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Aurora R7 Core i7 8700K Factory Overclocked?
Howdy Folks,
I have had my new Aurora R7 for just under 3 weeks now. I opted for the Core i7 8700K with 850 watt Power Supply with Liquid Cooling (not sure why the power supply and CPU cooling are lumped together). I have seen numerous posts (not here), and articles indicating that the R7 comes "factory overclocked at 4.6 GHz across all 6 cores." I understand that as it is a K series CPU Overclocking is "allowed" and does not violate the warranty, but my system did not come factory overclocked. It is running at stock clocks, but I do see an option within Alienware Command Center to enable overclocking (OC profile 1 and OC profile 2). So my question is, is the R7 supposed to be shipped "factory overclocked," or is it just that you can easily do it from Alienware Command Center? Thanks!
Rich S.
Tesla1856
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8 Wizard
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April 6th, 2018 07:00
1. Perfect
2. Good. Unlike my Aurora-R6 ... you didn't have to observe it crashing (and the OC tripping-itself off) when you first got it hooked-up.
3. Hopefully not. You don't want/need any OC or unstable-ness while trying to do the Windows First-Time-Setup or just generally observing how your new system is running.
hrgreen
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April 6th, 2018 19:00
Once you are satisfied with the setup, you can try out the O/C modes. The Alienware pages on O/C say test profile 2 (4.8GHZ/XMP1) for stability. If not, you may have a not-so-great 8700K, need more customized settings, or have a poorly installed cooler.
Before your O/C page allows running custom settings, it does a brief stress test. If you're pushing the speed toward 4.8-5GHz, the cpu fan may get loud near the end of the test as the cpu temp moves up above 75 deg C. The O/C utility has limits coordinated with BIOS settings to prevent cpu damage if not over-ridden.
LinkRS
43 Posts
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April 9th, 2018 10:00
Hi hgreen,
"The Alienware pages on O/C say..." is this the information presented within Command Center on the Overclock tab, or actual pages? Could you give me the link to the pages? Thanks!
Rich S.
hrgreen
74 Posts
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April 11th, 2018 00:00
www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln297032/alienware-overclocking
The reason O/C profile 2 wasn't very stable on my R7 was that my chip needed a little higher Vcore, 1.13v, but since the two profiles provided can't be edited, I needed to make a user profile with that change. A BSOD often can be fixed by higher Vcore as long as temps are acceptable.
If you "won the silicon lottery", you might have a cpu that by pushing both freq and Vcore would run 4.9 GHZ or 5.0 100% all-core without going above 80 deg C. The internal and external conductive pastes and the cooling being optimum help; the average chip and stock R7 are limited.