SA Voltage issue with MSI X99A Gaming 7 & Core i7 6850k....

[PowerPie5000]

Hi,

Does anyone here have an MSI X99A Gaming 7 or the X99S Gaming 7? Or even used or reviewed one at all? I'm having a hard time trying to find out what the CPU SA voltage is configured at (System Agent/VCCSA). I have it set to auto in the BIOS and there's a little info box on the right side of the screen that shows a few voltages and one of them says "CPU SA: 1.256V".... That seems a bit too high! It's running a stock Core i7 6850k (Broadwell-E). I can manually enter a different figure in to the CPU SA voltage settings, but the CPU SA voltage reading in the BIOS always shows 1.256v no matter what I change it to!


HWinfo doesn't show any voltage reading of 1.256v and neither does Aida64 or even the MSI Command Centre. HWMonitor on the other hand shows the 1.256v reading as "VIN5" and it never fluctuates. Does this board actually have a sensor that reads/shows the SA voltage? HWMonitor also shows a system agent offset of +0.512V when I enable the XMP profile for my DDR4 RAM which again seems a bit high, especially considering I can't seem to find out what the default SA reading is (currently running RAM at 2133 by default now).


Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?




Cheers

[PowerPie5000]

Some more screenshots. You can see I manually changed the CPU SA voltage to 0.900v, but it still shows as 1.256v in the info tab in the BIOS. You can also see the CPU Ring Bus and CPU VCCU voltages are not showing.






HWMonitor and Speccy show the 1.256v reading (speccy shows it twice)… But there's no proper label for them. All other software I've tried so far can't detect/see or display the 1.256v reading.








…. And why does the game boost function show a Core i7 6700k & Core i5 6600k?? It's an X99 based board, not Z170.

[PowerPie5000]

So nobody here at all with an MSI X99 based board? I'm still waiting for MSI to come up with an explanation and in the meantime I'm seriously thinking about jumping ship and getting a Ryzen 2700X setup.

[peterb]

The software is only reading the sensor (if indeed it is measuring the voltage - it may just be a setting)

I don’t have that board - but out of interest, why are you worrying about it? If the machine is working OK, then just get on and use it!

[PowerPie5000]

The software is only reading the sensor (if indeed it is measuring the voltage - it may just be a setting)

I don’t have that board - but out of interest, why are you worrying about it? If the machine is working OK, then just get on and use it!

I think it's a false reading or a reading for another sensor that is labelled wrong in the BIOS. SA voltage typically runs around 0.850v - 0.950v with a stock Broadwell-E processor and not 1.256v.

I'm worried about it as I have no way of seeing what the real SA voltage reading is and enabling XMP or any RAM setting above 2133MHz automatically adds an increased offset to the SA voltage... Anything up to 0.512v on top of the currently unknown SA voltage this board is supplying. Too much can kill the IMC.

MSI sent me a beta BIOS to try (HH1) and said they "fixed" the issue. All they did was remove the SA voltage reading from the BIOS and then told me the not to worry about the voltage offsets... I feel like they've just fobbed me off.

Anyway I'm now looking in to either getting another X99 board (had a couple already) or just jumping to a Ryzen 7 2700X setup with an Asrock Taichi X470 board.

[peterb]

Well if the IMC hasn't died already, you may be worrying unnecessarily - and there isn't anything you can do except restore is to standard settings.

I'd take MSI at their word and not worry about it - sometimes too much information is just well, too much.

[PowerPie5000]

I only bought the 6850k recently (new) and it's not seen much use so far. Not enough use with XMP enabled for the IMC to degrade or die. I've pretty much been running it stock 99% of the time.

Lets say the SA voltage is currently 0.900v at stock, then enabling the XMP profile on my GeIL DDR4 RAM takes it up to 3000MHz and at the same time it automatically adds a +0.512v offset to the SA voltage. This means the SA voltage could be in the region of 1.4V which I'm pretty sure isn't safe at all in the long run. I can see the various voltage offset readings using HWMonitor, but there's no way of seeing the actual SA voltage total. Enabling XMP also increases the idle and load CPU core temps by quite a bit too... By around 10C or more!

The BIOS allows me to manually enter an SA voltage, but how do I know if it's been accepted or not? You can even adjust the -/+ SA voltage offsets in the BIOS, but it's not too much use if I don't know what the original/default SA voltage value is to begin with.


I'm contemplating whether or not a Ryzen 7 2700X would be much of an upgrade when it comes to gaming? Or should I source a better X99 board?

[peterb]

Well, the only way to be absolutely certain would be with a multimeter on the relevant pin.

However you also need to read the relevant spec sheet to see what Vmax is for the SA voltage.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...resources.html

Can't help you about the Ryzen - I don't play online games.

[PowerPie5000]

Well, the only way to be absolutely certain would be with a multimeter on the relevant pin.

However you also need to read the relevant spec sheet to see what Vmax is for the SA voltage.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...resources.html

Can't help you about the Ryzen - I don't play online games.

Thanks for the link. I've had a browse through some of the documents but can't seem to find anything relating to the SA voltage (there's quite a bit of info to sift through). Anyway, I've decided to keep the i7 6850k as it still appears to be slightly better than Ryzen when it comes to gaming performance. I managed to get an Asrock X99 Taichi board at a reasonable price so I'll see how it goes.

I'll just put the SA voltage thing down to a lack of sensors and/or limited BIOS on the MSI board. It seems to be the same with some of the other MSI boards including the X99S Gaming 7, X99A Tomahawk and X99 SLI and X99 Krait too.