent one, even though you passe Wprime test with no system crash, that doesnt mean your system is stable. Run some benchmarks Cinebench or XTU benchmark and report back the temp.

Ive got a ****ty lottery chip as always ^^" mine is stable @ 42 Ghz 1.2v. I had the option to buy a laptop with 4930mx in it, but I thought intel might improve the lottery ******** in 4940mx, too bad I was wrong .

Also, if you set the system power management mode to high performance, all your cores are going to run at their max frequency. Set it back to "balanced" to get dynamic frequency and less idling temperatures.

Glad I managed to help you out. So far so good for you, I think you can pull up to 4.4Ghz.

 

Yes I did set the core voltage to static after you mentioned it

I will try 4.3 GHz. then 4.4 GHz. later one in a few days once I am sure this is stable and I will also run the tests you mentioned.

Now when incresing to 4.3 and 4.4 GHz. what are the settings I need to change? anything with the voltage? more or less? and how much? I am a total noob to this......also please mention any other settings that need to be changed if upping the clock to 4.3 / 4.4

 

This is an example of a **** chip. Max 98C, I can cook pasta while using "Intel Extreme 1100$ Processor"

 

oh darn!

man I just played a few videos just now and my system froze then shutdown even though the idle temps / max temps were fine in wPRIME

going to 4.1 GHz. now anything you recommend to change in the settings? ohh wait let me try putting the cache frequency to 4.0 instead of 4.2

 

thats because you have also 330W power supply. Increase the core voltage to 1.21v and see what happens. Told you, you have a good chip, mine is ****.

 

Last thing to do, set dynamic core voltage offset to 0 mv and try, and core voltage to 1.2V and report back. This is the most stable setting.

 

Sounds like youre using the factory TIM and experiencing factory TIM temps. I'm currently at 4.3GHz @ 1.266V and am not seeing CPU temps north of 75c, whether this is Prime95, TS bench or Firestrike etc. The difference is that I'm using Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra.

I would run that, IC Diamond or Gelid GC Extreme. Do your research, CLU ends up semi-permanently stuck the heat-sink (it does come off eventually with vigorous encouragement from steel wool, only the heat-sink now, don't use steel wool on your CPU die, you may however, have to resort to carefully scraping old TIM off with a razor blade). IC Diamond does actually scratch your die, although I'm still using it (currently on the GPU's as that's all I had on hand). I would probably go with Gelid GC Extreme, it's only about 3-5C hotter than IC Diamond and about 10C hotter than Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra.

Also, elevating the back of your laptop with a small book or something else will also drop your temps about 10C.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-ultimate-cooling-mod-to-end-all-cooling-mods.586490/

 

This is the problem, my cpu runs hot the day I receive my laptop. Its simply a bad chip, now im running it @ 4.2 Ghz 1.205-1.21v stable. Anything beyond that will force my cpu to become hot reaching 90s C. Im running @ CPU Core current is 135A & core current is 120A

 

Honestly, I've had no problems with Liquid Ultra. It does a head-and-shoulders better job of cooling than Gelid GC Extreme and IC Diamond (both of which are really good pastes) and lasts much, much longer... at least 4 times as long between repastes for me. It's easy to apply. It doesn't wipe off of the heat sink without effort, but it comes off of the CPU die easily. Using the scuff pad on the copper plate polishes it to a mirror finish and makes the heat sink more effective after repasting from what I can tell in my own experience. It does take a bit of elbow grease, but nothing major. Zero regrets here with Liquid Ultra, and I refuse to use anything else on my overclocked M18xR1/R1/18 Extreme CPUs. I'd use it on my Panther, but the heat sink fit is too sloppy and Liquid Ultra does not work well in that sort of application. I need a heavy paste that can be applied very thick and gets hard, like IC Diamond, on that machine to keep it cool because of the sloppy CPU heat sink fit.

 

Firstly, those are some very nice clocks able to stand up even to the 4790k desktop chip.

Secondly I am wondering if I should go liquid ultra for my water cooler on the Titan-X in my dock or just stick with trusty IC diamond.

 

With a nice heat sink fit, which we can probably assume with the Titan-X, it would work really well. On GPUs is seems to make less of a profound change in temps because the GPUs typically don't get nearly as hot as a heavily overclocked CPU. I did see an advantage running Liquid Ultra on the Alienware 18's 780M cards because of the crippled fan profiles and it helped quite a lot with GPU temps on that machine in particular, but not a remarkable difference in temps for 780M SLI in the M18xR1 and M18xR2 since they run so cool to begin with.

 

Actually my 880m pair were throttling when I run them @ 992Mhz, some games crash after sometime basically temp was reaching 90C-93C before appling CLU, my temp are now in 80s. My system used to crash on evolve for example, reaching 90s C. Also, I applied that for my Asus 780 GTX DCU II and temp was better. If your using a reference nvidia card, this will surely help!

Here is results after repasting.

 

Something was up with the paste or application then since I had 780Ms running at over 1.2ghz using it on worse heatsinks

 

@devilhunter; Why don't you disable Package tubo power lock in Xtu? You must do this... It looks like there are several that have more overclocking problems with i7-4940mx than the old i7-4930mx. All these Hotwell MX processors are of very variable quality(has never been any worse than these hot processors-also all of the Hotwell Mq processors). You still struggling with high temperature even if you run with volts under 1.2V - 4.2ghz and Liquid ultra on die and heatsink... Maybe the processor heatsink is not completely flat ?

@Matrix Leader6; Why use Hwmonitor when Hwinfo64 is better to monitor everything you want ?
Set up Hwinfo64 like this ... Very easy to see everything you need to see.

Why don't you also disable Package tubo power lock in Xtu?
Most probably because of a too low voltage of the processor or unstable Cashe(Maybe try lower to 39). A very small performance difference if you lower the Cashe one or to steep down from your maks cashe. None of these Hotwell extreme processors are equal. Some need more, others less volt even though the processor runs with a low temperature. These processors are useless without Liquid ultra although Alienware laptop has some of the best cooling at such powerful laptops.

@devilhunter and @Matrix Leader6; Maybe change to Trottlestop and disable Xtu...? If you use Trottlestop you can also create up to 4 OC profiles. You can switch between all 4 OC profiles with different hotkey combinations in Trottlestop on the fly... Trottlestop also have monitoring of the temperature on processor and graphics card as well as all adjustment of the Fivr voltage and power settings. You can also follow wattage under load. I always put the system power management mode to high performance (I think it is better that the processors don't have to wander up and down all the time).... Why would others put it to balanced performance? Because many are experiencing lower temperature during idle and short-lived load so that the processor gets colder faster.(Maybe because they have a poor thermal grease, the application is bad or even run a modern BGA processor )

 

Can you send me your custom profile to me? I will try that and report temp.

 

Ok, this sounds extremely stupid but I figured out whats going on here. I notcied that the exhaust air of my 880m gpus are actually hotter than my cpu; for example, if both my cpu and gpu are running @ 80C, the exhaust fan of the gpu is hotter. This means that the heat is no longer traped inside and actually is being transferred to the air. Also, the gpu sink is noticeably hotter than the cpu sink! My conclusion is that for some stupuid reason, the sink is not making a good contact to the die! meaning I must find a good "thick" type paste, or somehow minimize this gab. Please help guys currently im running my stupid machine at 4.2Ghz @ 1.215v Max temp is 90-92 under cpu stress loads.

 

Ive done that already.

Finally, this is mr. fox hahahah

 

Dat voice amirite?

 

Follow the advice from Mr Fox; I'd use it on my Panther, but the heat sink fit is too sloppy and Liquid Ultra does not work well in that sort of application. I need a heavy paste that can be applied very thick and gets hard, like IC Diamond, on that machine to keep it cool because of the sloppy CPU heat sink fit.
Or maybe buy a new heatsink and see if it is better.

Edit: Run by the way a Cinebench R15 benchmark test for fun and get 852 cb. Almost none want test with Cinebench R15 only 11.5
http://hwbot.org/submission/2851693_papusan_cinebench___r15_core_i7_4930mx_852_cb

 

New Cinebench 11.5 and R15 benchmark tests and scores. Run without Trottlestop and Xtu
Cinebench 11.5 9.42 points - Cinebench R15 857 cb
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...k-thread-part-4.561350/page-410#post-10000370