iCUE prevents i9 9900K turbo boost

I've trimmed the vitriol out of today's posts. Keep it civil folks.

Is there any fix to this? It's starting to annoy me a little.

 

The issue does lie within iCue, but it doesn't do it on every motherboard.

 

I have a Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi - iCue stops my 9900k from boosting to 5GHZ.

 

I also have a Z390 MEG ACE - This works flawlessly with iCue open.

 

There has to be a fix somehow?

Same here with an I7 7820X (x299) and an Rampage VI Extreme.

Is there any fix to this? It's starting to annoy me a little.

 

The issue does lie within iCue, but it doesn't do it on every motherboard.

 

I have a Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi - iCue stops my 9900k from boosting to 5GHZ.

 

I also have a Z390 MEG ACE - This works flawlessly with iCue open.

 

There has to be a fix somehow?

 

Hmmm. If the issue was in iCUE alone, it'd happen on every motherboard.

The fact that it doesn't forces a different conclusion.

Hmmm. If the issue was in iCUE alone, it'd happen on every motherboard.

The fact that it doesn't forces a different conclusion.

 

Yes, there is a conflict with iCue and certain motherboards.

 

The issue is there, and it is present on certain boards, my Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi being one example.

 

I am not alone with this issue, and its frustrating to spend £XXX on Corsair equipment only for it to gimp my CPU's performance, as soon as I exit iCUE my 9900k boosts normally.

This might be related to what us Ryzen users are getting where icue prevents us idling - if iCue is putting light load on all the cores (even if its just for polling them for usage/temps/whatever), by preventing idle and keeping cores active, it could mess with turbo clocks and boost states

I'm seeing this issue too. Specs in profile.

 

I've just had to replace a 9900k as the first one semi-died and wouldn't boost over 3.6Ghz. BSOD when booting into Windows for anything above 3.6Ghz.

 

New one just arrived and wouldn't boost when running CPUZ benchmark, single core result was 50% of what it should be.

 

Closing iCUE and restarting CPUZ sees the single core speed return to expected value.

 

This is 100% an issue with iCUE.

 

I'm wondering if this iCUE problem killed my first i9900k..

 

All BIOS setting stock except XMP is switched on and VCCSA is manually set to 1.20 (Aorus puts it at 1.3v+ which is madness).

 

This really needs fixing, I used to recommend Corsair products..

You can see my system specs. I match 90% of the people claiming the issue and insistent that it MUST be iCue.

 

And yet I've never had this, ever. I'm at an all-core 5Ghz on my i9-9900k and it stays there apart from AVX loads. iCue does not limit it nor cause it to drop.

Mine is clocking along normally after the 3.20.80 update.

 

What Windows power plan are you running? (Mine is set to "Balanced".) If you use "High Performance" power plan; from my experience, you'll be in permanent boost state.

I have the I7-8086k on a msi mpg z390 gaming pro carbon ac and have this same issue it locks on 4.3ghz as soon as close icue all goes normal in clocking down or up as needed

Not a pro here but the first thing that came to mind for me right off the bat (reading first post) was AVX instructions, which many others did as well. Offhand it eludes me but it should be relatively straightforward to verify whether iCue is or is NOT causing one of your AVX negative offsets to kick in, especially if you have something like HWinfo64 or another util that you can watch individual core clock multipliers on.

 

You could probably even verify which core(s) iCue is running on and watch those clocks. You'll be able to tell when AVX negative offset is kicking in on those cores by the clocks/multipliers they come down to. I've seen that watching stresstests with Prime95, Realbench, etc. when testing my OC stability. Course, it also depends how you've set the BIOS to manage core clocks, using turbo boost max or not, etc.

 

The other suggestion someone gave, try changing your AVX offsets, is a good one -- (change them downwards to a "more negative" offset to be safest) and see if those clocks change downwards by the new amount or not. That will more or less prove whether what you are seeing with iCue is due to use of AVX instructions by iCue on those cores.

 

I'll be honest, the more of this kind of stuff I see, the more I am coming to the conclusion that I should only have iCue installed in a special "configuring my lighting" Windows boot/installation that I only ever boot into when I want to change the lighting scheme and keep iCue far, far away from my general/everyday Windows boot/install.

Edited September 21, 2019 by RetroRambler

Hmmm. If the issue was in iCUE alone, it'd happen on every motherboard.

The fact that it doesn't forces a different conclusion.

 

No it doesn't. Is this kind of logic routinely employed at Corsair to troubleshoot problems or write code?

 

Motherboard manufacturers don't all implement AVX negative offsets exactly the same way (or at all), name the settings the same, or use the same default values, even among different models from the same manufacturer.

 

And then there is (of course) the end user part of the equation.... not everybody is going to tune them their AVX knobs the same way either.

 

 

 

Bedevere: "Exactly. So... logically... "

 

Villager: "If she... weighs the same as a duck... then she's made of wood...."

 

Bedevere: "And therefore...."

 

All: "A WITCH!!!"

 

 

Sorry if it ruffles anyone's feathers, but it fits.

Edited September 21, 2019 by RetroRambler

I think this cpu turbo boost behavior is working as intended... or at least is not an issue that only appears with iCUE, might happen to softwares that are multi thread.

FYI. Same behavior occur with Battle.net application running in the background.

have people here tried 3.20? seems to have fixed a bunch of CPU usage related bugs

I've recently acquired a new system with the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Motherboard and the i9 9900KF CPU and could not get past the 4700Mhz as well.

 

The solution was to go to the BIOS and set the multiplier to 50 (it was Auto before). Now, every time I set "Performance" power settings in Windows 10 I get 5000 Mhz always. You can use CPUID CPU-Z to validate that as well.

 

Tip: If you want to get back to "Auto" behavior where the clock is not always set to 5000 Mhz just switch to "Balanced" power settings in Windows and you get the 1000-5000Mhz range again.

 

Just my 2 cents to hopefully help the discussion on this matter.

 

\Edit: By the way, I have Corsair Vengeance RAM (2x16GB).

Edited October 6, 2019 by greenbalrog
To explain I have corsair RAM.

The solution was to go to the BIOS and set the multiplier to 50 (it was Auto before). Now, every time I set "Performance" power settings in Windows 10 I get 5000 Mhz always. You can use CPUID CPU-Z to validate that as well.

 

Tip: If you want to get back to "Auto" behavior where the clock is not always set to 5000 Mhz just switch to "Balanced" power settings in Windows and you get the 1000-5000Mhz range again.

 

That is another way to do it if you prefer not to set an 8 core single multiplier or change the AVX offset behavior. All of this behavior is either BIOS or OS manageable, but in standard default Intel single core turbo mode, something is always going to be using more than 1 core so you will never hit the single core max peak.

I have the same problem.

 

I overclocked my 9700K to 5 GHz on all cores and set an AVX offset of -3. With ICUE 3.26 and 3.25 my CPU clocks to a maximum of 4.7 GHz and without ICUE to 5 GHz (for games and benchmarks).

If I change the AVX offset e.g. to -2 or -1 the CPU clocks to 4.8 or 4.9 GHz.

 

Maybe the software programmers should have a look at the difference between ICUE 3.25/3.26 and ICUE 3.24, because I have no problems with ICUE 3.24.

 

Greetings

 

Mainboard : Asus Maximus Hero XI Wifi

Edited March 6, 2020 by Spacephone

For me the answer is pretty simple.

Icue and its associated services constantly put an average load of 8-10% on the CPU (a 9700K on stock clocks).

This alone makes it roll back to a maximum boost of 4.6Ghz instead of 4.9.

Icue itself takes between 4 and 6% but the corsair services running in background also take 2 - 4% CPU usage constantly, no matter what lighting or fan regulation is running.

It's no longer spike load territory, the boost clock drops as it normally does, and iCue is not the only program causing this.

I'd say if you care about performance, just close iCue and stop the corsair services until you're done.

 

Now, if something could be done to lower the massive CPU usage, that would be great and we wouldn't need to play with the task manager and windows services before starting a game to avoid having freezes and clock drops.

A pretty hefty price performance-wise just to drive a few LEDs

 

Edit : i checked after posting, it's more like 10 - 16% that iCue takes in total. when i kill it, my CPU usage goes below 1%, and there goes your boost clocks..

Edited March 7, 2020 by LeDoyen