Strange overclocking problem when getting into windows

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bradcollins

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Nov 19, 2011
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I'm having a bit of a funny problem with mine. I value silence, so I'm cooling my 3930k with a H100 with 2 120mm's at 900rpm and don't want to go higher than that.

As such I thought that running at 4ghz with all 6 cores active, 4.2ghz with 4 cores active, 4.4ghz with 2 cores and 4.5ghz with one core would be a nice setup that would be fast but never hot, and it isn't.

However I'm having a bit of trouble keeping it stable. I want it to go to ~0.9v at idle, so on my P9X79 I have used the voltage offset to increase voltage and I'm currently running it at 0.050v increase with LLC at regular. This results in a fairly high voltage (for the speeds I want to acheive) of 1.38v under load.

In prime95 and any other stability testing program, the PC runs fine and is perfectly stable, no matter how many cores I assign it. However I seem to have a problem getting into windows. It works fine at stock speeds, but running at the speeds above, it often hard locks just as it is loading my startup programs - which consists of the Asus AI suite, Realtek sound manager and nothing else.

Does anyone have an ideas? It seems to be about one in every 5 boots that locks up and I've tried it down to no offset voltage at all where it seems to be a bit worse, locking up a bit more often on boot, but still perfectly stable in prime.
 
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fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
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Try adding just a tad more vcore and see if it does it. I would also suggest re-installing windows. When overclocking you CAN break a windows install, albeit it generally happens when you are at very high speeds and or fiddling with ram timings/frequencies more often the cpu things. But either way it very well could be a broken install. I would simply reinstall and see if that fixes it and or add just a hair more voltage.

As far as running with less cores, I really don't see a point. I would keep all of the cores active, your h100 will cool it down just fine. Don't be afraid to push some voltage through those chips and see some nice overclocks, with all cores active.

It's like buying a Ferrari and only driving it 25mph, I don't understand some people lol.
 
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bradcollins

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Nov 19, 2011
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I'm now running with LLC set to Medium and Offset set to 0.020v which gives me around 1.35v under load and 0.85v at idle, this seems to be ok at the moment, I've rebooted about 20 times with no locking up on boot. I'd still like the load voltage to be a bit lower, but at least both idle and load voltages are lower than before and it seems to be more stable.
 
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fastamdman

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Nov 18, 2011
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bradcollins - run linx or intelburntest to check for stability. You said "seems to be more stable", there is no seeming heh, it's either you are stable or you aren't. Simply let one of those two programs run for a few hrs, if you pass without any errors or BSOD then you are fine.
 
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bradcollins

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Nov 19, 2011
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tweakboy, yep the ram speed and timings are correct.

fastamdman, the system is stable for hours and hours with prime and always has been, with the settings near where they are at the moment I've never had a crash once in windows. I'm running the intelburntest as we speak, will be interesting to see what happens. It doesn't seem to heat up the cpu as much as prime95 does though?
 
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bradcollins

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Nov 19, 2011
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Installed from an OEM Win7 64bit SP1 DVD and I have been using v2.53 of the software.

Now here is the strange part. I had it running at the settings I mentioned above, but changed 6 cores to run at 4.2ghz, so:

LLC set to Medium and Offset set to 0.020v which gives me around 1.35v under load and 0.85v at idle

4.2ghz with 4,5,6 cores active, 4.4ghz with 2 cores and 4.5ghz with one core.

Now what is strange is that I could run at 4.2ghz using all 12 threads for about 3 hours with the 120mm fans at 900rpm, the temps got up to 80C in coretemp. The cpu speed stayed a 4.2ghz the entire time.

I stopped the test, changed the affinity in task manager to cpu0 and started it again, the Intel Turbo Boost Monitor software reported the cpu running at 4.4ghz, then the PC hard locked. So I rebooted with the same settings still, started the test and ran it for about two hours with no problems set to use cpu0 only.

It seems my problem is changing rapidly from no load to a high load on only one or two cores.

I might do some testing later on with all 6 cores at 4.4ghz with the same settings and see if that is stable.
 
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fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
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First off, just run the processor with all cores...I don't know why you feel the need to be switching the cores on and off randomly.

If you leave the all the cores active, run linx for an hour or two and you have no errors then you are stable, period.

Nothing "weird" will happen if you are stable. Run all the cores, run it at the max setting, and you will be fine. If you lock up, bsod, error out, up the vcore. Thats all ya gotta do.
 
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bradcollins

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Nov 19, 2011
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The only reason for running them at lower speeds is to keep the fan speeds low and the temps at a reasonable level. I don't want to have the fans above 900rpm or the temps above 80C.

Purely for testing though I'll ramp the fan speeds up a bit to keep the temps around 80C and see what happens with all the cores at 4.4ghz.
 
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fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
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I can't believe your h100 is not keeping that chip cooler, that is sad. Try remounting it, or using better fans.
 
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