Intel Core i5-12600K: A basic overclocking guide
Get the most out of Intels brand new hybrid core architecture
- An introduction to Intel Alder Lake and the Core i5-12600K
- Alder Lake Voltage Characteristics
- Baseline, Test-Setup and Overclocking
- Final overclocking results
- Summary
1. An introduction to Intel Alder Lake and the Core i5-12600K
With the launch of its Alder Lake hybrid core architecture in November 2021, Intel finally brought back some serious competition to the CPU market space. Alder Lake is nothing like we’ve seen before and, for the first time ever, features two different types of cores in a single CPU.
A set of powerful performance cores (short: P-Cores) is accompanied by a group of less powerful efficiency cores (short: E-Cores). The main Idea behind this major change in chip design is, that the powerful P-Cores are responsible for more demanding tasks, like gaming, while the E-Cores handle all the background stuff that’s running which could be a web browser, some video playback, or discord. This approach should free some resources of the P-Cores, allowing for better utilization and optimization in general, leading to performance improvements in all types of workloads.
Alder Lake also sets a new standard in I/O and memory capabilities, being the very first to support PCIe 5.0 as well as both DDR4 and also the new DDR5 standard, depending on what motherboard you are using the CPU with. With Alder Lake, Intel also introduced the new LGA1700 socket and the 600 series chipset.
Another difference between the two core types is, that only P-Cores do support hyperthreading, while E-Cores do not. This results in some interesting core configurations.
Currently, there are three K-SKU CPUs of which the i9-12900K represents the flagship of the lineup, featuring 8P+8E-Cores, resulting in a 16C/24T configuration, followed by the i7-12700K with 8P+4E-Cores and 20 threads respective, and the CPU we are focusing on in this article, the i5-12600K with 6P+4E-Cores and a total of 16 threads.
i5-12600K: Clocks, Power and Price
The i5-12600K runs its six performance cores with a base clock of 3.7 GHz, which boost to up to 4.5 GHz on all cores and reaches a maximum of 4.9 GHz in single threaded workloads. The four efficiency cores can boost from a 2.8 GHz base to a max clock of 3.6 GHz. Intel specifies the maximal power draw during boosts with 150 watt for the i5, which it will definitely reach under heavier workloads. At the time of writing, the smallest K-SKU will set you back around 300 USD or (300 EUR in Europe), which means it competes head to head with AMDs alternative, the Ryzen 5 5600X which is sitting at a similar price level of about 270 USD.
2. Alder Lake Voltage Characteristics
There are a lot of different voltages you can adjust on an Alder Lake processor, but for basic overclocking on ambient temperatures, there is really only one voltage you need to change which is VccIA, because this one is the responsible voltage for powering all P- and E-Cores as well as the Ring. VccIA means Intel Alder Lake Voltage and will be referred to as CPU core voltage or simply VCORE in your motherboards BIOS.
Voltage modes and the Voltage/Frequency curve
By default, the 12600K and all other Alder Lake CPUs have two different ways to set the voltage, which is either adaptive or override mode.
Override mode will run a static voltage no matter what clock ratio or workload the CPU is running currently. This is only really useful if you are going for a static all-core overclock or, you have more extreme overclocking ambitions with dry ice or liquid nitrogen cooling.
Adaptive mode, which is the default operating mode, will adapt the core voltage based on what ratio the CPU is currently running. These voltages are configured in the so-called voltage/frequency curve (short: v/f curve) which defines fixed voltage levels that are mapped against certain core ratios.
The v/f curve does only specify the voltage for a few fixed core ratios, while the voltage for all the other ratios is calculated from two neighboring points on the curve.
When manually setting a core voltage while in adaptive mode, this voltage will be used for the highest specified core ratio only. It won’t however change the voltage for all the stock ratios that are already defined from the factory, they will still use the value from the v/f curve.
For example, if we set a core ratio of let’s say x51 and a core voltage of 1.45v, the CPU will still use the default core voltage for all ratios up to the max stock ratio, which is x49 on the 12600K. For the x51 ratio, 1.45v will be used, while for x50, the voltage will be calculated based on the voltages of the x49 and x51 ratio (which means it will be something in between these two voltages) and could be something like 1.425v in this example.
CPU Lite Load vs CPU Load Line Calibration
Can anyone enlighten me on what the differences are and why did my CPU Lite Load on my z590 default to mode 9? It's been pumping alot of voltage. With experimentation and stress testing it seems that CPU Lite Load could have been Mode 3 or Mode 4.
CPU Lite Load can change the load CPU voltage if you keep the CPU settings auto. It's not overclocked and CPU core voltage (Vcore) is default (auto). Different CPU Lite Load setting will have different Vcore under workload. But too load Vcore may lead to unstable.
CPU load line calibration is for manual CPU core voltage (Vcore) . Say, if you set your 11700K's Vcore to 1.3v, and under workload, different CPU load line calibration mode will have different core voltage. If CPU load line calibration is kept auto, the load Vcore will be very close to 1.3v.
Mode 1 has higher Vcore under load, will be higher than your setting in BIOS. Mode 8 has the most Vdroop. The Vcore will be lower than your setting in BIOS.
Сказ о том как я интел от нагревания лечил
Данный пост будет интересен людям, которые имеют 8-9 поколения intel на плате MSI B360M Pro-VD (возможно и на других от MSI) и так же страдали от высокой температуры ЦП (МОДЕЛИ БЕЗ РАЗГОНА) и непониманием того, почему в интернете у людей одно, а у вас совершенно другое.
Тем кто хочет сразу прочитать решение — читать последний абзац.
Мой i5-9400F нагревался в стресс тесте FPU Aida64 до 80 градусов! на стоковом кулере.
После смены охлаждения на Zalman CNPS5X Performa:
(одна из самых простых но эффективных башен, на уровне с DeepCool GAMMAXX 300, но шумная как турбина, лучше бы взял дипкул) )
температуры упали, и я видел максимальную отметку в 72-74 градуса. Но это все равно далеко не идеально. У других людей максимальная температура была под 64-65 градусов.
Далее были попытки настроить максимально допустимое энергопотребление в биосе (да, который UEFI), для этого 65W процессора по умолчанию был допуск потребления до 95W. В подробности не вдаюсь, но это эффект на температуру поимело. А так же «поимело» максимальную частоту турбо-буста и в стресс тесте частоты стали не 3.9 Ghz а 2.8 Ghz что конечно ужасно.
После нескольких дней тестов нового кулера и смирением с данной ситуацией, я случайно шерстил биос во вкладках энергопотребления ЦП и увидел непонятный параметр cpu lite load. Спойлер — вот он, камень преткновения, который мешал моему счастью.
Cpu lite load по данным из гугла/форумов MSI нужен для разгона, ибо темы с вопросами были только от владельцев процев с индексом K (но моя то мамка не поддерживает его!!).
Этот параметр влияет на напряжение ЦП, а следовательно и на его жор энергии. У меня лично там можно выставить цифры от 1 до 23. Один — минимальное напряжение, 23 — соответственно максимальное и максимальное энергопотребление.
Последний абзац:
Мое решение было простое
Cpu lite load в биосе выставить на минимально возможное значение (по автомату стояло 17. я поставил на 1)
Больше ничего не трогать, все остальное как и стояло в авто режиме.
MSI говорит что у разогнанных камней могут вылезти синие экраны после таких манипуляций, возможно вам не повезет и нужно будет выставлять не 1 а 4 к примеру, или 7. Но мое мнение таково — для процев которые не имеют возможности разгона, можно сразу ставить единицу.
Интересуют отзывы от попробовавших данный способ. Так как у меня теперь температуры в стресс тесте аиды не превышают 60 градусов. Тестил в играх, прогнал ВСЕ тесты в Аиде, что бы проанализировать изменение производительности и вылеты. Все осталось как и прежде, только пропал дикий жор от ЦП. Hwinfo говорит что температуры в зоне VRM упали на 10 градусов при тесте prime 95, сам ЦП супер-стресс тест от прайма нагревает всего лишь до 65 градусов.
Newbie, could use assistance on 13600k undervolt
ok, so, quick backstory (skip this paragraph if you want, not that important)
had an msi pro b660m-a, ak620 (proper installation, mx-5, pretty high fan curve), didn't go well, i think voltage was way too high, cinebench r23 was instant 100c with major throttling obv, Cyberpunk brought it to 90c+
most I could do with b660 was a -.05 offset with liteload settings, temps dropped but were still ****, cinebench resulted in subpar performance. 20k points, 85-90c, with slow rises. Gaming was like 70-80c.
Honestly the ak620 was probably fine but I've since upgraded to the liquid freezer ii 280mm.
I replaced the b660 with an Asrock z690 Pg Riptide, dropped from $170ish to $135 I think, good feature set, only budget motherboard ppl recommended when i showed them the cheapest 10-ish.
Anyways, new motherboard, new cooler, still instant throttling, read a reddit post or forum saying set voltage helped, so I set it to 1.1v fixed in bios, now it's like 63c with 24k points (after 2 runs, temp prob go up, idk). Havent tested gaming yet but assuming it's going lower tempwise.
What's an optimal fixed voltage? Is using an offset better?
I've heard of people having undervolts where they get better performance with lower temps, what's an optimal voltage for this. Currently from what I understand I'm at regular performance with great temps.
My GPU is rx6800xt, everything 1440p ultra 100+ fps so performance not much an issue, GPU also on an undervolt I copied from reddit, temps very chill (especially hotspot) and only 5% drop in performance.