How to keep your CPU from melting! 

Perfect timing Jay! I was literally stumped on the XTU, blocked by windows defender. This is classic Jay, on point tutorial. I heard about undervolting, was interested, now I'm using it.

To the commenters asking for AMD: Benchmark your CPU at stock. Write down the results. Go to PBO, pick the max negative offset you can get that's stable. Benchmark again and write down the results (they should be higher). Then go back into the BIOS and lower the target temperature in PBO until your benchmark results drop to around the first number. There you go!

I appreciate you taking the time to do this, I would like if you might revisit it again with a 13900K or KS to see what you can get out of it and still lower the voltage and temps.

I knew some of this already but It's very much appreciated to get a nice refresh from someone who knows! Thanks Jay!

Knew a lot of this myself. A very good explanation of XTU and what it provides.

Thanks Jay for the video. I would be interested by the Load Line Calibration settings and other advanced OC stuff. Would you consider a follow-up video about that, please ?

Jay, I really like how your brain works! You're articulate, you talk things through, not afraid walk your way backwards out of something that you said too quickly and explain your reasoning, and overall an excellent communicator. I maybe late to the game and to subscribing but totally enjoying catching up on all your most recent vids. Thanks so much! Helps me greatly in planning out my first build... And the thing is I'm sure MOST don't just watch vids like this - one and done! But rewatch, II, , into infinity til we totally get it.

I did undervolting on my 5900x and dropped 15-20C off of load temps and gained some performance. Totally worth the effort.

One of the biggest factor I noticed in high temps is the ambient room temp. I live in a tropical country and i tend to turn off my AC 14 hours of the day. And while turned off, my gpu tends to reach 90+ C.

I have been waiting for this video since you first talked about studying this!

It's definitely a good piece of software. My 10900k would be hitting 90+ on Cinebench until I adjusted my voltages. Motherboards do tend to send way too much power to the CPU on even default settings at times.

Using this video I was able to undervolt my i7-13700KF with a -.65v offset, and pl1 125w pl2 253w and get great temps in my mini itx fractal terra build. I had no idea these ran so hot when building this PC, and if I did I may have went another route, but now I'm seeing about 45°C at idle and 75°C while under load. Not bad for a Noctua NH-L12 Ghost!

Thanks for the video. Recently upgraded to 13900k and temps are outrageous. Will give this a try. I’d like to see more on load line calibration settings. That would be a good topic to do a deeper dive on. Also, currently having some issues running 64gb of ddr5 with xmp enabled at 6400Mhz. Heard others complain about Intel 12/13gen running full dimms with OCs. Maybe you could touch on that at some point. Appreciate all your content, Cheers!

Haha, loved that outro! Thanks for this vid, I might make use of it one day, when I decide to tune my 12th gen i5.

21:23 This hits hard after Jay's latest update about his health and I really hope everything goes well for Jay and we can continue seeing you in great shape for your next videos.

There are still not enough oc guides out there. Thanks jay

Thanks for this video, Jay! I received my i9-13900k today and look forward to optimizing. Fair winds and following seas to all.

Great video, Jay. I been messing around with it myself but this way makes it a bit easier.

Thanks Jay and crew!

would you be able to do a full bios version of this video? would be really helpful for me and probably many others

Seems like a good way to find the limits of your system and mirror them to BIOS. And ditch XTU, I'm allergic to applets running in backround. But I don't know how granual control Intel allows, they have a habit of taking away control from users, even settings that are harmless or even beneficial to longevity of CPU. Like undervolting with non-K models or cheaper chipsets

That ending, Phil! Love it!

I just literally installed XTU 3 days ago and started messing around. Great timing Jay.

Thanks Jay. Your timing was perfect for this video. My step dad was been wanting to build and computer and has been wanting to build in a small form factor case. I was just mentioning to him the importance of undervolting the 13th gen since he wants to go intel.

I personally have used throttlestop for over a year. With it, I cut my 45-50C idle temps down to around 30-32C!

Thank you so much Jay! Perfect guide, worked well for my 12900k!

Holy crap I've been hoping for exactly this video, I'm literally going to turn on my machine and do this right now

I would love a full tutorial on buiding a pc with a full water loop. Step by step guide if someone was starting from scratch. I've done many builds now but full water cooling seems daunting to me and would love a follow along. That way we can copy what we want or use the instructions to do different cases etc. Anyway love the content, thanks for all the hard work my ADHD brother :)

This video is so hilariously perfectly timed. I caught a deal on a 13900k. Amazon had it priced at 409$ this morning so i bought it, and was planning to undervolt it haha. Thanks so much for informative content like this!

OMG, TY for this. Wanted to get more into undervolting my Intel CPU(s).

The end almost made me choke. Your actually almost killed me. Keep it up.

If you wanna play it safe, just leave everything stock / auto when it comes to frequency .. just apply small offset to voltage and change LLC to something like normal behaviour. The boost that you will get in regards to FPS with newer gen of CPUs especially if you re playing on higher resolution is completely irrelevant. Did some testing with bit older hardware, and with MID OC of CPU and GPU in majority of the games was like between 2-4 FPS difference on 4k resolution. Would say, waste of time. (But small offset gets you lower temps, and just leave the frequency be)

But on most of the Asus board, XTU won't be able to apply the setting on boot because of the watchdog timer, XTU said watchdog timer is not present, lots of people are facing the same and still not able to find the solution :(

I love the jokes and cuts that can be anywhere in your videos. Always cracks a smile/laugh out of me. Thank you for the guide. Will be using it for my incoming 13900k build.

You know something?… I realized a Jays Two Cents video about something I don’t use is better then no Jays Two Cents video at all. Always something to learn!

Phil was having fun when he editted the last part 🤣

Great advice. I've got my intel 13700k undervolted by 0.150V and it runs great (no OC applied). Temps very much under control, power draw fairly reasonable, and rock stable. Now I need to work on undervolting my video card.

Here listening to you explaining about Intel XTU and remembering my Per-core Curve optimiser for my Ryzen 5900X in the Ryzen Master app. That process took hours. Yup, it's an iterative process!

Thank you so much for your videos, I've learned a lot, even when I thought I already knew much more than the average, BUT, isn't it better to test the cpu with OCCT? In my personal experience it crashes and stresses a lot more than cinebench. What do you think?

@JayzTwoCents How did you get around the 'Watchdog' error that intel XTU has been having, I noticed in the video you also werent able to enable the feature to load changes on reboot in the settings menu, its greyed out. When this happened to me I did some research and apparently alot of others (as in everyone with a 12th and 13th gen) are having this issue, were you able to find a way around??

My z790 Aorus Master had my 13900K set to 1.5v out of the box!! It immediately thermal throttled, even though I have a high end liquid cooling system. Not surprising. When I saw the voltage I was like 😳 anyway, I dropped the voltage a lot, around 1.2v and it still clocks to 5.7 on all the p cores, and a bios update which helped immensely, so that’s also a high priority. I can’t remember when or if I ever had to undervolt a cpu before in 20 years.

This was amazing. Thanks for making this video.

much appreciated vid. My 13900k was hitting Mid 90s temps and I was going to invest in a WaterCool Loop to see if that would help. Now I know I just need to undervolt

7:55 vid is the requested voltage NOT the actual vcore the cpu is receiving

Impeccable timing for this video, as if sent from the internet gods themselves. Thank you Jay!

Saving this video for the next upgrade. Thanks!

I have a 12700kf with a 240mm AIO when it was in a case that had horrible air flow my cpu running cyberpunk went up to 91c or higher. Had to take of the side panel and it immediately dropped to 70c. So I just got the O11 Mini Airflow with all new case fans and Liquid Metal on the Cpu and water block. My cpu temps are now 50c or lower and I’m blown away how much the Liquid Metal has helped the temps and the better case and fans as well

@4:00 i disagree Jay, I ran cinebench non stop on my 10900k to test the overclock and it ran fine, however, I launched battlefield and it crashed with Whea_uncorrectable_error loading into the game. As a result i started using Linpack extreme instead, 3 runs of the stress test it crashed immediately, altered my voltage, ran linpack again for 3 more rounds, it was perfect. Launched battlefield with the same OC but better voltage curve and its ran perfect ever since. Cinebench only tests the core clock itself, core clock OC can affect memory and cache, which cinebench does not test..Linpack does AVX and nonavx instructions, also loads up cache and ram. Covers all possibilities.

Running a 13900KS and stock hits 101°C and mid 37k CB pts. CPU uses 330W peak and bounces between 300-320W while thermal throttling throughout the run. Fun facts: 1. Cinebench R23 yields higher scores if task manager priority is set to high, or if you don't mind your cursor being extremely slow or freezing for 10 minutes, set it to real-time. 😊 2. linpack Xtreme uses even more power! 😮 3. ASRock motherboards, until a recent BIOS update, was setting TjMax on 13900K / KS to 115°C. 4. 14900K will burn a hole through your mobo. 5. Thanks Jay for making this helpful video! 🤓

bahahhaaha ...the ending, is "philling" EPIC ! Ty Jay for precious info !

when you see the PFP change - Looks great btw!

Would love to see Jay tackle this same sort of thing with Zen Master for AMD

Can you do this video on AMD? I have a 5900X, I tried using the AMD Ryzen Master curve optimizer and its causing crashes in game, but helps bring score up and temps down in cinebench.

loved the TLDR at the end ❤

the end with only breathings is VERY funny i liked it, waiting for a 3 hours version

Just a few days ago I found one setting that fixes everything. So I have a z390 board from Msi with an i9 9900k. So basically my cpu always hits 100c on all core in cinebench r23 with about 220-260 watts (score ≈10k). Voltage was at 1,46. Now I found out that there is a setting wich was called CPU lite load standard was mode 11, tested the modes and found out that mode 4 runs perfectly stable now with voltage at 1,25 and temps are around high 70s and low 80s in cinebench at 170 watts which results in a score of about 13k.

I used to be a static voltage guy, but I prefer undervolting just like you do, for the same reasons you stated. the problem with a static voltage is evident in instability while rendering a video footage on h.265 or exporting high ASIO time workloads.

I like when fans are tuned to sound like a racing car, with ramp between 600-800rpm to 1850-2200 at different levels of temps is nice while playing.

Quite interesting. Many thanks for posting this tutorial.

Great a video JayZ. Unfortunately when I was trying to undervolt, XTU didn't let me because there wasn't a watchdog feature enabled. Does this mean I can't undervolt? Or is there any other software that I can use then? I'm running an ASUS M Hero Z790 with i9-13900k. Can someone help? Thanks.

XTU does not work for B660 chipsets as it pertains to undervolting within XTU due to plundervolt. Intel has yet to update to allow us to undervolt under these chipsets. You can make any changes within Throttlestop and it will ignore any of the changes due to the same reason. I had to underclock to get my thermals under control (a previous video Jay did :) until something changes)

Just built my PC this is exactly what I was looking for appreciate it

Loved this video. Thank you. Can you do all the settings you changed in XTU in the BIOS without using XTU?

There seems to be an issue with XTU watchdog feature on ASUS boards. Cannot find a fix for it anywhere.

I thought XTU also allowed you to set max speed limits for individual cores to keep the weaker cores from going too fast... There is probably a whole other space to search if you go down to the individual level.

Your new logo looks pretty nice!

I’m procrastinating my sleep long enough watching your videos that you have time to upload another one to watch

Hey Jay Back In January, I was able to undervolt my 13900k, but apparently an update somewhere between then and now lead to XTU showing an "Undervolt Protection is enabled and will prevent voltage from being set below the boot-time voltage" I tried disabling the undervolt protection in the BIOS, but that leads to XTU refusing to launch at all. The application still works fine, I am able to apply an overclock and add voltages, just not undervolt.

I am going to have to try this once I'm feeling a little more motivated. I just completed my i9 13900K build and I freaking love it - and surprisingly, my Corsair H170i AIO seems to be keeping it pretty damn cool during normal gaming - I have not run something like cinebench though, at least not yet - I would rather have my ...planned cooling setups complete before I even let a program like that touch my chip and fry some eggs on it, haha... it scares the piss out of me... to be completely honest. I get it - this stuff is designed to run hot. I've understood that about certain brands and products for years and years, but it does not alleviate my uh... trepidation? Yeah, not really. I don't even TEST with benchmarks until I've got overkill solutions or just plain perfect airflow through the case in addition.

Would running this on an I5-13600K make a difference as well on temps? Good job on explaning this and looking forward to more 'tricks' and info.

YIKES! ) 0:34 I would have taught the viewer the benefit of BIOS overclocking versus invasive software that either has a profile initiated upon OS boot or can actually have permission to alter anything further in on the BIOS level. I mean I'm not trying to hate on Intel here, it's a great application to perhaps initial vet and bin a chip in a user-friendly environment BUT once done so go for and learn the ins and out of your own BIOSes where these overlocks should really be altered and applied, especially for a "real" all day and reliable overclock regardless of an under-volt or reaching for the stars... Peace!

Unrelated to bios overclock, anyone notice XTU options just doesn't work anymore? :) Both on my new PC and legion laptop, where it was working a while ago, no bios updates at all, just greyed out now. Even older XTU versions.

would you recommend running the AI Optimized core rations for daily use or should I stick with a basic overclock + undervolt like in the video??

Hey Jay, do you know what days you’ll be at the micro center in Indy? I’m a few hours away but would love to drive into check out the microcenter of course aswell as meet the man who has made me confident in building and working on my own PCs!

Hey Jay, I just got a 5800X and it just shoots to 85C under any load and stays there. It would be extremely helpful if you make one of these videos for AMD as well as I'm dealing with an AMD processor for the very first time in my life. :)

I undervolted my powercolor red devil RX7900XT. with around 15% it uses 150-200W less power total. and has barely a decrease of 5% in performance

As i don't want exhausted hot air from a 95°C hot 7700X, i simply set the max temperarure to 60°C in the BIOS. That might cost me around 15% performance, but i *gladly* take that drop if that means an insane 35 degrees drop in temperature.

Nice video.With my 7900x,at 145watt with amd s pbo parameters and -20 all cores(30seconds at bios)cinebench r23:29350 all cores,2046 single core,67 c temp.From 12 cores not from smurf cores

There is also a 90 degrees cap in the latest BIOS update. It's working wonders for my 13900k, very rarely going over 90 while AAA gaming...

I really appreciate this guide for Intel, could you do a similar for AMD? Since summer hit I've been wanting to update my overclock and I noticed that my AMD rig is pulling a ton of voltage when it doesn't need to be. You guys rock!

Ive been undervolting for years thanks to jays old videos

I like the logo! thank you for this video!

I'm not sure why there's so much trouble cooling this chip. I have one paired with the ASUS rog strix 360mm aio, the chip is overclocked and I haven't seen the chip go over 65C playing modern titles max settings with a 4090. Starting certain games it reaches into the 70s but thats it.

Please do one with the i9 13900k

I have been building computers for an AI developer who works from home in an area with slow internet service. While coding can be done on a laptop, testing is done on a PC that I assembled with a 13900k CPU held down by a Thermal Grizzly Contact Frame and cooled by a Noctua NH-U12a and a 4090 GPU. With FurMark running on the GPU, the CPU was under 90 C while running Cinebench R23 doing a 30 minute stress test in a 25 C ambient. The multi thread score was just over 38000. Intel XTU makes getting the most out of CPU lottery and cooling solution a lot more time efficient. Cooling solutions also need to be efficient over time. Dust decreases the cooling efficiency and dust increases with fan speed (air flow). Dust will accumulate exponentially with time. This means that an initial temperature margin, e.g. 90C, will be needed to compensate for the inevitable accumulation of dust. CPU temperature will increase exponentially with frequency. The CPU and its bios will use a higher frequency and voltage (turbo boost) on a core if the temperature and voltage and maximum frequency will allow. This seems like a good idea but it depends on the cooling solution. This turbo boost can use more of the thermal budget than the ideal heat/work ratio. This will cause less work for a targeted temperature margin. A quick indication that the maximum frequency is too high is that the Windows Task Manager reports a CPU speed much lower than the maximum frequency. The best indicator is the Cinebench score at your target CPU temperature. The best PC motherboard fan curves will remove the heat with the minimum air flow. This will make less dust and noise. By adjusting the fan curves and maximum frequency the curve should look similar to the table below. CPU C 40 50 60 70 80 90 94 Fan % 0 10 15 40 70 90 100 The number, size of the fans, and fan speed of the fans that help remove air (exhaust) should be sized to maintain positive pressure in the PC case from filtered air.

Quick question. What keyboard is that, please? Thank you! Loved it when it had the golden glow on it.

Jay can you do one for AMD ryzen 5000 series

Can you do a video for AMD as well?

This vid was so perfectly timed!! Oh wait, I'm running an AMD Ryzen 7... Carry on.

Thank you Jay..this really helped, I wasn't saving on reboot and I had Ai on in Bios...I have a i913900k can get 6 at 55-60 temps..and that was with 5.0 V um..I'm excited to try some more settings in XCU

Already 3 people are “first” I would just like to ask fellow comment section readers what is the addiction to being first in the comments

1 : Don't turn on the power. 2 : CPU is undervolted.

glad to see jay get some good breathing techniques in at the end of the episode

super sweet guide, building a rig with a 13900k right now, this will be useful!!

the best way to undervolt any intel cpu is simple. go amd. :) team red ftw

Gonna take a look into this, just upgraded to a 13900k and boy that cpu is hot when I'm playing games

@Jay, I would like to see some videos about your thoughts on the Asus ally. Would it be possible to get future videos on it? Thank's!

Great video segment. Turn off the turbo boost OC and set the cores to Auto in the bios. Then you are done.

That was awsome material! Nice! Would be nice to watch about how to undervolt for laptops - for temps. reasons. - although I assume it's the same wtih Intel CPUs.

I agree with those below asking about AMD 5000 series. Ive tried to look for info on it elsewhere (other videos/forums) and hardly any of it is straightforward and layed out in a simple to follow format the average person could understand (not to knock down any IQ points i may have, but everything ive read seems like its written by OC enthusiasts who dont take lamens into consideration)