4770k stable in stress tests but bsods in most games

[Sohaib]

Hi all, so i have a pretty old CPU. As a matter of fact its the oldest component in my PC. A core i7 4770k and Asus Maximus VI Hero. When i got this chip about 4 or so years ago i tried to overclock it and i couldn't get it to 4.3 Stable. I did lots of tweaks but the processor froze in one test or another. Knowing that i lost on lottery i just gave up on overclocking and ran it in its stock speeds for the past 3 or so years.

Recently i was messing around in BIOS and found Asus cpu step-up and tried 4.2 GHz. To my surpise CPU was stable. I have thermaltake Frio advanced cpu cooler.

Tried Aida64 CPU stress for 60 minutes = stable
Aida64 CPU+FSB for 20 minutes = extreme heat (temps reaching almost 90%) but still stable
Intel burn test = stable
Handbrake = encoding 5 minute 4k video via extreme preset (30 minutes of rendering) still stable
Timespy = stable
Firestrike all 3 tests = stable

Now that gave me a very good indication my cpu is stable. I wasted around 5 hours running various tests. Next day i ran Fallout 4, 15 minutes and BSOD. Restarted, ran again but this time another BSOD within 5 minutes. Mass Effect Andromeda, again BSOD. Few games did run ok but these were older games like Company of Heroes/The Sims 4 etc.

This convinced me on 1 thing, how useless these stability tests are. They force the cpu to 100% and create extreme heat but don't evalute the real usage scenario. In Fallout 4, my cpu was around ~55c when it crashed so definitely not a heat issue.

Any idea what issue it could be? I have checked and the max voltage i see is 1.215v. Low voltage or something else?

specs:
core i7 4770k
asus maximus VI hero
gtx 1080 Ti
DDR3 @ 1600mhz (i had it overclocked to 2000mhz but currently i am running it on stock)

 

[Mikeandike]

Short answer: your overclock is not stable, try -100 mhz.
Long answer: as you said, synthetic tests do not really simulate real world applications like gaming in most cases. That being said, maybe bring your core clock back 100mhz and see how that works for you. I tried overclocking my i7-6700k and ran into the same issues as you, got it to 4.8ghz on synthetics, but in the real world, it just gave bsod screens all the time. My advice is to use Asus realbench for 8 or so hours. I have found that to be the best stress test that I have used.

 

[Sohaib]

Short answer: your overclock is not stable, try -100 mhz.
Long answer: as you said, synthetic tests do not really simulate real world applications like gaming in most cases. That being said, maybe bring your core clock back 100mhz and see how that works for you. I tried overclocking my i7-6700k and ran into the same issues as you, got it to 4.8ghz on synthetics, but in the real world, it just gave bsod screens all the time. My advice is to use Asus realbench for 8 or so hours. I have found that to be the best stress test that I have used.

I say if my CPU can't do 4.2 GHz @ 1.215V then its an extremely bad chip.
This reminds me why i stopped bothering to overclock this chip in the first place 4 years ago.
I thought maybe Asus overclock can make a miracle and finetune itself. I won't lie, i have done some basic overclocking in the past but i am no expert.

 

[Mikeandike]

Short answer: your overclock is not stable, try -100 mhz.
Long answer: as you said, synthetic tests do not really simulate real world applications like gaming in most cases. That being said, maybe bring your core clock back 100mhz and see how that works for you. I tried overclocking my i7-6700k and ran into the same issues as you, got it to 4.8ghz on synthetics, but in the real world, it just gave bsod screens all the time. My advice is to use Asus realbench for 8 or so hours. I have found that to be the best stress test that I have used.

I say if my CPU can't do 4.2 GHz @ 1.215V then its an extremely bad chip.
This reminds me why i stopped bothering to overclock this chip in the first place 4 years ago.
I thought maybe Asus overclock can make a miracle and finetune itself. I won't lie, i have done some basic overclocking in the past but i am no expert.

Overclocking is always a gamble, you can get chips on one end of the bell curve, some on the other, its up to the silicon lottery, and its always a case of trial and error to get things stable. the 4770k is still a decent chip and any bit you can squeeze out of it is great, I personally spent about a week OCing my 6700k, and even after a month or so, i had to mess with it again to get it 100% stable.

 

[ccampy]

I'd also try running a couple ofpasses memtest x68 as it could also be a memory issue

 

[TwilightRavens]

Well 2 things, either lower by 100mhz, or up the voltage. I know how you feel about losing the silicon lottery, my 4690k took about 1.3v to even be stable on 4.3GHz and 4.4GHz was 1.38.

Edit: Another thing, make sure you are overclocking one thing at a time, I made that mistake before and it took me 2 months to figure it out. What I mean is start with core overclocking and get it 100% stable before even messing with Ring/Uncore and RAM. Leave those at stock while doing core. Then do uncore by itself once you are 200% sure your core clock is stable. Then lastly RAM. But i'm sure you probably already know this.

Edit #2: The best stress test (in my opinion) is going to be whatever you built the computer to do, if its games then playing a few hours of different games over a few days. Because i've stayed 100% stable in prime95 for 24 hours, only to blue screen 5 minutes into of fallout 4.

 

[Sohaib]

Well 2 things, either lower by 100mhz, or up the voltage. I know how you feel about losing the silicon lottery, my 4690k took about 1.3v to even be stable on 4.3GHz and 4.4GHz was 1.38.

Edit: Another thing, make sure you are overclocking one thing at a time, I made that mistake before and it took me 2 months to figure it out. What I mean is start with core overclocking and get it 100% stable before even messing with Ring/Uncore and RAM. Leave those at stock while doing core. Then do uncore by itself once you are 200% sure your core clock is stable. Then lastly RAM. But i'm sure you probably already know this.

Edit #2: The best stress test (in my opinion) is going to be whatever you built the computer to do, if its games then playing a few hours of different games over a few days. Because i've stayed 100% stable in prime95 for 24 hours, only to blue screen 5 minutes into of fallout 4.

Yeah i did optimized defaults before overclocking the cpu so everything was running on stock.
I just reverted my cpu to stock again. Not worth spending hours of time on a 4 year old cpu over 200mhz. I game at 4k so getting more cpu performance isn't even necessary in most cases. I hope my next cpu (whichever i buy) is better in overclocking head-room then my current one. The MSI 980's i owned in SLI before my current setup overclocked really well.