Question BSOD after overclocking CPU and RAM ?

[hedonismbot73]

Hey everyone, really hoping someone can guide me towards a fix here - I really don't know what I'm doing.

I've felt my PC has been struggling more than it should to run older games that used to be fine. I decided to try overclocking for the first time to see if that helped, while looking into how to overclock my CPU I also found something about RAM overclocking so I did that at the same time (probably a dumb idea). Now I'm getting intermittent blue screens/crashes, sometimes constantly other times only once a day. The odd thing (to me) is that the BSOD seems more likely to happen when my PC is under light load (generally just streaming video or even just idling) rather than when gaming.

I've already reverted the RAM overclock and returned it to the default settings in the BIOS. However, when I tried to do the same with the CPU I find that my PC runs incredibly slowly on the default 3.40Ghz setting. I'm positive this isn't just me feeling like it's slow relative to the overclock, this is genuinely 5-10x slower than the PC ran before I ever touched the BIOS settings a few days ago; I can't even watch a video with a single Firefox tab open, it's that slow (the entire PC lags out and becomes unresponsive or extremely delayed, even closing the tab takes like 10 seconds).

So here I am with lots of blue screens/crashes and I can't even revert the CPU overclock to see if that fixes it because it seems like my PC no longer functions with the setting it was at earlier this week (3.40Ghz).

Here are a few things I've tried so far followed by my specs, any suggestions would be appreciated:

• As mentioned above, rolled back RAM overclock to default setting.
• Increased CPU voltage to 1.3000v (rolled back to default after the next BSOD)
• Ran memtest64 (no errors found)
• Ran chkdsk /f
• Reinstalled OS (I did this because at one point after a BSOD I couldn't get the PC to fully boot back to the desktop, I could get as far as the login screen and then it would just sit there indefinitely)

Full specs (I'm unsure what is/isn't relevant):
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X
X399 AORUS Gaming 7
16GB DDR4
Windows 10 64-bit

 

[Nighthawk117]

I find that my PC runs incredibly slowly on the default 3.40Ghz setting. I'm positive this isn't just me feeling like it's slow relative to the overclock, this is genuinely 5-10x slower than the PC ran before I ever touched the BIOS settings a few days ago; I can't even watch a video with a single Firefox tab open, it's that slow (the entire PC lags out and becomes unresponsive or extremely delayed, even closing the tab takes like 10 seconds).

I find this very odd, even at 3.4Ghz you shouldn't have any trouble doing basic things. I would reset the CMOS to ensure you've undone everything.

May I ask what overclocks you applied to the RAM and CPU?

 

[hedonismbot73]

I find this very odd, even at 3.4Ghz you shouldn't have any trouble doing basic things. I would reset the CMOS to ensure you've undone everything.

May I ask what overclocks you applied to the RAM and CPU?

Apologies, I should have included that in the original post.

I have the CPU set to 3.70Ghz and the RAM was set to 3200 before I rolled it back to the default.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Apologies, I should have included that in the original post.

I have the CPU set to 3.70Ghz and the RAM was set to 3200 before I rolled it back to the default.

Ok so it wasn't much of an overclock then. Do you know what voltage you had for both?

 

[hedonismbot73]

Ok so it wasn't much of an overclock then. Do you know what voltage you had for both?

I never touched the RAM voltage so it's still at the default of 1.2V.

When I originally overclocked the CPU I didn't adjust the voltage so it was at 1.22500V. At one point I did increase it to 1.30000 but when I was still getting crashes I just reverted back to the default above.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I never touched the RAM voltage so it's still at the default of 1.2V.

Oh ok, I would expect the motherboard to increase the voltage automatically if you changed the speed. I would clear the CMOS rather than just reset the settings and go from there. You want to be sure everything is back as it was before.

 

[hedonismbot73]

Oh ok, I would expect the motherboard to increase the voltage automatically if you changed the speed. I would clear the CMOS rather than just reset the settings and go from there. You want to be sure everything is back as it was before.

Okay, I cleared the CMOS and now the 3.40Ghz on the CPU actually feels like 3.40Ghz. I guess I'll leave it like that for now and see how it holds up, I don't have a reliable way to reproduce the BSOD as it seemed pretty sporadic before (one time it was fine for 5 hours, then it crashed 2 times within 30 minutes).

 

[Nighthawk117]

Okay, I cleared the CMOS and now the 3.40Ghz on the CPU actually feels like 3.40Ghz. I guess I'll leave it like that for now and see how it holds up, I don't have a reliable way to reproduce the BSOD as it seemed pretty sporadic before (one time it was fine for 5 hours, then it crashed 2 times within 30 minutes).

I would say overclocking is not worth it, if your having performance issues then a 8% overclock won't be enough to change that. I'm not surprised at the sporadic nature.

While it's not a new CPU, I'm surprised it would feel slow. If you do encounter further performance issues then it would suggest something else is wrong. I notice you have 16GB RAM, have you ever thought about increasing this, DDR4 is quite cheap now?

 

[hedonismbot73]

I would say overclocking is not worth it, if your having performance issues then a 8% overclock won't be enough to change that. I'm not surprised at the sporadic nature.

While it's not a new CPU, I'm surprised it would feel slow. If you do encounter further performance issues then it would suggest something else is wrong. I notice you have 16GB RAM, have you ever thought about increasing this, DDR4 is quite cheap now?

Yeah I probably should look into that, I was just starting with options that wouldn't cost any money. But the PC is about 6 years old at this point so I should probably just bite the bullet and start upgrading components.

To be honest the overclock did have a pretty noticeable impact on the game in question. I went from getting 35-40 fps on medium settings to 60fps on almost maxed settings. Was quite nice, but doesn't really mean anything if it makes the PC so unstable that I can't reliably play.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Yeah I probably should look into that, I was just starting with options that wouldn't cost any money. But the PC is about 6 years old at this point so I should probably just bite the bullet and start upgrading components.

To be honest the overclock did have a pretty noticeable impact on the game in question. I went from getting 35-40 fps on medium settings to 60fps on almost maxed settings. Was quite nice, but doesn't really mean anything if it makes the PC so unstable that I can't reliably play.

Can I assume the PC was fine in general use, like just browsing the web and stuff like that before you overclocked anything?

Can I ask what games your trying to play?

 

[hedonismbot73]

Can I assume the PC was fine in general use, like just browsing the web and stuff like that before you overclocked anything?

Can I ask what games your trying to play?

Yeah for the most part, although if I was streaming video on my second monitor while playing a game on the primary one there would be noticeable frame drops.

The game in question is World of Warcraft. I play other games as well but those are either fine or relatively new to the point where slightly lower performance wasn't surprising to me.

Now WoW isn't really as old as it looks on paper since they regularly update the graphics and push it further every few years. But my fps was dipping as low as 5 in some of the newer content which I just found unacceptable.

 

[Zerk2012]

I never touched the RAM voltage so it's still at the default of 1.2V.

That is a mistake for 3200 you should of been @ 1.35 voltage.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Yeah for the most part, although if I was streaming video on my second monitor while playing a game on the primary one there would be noticeable frame drops.

When you say streaming, do you mean just watching things like youtube?

Now WoW isn't really as old as it looks on paper since they regularly update the graphics and push it further every few years. But my fps was dipping as low as 5 in some of the newer content which I just found unacceptable.

I don't play WoW so it's not something I have experience with. However I would be surprised if nothing could be done to improve that, like altering settings for example.

 

[hedonismbot73]

When you say streaming, do you mean just watching things like youtube?


I don't play WoW so it's not something I have experience with. However I would be surprised if nothing could be done to improve that, like altering settings for example.

YouTube or Twitch mostly, sometimes Netflix or Amazon.

There's one particular section in WoW that dropped to 8fps even when I had every setting turned to the absolute minimum. Others have reported lower performance in the area I'm talking about but not nearly to that extent (more like 25-30 fps which I could tolerate).

 

[Nighthawk117]

YouTube or Twitch mostly, sometimes Netflix or Amazon.

There's one particular section in WoW that dropped to 8fps even when I had every setting turned to the absolute minimum. Others have reported lower performance in the area I'm talking about but not nearly to that extent (more like 25-30 fps which I could tolerate).

I'm surprised your having difficulty streaming Netflix as well, are you sure that's not GPU related perhaps? I have seen people having performance issues with even high end systems with i7 12700K's. It does sound like it might need just the brute force of very fast cores.

Your board looks awesome btw.

 

[MJS WARLORD]

Just wondering .... have you overclocked your graphics card , the reason i ask is because i have the zotac version of the gtx 1080 ( not a TI like yours) , i had it put in a custom built rig when the 1080 had just come out.

I found an overclocking program on the disc a as i did not know how to use it i wrote to zotac , the individual who replied said he did not understand what that program was on the disc because the 1080 has the ability to do the equivalent of overclocking itself when put under load ..... i am only repeating what he said .

With regards to old games ... how old ??? , some pc's a too good to run old games and you get problems like jumping onto a mounting and you go straight through it to a green screen crash , if i have a problem with an old game i use compatability mode on the launcher to match what operating system was around when it was made.

 

[hedonismbot73]

I'm surprised your having difficulty streaming Netflix as well, are you sure that's not GPU related perhaps? I have seen people having performance issues with even high end systems with i7 12700K's. It does sound like it might need just the brute force of very fast cores.

Your board looks awesome btw.

No, I'm definitely not tech savvy enough to say with utmost confidence that there are no GPU issues going on. However, I will say that WoW does have a reputation as a fairly CPU-intensive game and I did see the substantial improvement I mentioned earlier when I overclocked the CPU, even though it was a relatively small OC.

I do know the GPU isn't overheating, and according to task manager it's at about 75-80% usage when streaming and playing WoW simultaneously.

Edit: We are basically a full 24 hours from the CMOS reset at this point and I haven't had any crashes since then so I'm reasonably confident that solved the issue. Maybe I'll try fiddling with it some more in the future now that I know how to properly reset it if needed, but for right now I'll just be happy with my playable 20-30fps. Thank you for all your time and responses over the last day or so.

 

[hedonismbot73]

Just wondering .... have you overclocked your graphics card , the reason i ask is because i have the zotac version of the gtx 1080 ( not a TI like yours) , i had it put in a custom built rig when the 1080 had just come out.

I found an overclocking program on the disc a as i did not know how to use it i wrote to zotac , the individual who replied said he did not understand what that program was on the disc because the 1080 has the ability to do the equivalent of overclocking itself when put under load ..... i am only repeating what he said .

With regards to old games ... how old ??? , some pc's a too good to run old games and you get problems like jumping onto a mounting and you go straight through it to a green screen crash , if i have a problem with an old game i use compatability mode on the launcher to match what operating system was around when it was made.

I have not tried overclocking my GPU yet, and after this whole experience I'll be pretty cautious regarding OCs in the future 😆

 

[Nighthawk117]

I did see the substantial improvement I mentioned earlier when I overclocked the CPU, even though it was a relatively small OC.

I find that very odd, the boost from 3.4Ghz to 3.7Ghz wouldn't cause a substantial improvement. What was you RAM speed before you overclocked, 2666Mhz?