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hey guys build Zoid here from actually hardcore overclocking and today we're gonna be talking about load line calibration and I can't write very fast so this is gonna be very painful so load line calibration also known as all C for short is a setting available on basically all high-end motherboards and most mid-range as well as I'm not sure I don't use that many low on board so I'm not sure if it's most or some but basically if your motherboard supports overclocking it should probably have load line calibration settings now load line calibration settings are not the most important thing until you're in a situation where you can absolutely max out the core voltage for your CPU pretty much so you're on a cooling system that can handle the maximum safe voltage force for your CPU if you're on a weaker cooling system you basically don't have to care about this because v droop is there to protect you before getting to that this coverage is brought to you by EVGA and on video with the destiny to 1080 Ti bundle a 1080i SC to comes with a synchronous fan control for its dual fans and nine thermal sensors and again includes destiny to learn more at the link in the description below so let's actually talk about well the droop doesn't really have any negative impacts on you unless you're like starting to push up against the edge of max safe voltage and we'll go you'll see why that is very soon before we get into that we need to define something so first of all what what on earth is what is load line calibration well it's made up of load line and calibration and the load line is this magical thing which is actually it like it's not actually like a physical it's not a physical phenomenon or anything it's a V Group specification basically it looks like like if you have a graph where one line is current one side is voltage there would be zero that right here is your load line that's that's a load line yeah and you might be wondering what on earth does that mean well it's a simple way of defining a V droop sort of adaptive V core like an adaptive voltage V droop system very simply because essentially as your current increases your voltage decreases so if you're at idle and the vrm is outputting only 10 amps you might be at like you know say at this point on the line and none of this will be on to scale and that point might be 1.3 volts right and vid might be 1.35 like here vid at this point is pretty special because it's vid equals V core at that point but then you turn you know you start doing some intensive rendering or something and you go to this point over here that point is at say 60 amps but that's realistic for full load and your voltage might drop down to one point to four volts which these are completely arbitrary figures but you get the idea here well actually it would be more realistic if it was 1.25 volts and what you're seeing here is if because I decided that vid is gonna be like that up there is gonna be one point three one volts and essentially this means that you have a load line of 1 million because for 60 amps you're getting 60 millivolts of droop so this is a way for Intel to define how much your voltage core voltage should be decreased at increased current levels and you might be wondering like why on earth would you want to lower the voltage as the CPU goes under load well one it makes sure that the CPU uses less power so you stay within TDP 2 it puts less strain on the vrm because the CPU uses less power 3 it keeps you in voltage tolerance levels which is actually the main reason why this is done because as some CPUs and everything is just like well CPUs got a finer and finer manufacture processes they get more and more voltage sensitive and Intel's also been like pumping up the you know the efficiency has been going up as well so load line load line has been used to basically make sure that all of that works as well as possible and the voltage tolerance thing is basically comes down to this scenario if you have voltage here and this lower graph will be current and we're looking at these over time you might see something that looks like your current level might go like that and you're gonna see a voltage graph that looks like and we're gonna say we have like an oscilloscope here so very accurate measuring tool and then you're gonna see a big voltage dip and then you're gonna see increased ripple until you get to the point where the VR like the current draw drops off at which point you're gonna get a voltage spike some ringing and then returned ripple to pre you know to this level of ripple and so load line you know having the load line allows Intel to basically grab this entire section right here take all of that and you know they want that the core out erm output voltage never exceeds this level right this is the voltage you must never exceed so they can grab this entire chunk here which is going slow like it's going out a spec here and they can just drag it down so that your because if you looked at your deep like if you had a multimeter on this right you would see us flatline because this this would be the average right so you'd be seeing an average voltage that's completely flat and then if but with load line you would see something that looks like this in terms of average voltage right and and this dip down here basically would take this spike and push it down as well as also push all of these spikes down so if actually you know if this line over here that I drew was lower these bikes would also go within tolerance because now your average voltage is lower and your vrm is trying to actually is aiming for a lower voltage output and your ripple is now in spec and you're not overshooting as hard so that's why load line exists now we're going to talk about why it's actually really annoying and why the load line calibration setting is so helpful when overclocking because well is it's rather simple right imagine this scenario we have a CPU a I seven we have an i7 for 790 K why I chose that one and now let's go modern you have an i7 77 and no more modern 8700 K I like my upgrades and six cores so you have your i7 8700 K alright and the maximum voltage recommended for this is one point four five volts and so you decide that you're gonna set your and you have you have the CPU deal it it you have a giant water cooling loop and you decide that okay I'm gonna go and well actually you wouldn't even need a giant water cooling loop if it's deleted but it's deleted and you have a good good cooling system on top of it and you decide that yeah I'm gonna run one point four or five volts through the CPU so you set your voltage setting which on most motherboards would just be the vid you set that to one point four or five volts so you set that to one point four five and then you get a voltage reading of you get V core will have actual V core readings here and I'm sorry that I didn't prepare tables for this but I think it makes sense to just draw it out like that well I don't know if it makes sense like this I don't know anything about video production so deal with it I'm here to teach you about load line not how to be a good presenter so you have your vade you have your idle and you have your load B core and your idle v core on stock load line well actually let's add the LLC right load line calibration would be stock then you have your record levels and here you have idle and here you have load right an idle you'd be seeing say one point four four five volts and you wouldn't actually see one point four five because remember the only time you would ever see one point four five is if you're you know if you're at zero amps current output since you're not at zero amps current output there's gonna be a little bit of droop right so you're drooping a little bit off of that one point four five volts target now you go and you start up the render and your voltage drops all the way down to one point three five volts that's atrocious that's terrible you know that significantly limits how much you can overclock your cpu because your voltage that defines your max overclock is this right this is what limits your maximum overclock now if you're on a weaker cooling system that can't actually cool one point four five volts this is great this is awesome because you can idle on one point four you can idle on just under one point four or five volts all day and then you go under full load and you're at one point three five volts so the heat output of your CPU isn't high enough to actually overload your etes overload your eat sink but and and you know you might complain about the high idle voltage but if you just enable C States and like there's a few automatic power saving settings if you just leave them turned on it won't like your idle your idle voltage won't be that high as well as your idle clock won't be maxed out all the time and when you go under like light load where you need full CPU speed it will go up to all the way up to this but it won't be like idle idle it'll be like mid load or medium load or lightish loads so this would be perfectly fine if you know your your heat sink can't actually cool more than one point three five volts but we just established that our cooling system here is not the issue so we need to go fix this cuz this is severely limiting our overclock to only 4.9 gigahertz which really isn't that rare most of these chips should be hitting over that I actually know wait a minute 4.8 gigahertz it's limiting us 4 to 4 point 8 GHz which this is not high enough 8700 Kay's should regularly hit 5 gigahertz if you can push 1 point 4 2 volts into them so we're gonna throw some LLC at it 1 point 4 or 5 volts and we're gonna set our LLC to flat because I've not well there's a few motherboards out there like really good or extreme overclocking motherboards are starting to come out with LLC settings I can actually get you basically completely flat voltage output but most motherboards can't do flat but let's say you get a motherboard that does flat and now you're getting one point 4 or 5 volts idle one point 4 5 volts load and you're getting your 5 gigahertz awesome great so this is why you want your low you know why you need the load line calibration setting now the problem is this right here not realistic ok I'm like I've tested a lot of motherboards well okay not that many I'm not a full-time motherboard reviewer but I have used a lot of motherboards and I've not seen a lot of motherboards where your voltage does this like this is really rare usually what you actually see is what you actually see in terms of actual load lines that you would see here is just an example graph so if you looked into a BIOS for for some motherboard right you would see something like stock so that would be s then say low medium and then you know this is what we'd want this is our flat this is what we're aiming for and then you get high hi LLC gives you just the smallest amount of boost and then you get very high gives you even more boost and then you get extreme and most motherboards with an extreme LLC setting go way out of whack and basically the end result is like if you were to set one point four or five volts and then put the LLC to extreme you end up in a situation where you're idling on say one point four seven volts because remember you're never at zero your you might be somewhere up here on the curve right at idle and then you go to full load and you're here on that line and when you go to full load you suddenly get one point five seven bolts right that kills chips that's really bad you don't want to be running that into your CPU long-term at all right if this was a workstation and you configured your and the funny thing is this would probably let you run 5.1 gigahertz right it would actually allow you to run a higher frequency it might even let you do 5.2 in some cases so you have this 5.1 gigahertz overclock you think you have it at one point four or five volts but the reality of the situation is is you're getting one point four seven volts at idle and then you're getting one point five seven volts at under full load and if this was a you know as I said a work machine where you know you render video on it for a couple hours everyday you can say bye-bye to that CPU in like six months in six months that CPU is no longer gonna be able to run 5.1 Giga Hertz at one like it's not gonna like you're you're gonna lose that five point one gigahertz overclock you're probably gonna lose the ability to do five gigahertz at one point four five volts completely as well you might end up in a situation where your CPU goes from one you know one point four five load and 5 gigahertz to four point eight you know so that would cause degradation if you decided to keep that like if you just lowered your frequency and kept the insane LLC setting overtime it would probably just straight-up destroy the CPU to the point where it doesn't run at all and unfortunately there is no really good way of knowing uh well some other boards you'll get lucky and they'll have a good software voltage readout and then there's some other boards where the software voltage readout is completely idiotic and I don't know what it's doing okay and that that makes things very very difficult and overall I would say if you know if you don't have the necessary skills and knowledge on how a motherboard works and how to takes voltage measurements on a motherboard don't go above medium LLC just don't because once you go above medium LLC things tend to like these days more modern motherboards I've noticed aren't that bad even like surprisingly cheap ones I haven't noticed one where the extreme LLC was this extreme but in the past I have run into motherboards where extreme LLC was well pretty damn extreme and completely unsafe for normal operation as a result and I've never really run into any motherboard where the medium sighting would be this rich like this stupid right it wouldn't be unsafe levels of over voltage under full load it wouldn't even know and typically it would droop you a little bit and in my personal testing and everything if I am doing any kind of overclocking for daily usage and I do actually have full voltage measurements for the motherboard then I'll still intentionally set up the system to droop a little bit so you know I might go for a one point four five volts medium and then I get one point four five idle because you know medium LLC is starting to get to that point where we're almost at that flat flat line like that that's not actually a realistic medium I've seen mediums that look like that basically though again it depends on what kind of skin we have if this was 400 amps here then the scale is that that extreme is not extreme enough probably but you know so medium LLC and then it would just droop down gently to say one point four three volts and this is something I would run daily no problem that this is like this is pretty much ideal at that point I've actually lowered the core voltage a little bit so that we get that you know one point four two which is where most 8700 case would hit five gigahertz anyway so you know it's just it's a kind of a an interesting topic load line calibration is but generally yeah my recommendation is if you're overclocking and your motherboard has load line calibration settings set it to medium like set it to the middle level like on an asrock motherboard you'll have levels that go one two three four five on as rocker boards I recommend two and three this one like it's not as bad as like what I've drawn out here I tested one but it does give you a little bit of overshoot if you are on ROG boards which I think they go like one two three four five six seven I would keep myself around while this range and actually I think they go up to eight but yeah you should always stay around the middle levels gigabyte motherboards always just stick to medium extreme LLC on those is a well extreme let's put it that way and yeah MSI boards I can't currently remember what their naming scheme is but generally just stay around the middle ground if you do know what you're doing then you know knock yourself out configure the LLC to give you completely flat lap voltage if you can figure out how to do that but under most scenarios you should be you know four asrock you should be looking at around two three level aces four five gigabyte medium and as a well MSI I can't like can't remember right now I think medium as well for them there's really no need for the using the higher levels though if you can find reliable information on the internet like there are I think turbo recently did a review of a bunch of low-end Z 370 motherboards and he actually went and measured what kind of voltages the various LLC's will get you so if you can get that kind of information then actually just use that information to figure out what LLC settings you want to run but if you don't know stick to the sort of middle ground because that's the safest because if you run like you know if you unknowingly shove 1.5 7 volts into your Mo's CPU well you're not gonna have a CPU very long so you know that that is a that's basically what you need to keep in mind with LLC if you're not bumping up against the Mac's safe voltage of your CPU I would straight-up recommend against messing with LLC at all because ultimately you know as long as you're not going over Mac's safe voltage at idle you don't have to worry about about the droop that much right because as long as it's true because you know if your cooling system is not capable of handling over like if your cooling system wasn't capable of handling over 1.3 5 volts well this this configuration right here works great for you sure your idle voltage is a bit high but it's not like that's gonna kill it like that's not dangerous this is this is really really dangerous this is this is perfectly normal actually that's why it's called stock sense how intel configures their CPUs out of the box pretty much except of course this voltage would be a lot lower but you know it's uh it is that kind of situation now obviously if you had a cooling system that was good for 1.4 and not good for 1.4 you know that then you'd have to set like 1.5 and then it gets a bit dicey but uh you know I personally would recommend just on the safe side and even then just stick to medium and you might be wondering like why can't we just use software readings I've run into motherboards where like the software readings are just like a cool like miles away from reality there are motherboards where the software voltage readings are very accurate and you can rely on them and then there's motherboards out there where the software might as well be reading I like I don't know a mile just pulling numbers out of thin air pretty much it's really bad on some other boards and on those boards you know is like if those have LLC settings and pray that you you don't that the medium setting is actually medium and not extreme because you're like yeah there there's just no way to to know for sure that you're not gonna destroy your chip so yeah that's pretty much that pretty much covers I think what you need to know about load line calibration I think I've actually gone a bit overboard uh-hum but I think you get the idea right load line calibration is well the load line is Intel's way of specifying adaptive CPU adaptive voltage for their V RMS it is done to basically help with will voltage tolerance on V RMS because you don't get actual flat out line voltage output you get spikes and ripple and you want to keep that below your maximum voltage tolerance and load line and load line calibration the actual load line calibration setting allows you to adjust the load line from the stock setting to be closer to completely flat and under ideal and my recommended setting would be something that droops a little bit under low don't go up a bit under load that's just no droop a little bit always safer it's always safer if your voltage is going down and going up if it's going up then you know you might have a very bad day one day if it's going down unless your idle voltages for hi you're gonna be fine so yeah that's it for load line calibration I hope you learned something I hope it made sense no I don't know how successful I was on that part I hope I protect your CPU from extreme LLC though there are some other boards where extreme LLC doesn't actually work properly but again it's just not worth the risk in my opinion so that's it for this video thank you for watching like share subscribe leave a comment down below or any questions you have if you would like to support what we do here with gamers Nexus there's a patreon link down in the description below and if you would like to watch you know see more extreme overclocking kind of content like the well more of erm stuff and other overclocking ridiculousness I have my own channel called actually hardcore overclocking you can go check that out I imagine there will be a link down in the comments below for that so once again thank you for watching and see you next time if you would like to support what we do here with gamer uh you know what we do here with game I have the the outro out the window