[SOLVED] A newbie's OC attempt, audio glitching

[Splot]

Hi there,
I recently upgraded my rig with i7 9700K and ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E Gaming. I decided to OC my CPU to get my money's worth from it. It's my first ever attempt at overclocking so I found this other guy's tutorial on YT how to get a CPU like 9700K overclocked to 5.0 GHz and I followed it almost to the letter. Firstly, I found out that with his proposed core voltage of 1.29 volts I could not achieve 5.0 GHz as I started getting errors while stress testing my CPU with OCCT. I settled with 4.8 GHz and 1.30 volts for now as I did not feel comfortable with raising my core voltage any higher as I am already seeing temperatures of around 90 degrees under 100% load. Maybe I will try again later with higher core voltage but I think I need to upgrade my cooler first. For now I believe a stable 4.8 GHz is sufficient. The real problem I started noticing was audio glitching. I first noticed the odd popping noises (like on an old, dirty vinyl record) when listening to mp3s in Winamp. I am using the built in Realtek audio. Somewhere on the internet I found a guy saying that he had the same issue and for him fixing the PCH core voltage at 1.1 volts instead at 1.0 volts solved the issue. I tried that and Winamp seemed fixed, but I kept hearing the same glitching sounds on loading screens in Fallout 4 and GTAV (as if loading a lot of data had something to do with it) so I tuned it up to 1.2 volts and I think it's gone now, but sometimes I think I still hear the occasional pop (I could also be over sensitive at this point as I am OCD). Somewhere I read that if I need to fix my PCH core voltage to 1.1 volts it means that there is something wrong with my rig in the first place. Could that be true? I already have another problem with my GPU on boot up.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/rtx-2080-super-random-post-error.3603974/

So, maybe my new PSU is too weak or faulty? I also thought about getting a PCI-E soundcard. What tweaks can I try to troubleshoot this issue?

Thanks!

EDIT: I corrected the CPU core voltage in my post as I reported it incorrectly as 3.00 volts. It should be 1.30 volts.

 

[zx128k]

core voltage of 2.90 volts

I settled with 4.8 GHz and 3.00 volts

Is that 3 volts vcore? If it is you need to change that very quickly.

Coffee Lake Refresh	SSE Frequency	AVX2 Frequency	Vcore	% Capable
9700K	4.90GHz	4.70GHz	1.337V	100%
9700K	5.00GHz	4.80GHz	1.350V	Top 90%
9700K	5.10GHz	4.90GHz	1.362V	Top 38%
9700K	5.20GHz	5.00GHz	1.375V	Top 9%
9700K	5.30GHz	5.10GHz	1.387V	Top 1%

https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics

The above table is the normal voltage you should need for each frequency.

 

[Splot]

Is that 3 volts vcore? If it is you need to change that very quickly.

Coffee Lake Refresh	SSE Frequency	AVX2 Frequency	Vcore	% Capable
9700K	4.90GHz	4.70GHz	1.337V	100%
9700K	5.00GHz	4.80GHz	1.350V	Top 90%
9700K	5.10GHz	4.90GHz	1.362V	Top 38%
9700K	5.20GHz	5.00GHz	1.375V	Top 9%
9700K	5.30GHz	5.10GHz	1.387V	Top 1%

https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics

The above table is the normal voltage you should need for each frequency.

Thank you for taking your time to reply to my post. I am sorry. There was an error in my original post. My voltages are:

CPU core: 1.30 V
DRAM: 1.35 V
VCCIO: 1.20 V
System Agent: 1.20 V
PCH core: 1.20 V

 

[zx128k]

Could you post the full specs of your PC. PSU make and model. Did you overclock your RAM as well? Also what stress tests have you run? Does the audio issue happen at stock?

 

[Splot]

Could you post the full specs of your PC. PSU make and model. Did you overclock your RAM as well? Also what stress tests have you run? Does the audio issue happen at stock?

MoBo: ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING
CPU: Intel i7 9700K
PSU: Corsair RMx 750W CP-9020179-EU
GPU: ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX2080S-A8G-GAMING
RAM: HyperX Predator XMP 32GB (2x16GB 3600MHz DDR4 CL17 DIMM)

For the basic setup I pretty much followed this guy's advice:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1Ze80GpLo


The exceptions are the voltages as per my previous post and the fact that I could not set CPU Current Capability to 170% (my available max was 140% so that's what I went with).

I made no effort to OC my RAM. The only change I made from stock was using XMP II instead of XMP I.

The audio issue does not appear when I load stock profile.

Again thanks for your time.

EDIT: As for the stress tests I ran MSI Kombustor for GPU and OCCT and Linpack in OCCT v. 5.5.7.

 

[zx128k]

MoBo: ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING
CPU: Intel i7 9700K
PSU: Corsair RMx 750W CP-9020179-EU
GPU: ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX2080S-A8G-GAMING
RAM: HyperX Predator XMP 32GB (2x16GB 3600MHz DDR4 CL17 DIMM)

For the basic setup I pretty much followed this guy's advice:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1Ze80GpLo


The exceptions are the voltages as per my previous post and the fact that I could not set CPU Current Capability to 170% (my available max was 140% so that's what I went with).

I made no effort to OC my RAM. The only change I made from stock was using XMP II instead of XMP I.

The audio issue does not appear when I load stock profile.

Again thanks for your time.

EDIT: As for the stress tests I ran MSI Kombustor for GPU and OCCT and Linpack in OCCT v. 5.5.7.

XMP is an overclock on your RAM. Stock RAM is 2667MT/s for the 9700k. Kimbustor is not a good GPU test. With a RTX 2080 super Control one of the best stress tests. Best GPU RAM test is World of Tanks EnCore RT.

CPU Aida64 and prime95 are good. Aida64 tests all the different parts of the CPU.

If you overclock, make sure RAM remains stable as you increase frequency. 8 passes of every test and 32 passes of test 7.

The first thing you should do before overclocking is run the stress test at stock. If you fail at stock then RMA. It's better than overclocking then months down the line finding stock is not stable.

The good news is that your issues with sound go away at stock settings and you can keep your RAM with the XMP overclock enbaled without issue.

Now you need to carefully overclock and run tests. At some point the issue will return. I would guess your overclock was not stable.

 

[Splot]

XMP is an overclock on your RAM. Stock RAM is 2667MT/s for the 9700k. Kimbustor is not a good GPU test. With a RTX 2080 super Control one of the best stress tests. Best GPU RAM test is World of Tanks EnCore RT.

CPU Aida64 and prime95 are good. Aida64 tests all the different parts of the CPU.

If you overclock, make sure RAM remains stable as you increase frequency. 8 passes of every test and 32 passes of test 7.

The first thing you should do before overclocking is run the stress test at stock. If you fail at stock then RMA. It's better than overclocking then months down the line finding stock is not stable.

The good news is that your issues with sound go away at stock settings and you can keep your RAM with the XMP overclock enbaled without issue.

Now you need to carefully overclock and run tests. At some point the issue will return. I would guess your overclock was not stable.

I ran Aida64 system stability test and Prime95 torture test suite (8 workers) for over 30 minutes yesterday and all passed. I got no errors. Aida64 showed CPU temperatures around 75 degrees, all voltages within specs and no throttling. With Prime95 I started getting CPU temperatures around 100 degrees so I decided not to run it for prolonged period of time. As I mentioned already - I need better cooling.

I am trying to get my hands on a PCI-E soundcard to if it's also affected.

Thanks!

 

[zx128k]

I ran Aida64 system stability test and Prime95 torture test suite (8 workers) for over 30 minutes yesterday and all passed. I got no errors. Aida64 showed CPU temperatures around 75 degrees, all voltages within specs and no throttling. With Prime95 I started getting CPU temperatures around 100 degrees so I decided not to run it for prolonged period of time. As I mentioned already - I need better cooling.

I am trying to get my hands on a PCI-E soundcard to if it's also affected.

Thanks!

Stress tests are normally run for +8 hours up to 24 hours. If you overclock you need to run stress test to confirm that everything is working fine. If you overclock to 5GHz for example then you need to run a stress test like Aida64 to see if the system is stable and that temperatures are not too high.

For my memory overclock I used memtet86 I ran each of the tests 0-9 32 times(5-7-9 are +2 hours). Also I have run test 10 and 13 8 times (3 hours). This is +8 hours of memtest86 (likely 12 hours total). You have too run the tests all at once with memtest. 10 one day and 10 another is not going to work. They have to be all at once.

For memetest a minimum of 8 passes all tests at once and 32 passes of test 7 (you can fail at pass 21 for example of test 7). Aida64 8-12 hours. Prime95 (if you choose to run it as temps will hit maximum which is bad if you hit 100c. AVX instructions can be disabled which reduces temperatures.) 10 hours smallest fft and 10 hours largest fft should be stable enough for gaming and such.

If your temps are too high then back off the overclock. Temps must remain in spec all year round, its hotter in the summer. So leave some headroom for the summer and keep the temps under 90c. Overclocks can be limited by the cooling. Keep the voltages for vcore etc within safe limits. Hope the silicon gods grant a high overclock.

Example of a 9700k run prime95.

Prime95 v. 27.9 with CPUSupportsAVX=0 & CPUSupportsFMA3=0, Small FFTs. This is AVX instructions disabled so cooler. Use the avx offset or older 26.6 prime95 to test if you wont be using anything with avx.

Guide for overclocking by Gigabyte https://www.gigabyte.com/FileUpload/Global/multimedia/2/file/525/946.pdf