Question I have a CPU and GPU that i want to OC but I have no idea what Im doing

[sobakowa19]

I have just built my first rig in like 20 years with a Ryzen 5 2600, Asus B 450 motherboard, an EVGA RTX 2080 with 16GB of Corsair RAM 3200mhz. It actually works, Im just curious on how to OC. I think I have an idea on what Im doing, i got the CPU clocked to 3.85ghz with the voltage offset up to 1.35v. The GPU I went into MSI afterburner and clocked the core +150, memory clock +675, power limit to 110% which takes max temp to 84 degrees and the core voltage +5. It seems stable running 3dMark FireEx and Heavenly as well as doing a CPUID stress on the CPU itself. Temps on the CPU don't exceed 67, and the GPU pegs out at 82. Is that ok? Also what could these numbers be at to be better but stable? I am just running a wraith spire (the better one that comes with a ryzen 7 2700x my buddy gave me) cooler and my case is a phanteks p300 with I would assume pretty good air flow cause it doesnt get really hot ever. Id really appreciate any feedback, what would be perfect is someone with exact components share numbers that I could base an OC from. Thanks in advance guys

EDIT: After playing bo4 for the past hour my max GPU temps are only in the high 70's (like 77).... so I think there is room to OC further I just dont know how and I will freak out if PC crashes and I cant fix it (Im a moron really ha)

 

[Darkbreeze]

All you need to know really.

Ryzen 2000 series overclocking guide

NVIDIA RTX 2080 / SUPER Overclocking Guide

www.overclockersclub.com

And when it comes to the CPU overclock, it would be VERY advisable that you FIRST read this, several times, until you understand EXACTLY what it is you are doing and how to go about verifying stability and validating your overclock. Otherwise, don't bother doing it. You'll just create more problems for yourself than you ever wanted to have to deal with. So long as you are willing to put in the WORK required to validate and verify thermal compliance and stability, it's really not rocket science. Only lazy people who want it all without any effort tend to run into major problems or damaged hardware.

CPU overclocking guide and tutorial for beginners

 

[sobakowa19]

All you need to know really.

Ryzen 2000 series overclocking guide

NVIDIA RTX 2080 / SUPER Overclocking Guide

www.overclockersclub.com

And when it comes to the CPU overclock, it would be VERY advisable that you FIRST read this, several times, until you understand EXACTLY what it is you are doing and how to go about verifying stability and validating your overclock. Otherwise, don't bother doing it. You'll just create more problems for yourself than you ever wanted to have to deal with. So long as you are willing to put in the WORK required to validate and verify thermal compliance and stability, it's really not rocket science. Only lazy people who want it all without any effort tend to run into major problems or damaged hardware.

CPU overclocking guide and tutorial for beginners

Thanks man

 

[Darkbreeze]

Of course. If you have questions AFTER reading those, just ask.

 

[sobakowa19]

Of course. If you have questions AFTER reading those, just ask.

Im going into this now with a bit more knowlage than before.... with that being said should i reset all/any changes I have made thus far to the BIOS / MSI Afterburner settings to start from square one? Im thinking it would be a good way to go about it, just change everything back to defaults? Oh and is it good to do the GPU OC with the CPU OC already completed? Kind of a noob question there but....
Thanks for your time


EDIT: Now that its after midnight and I have ran IntelBurnTest for the third time at "Very High" for 30 loops (which took about 50 minutes the last time and my room is crazy warm ha) I really have a better understanding of the whole OCing idea. My temps are all good with the CPU reaching only 81 degrees, monitored by HWinfo64 and Afterburner diagnostics as well. I think Im going to work on the OC for the GPU in the morning cause Im tired and Ill try and wait for a response from you regarding to keep the CPU clock on for clocking the GPU... Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, those are both good tutorials on getting started in the OC realm.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, CPU overclock can be done first, and probably should be. When overclocking the CPU you don't want ANYTHING else to potentially be a factor in instability. Memory, graphics and OS should all be baseline stable so that if there are any problems at all you can be fairly certain that they are related to whatever you are doing with the CPU. Once THAT is fully stable and thermally compliant, then you can move on to other things such as setting up the memory XMP profile or overclocking the memory if that's something you decide to do (Recommend just setting XMP/AMP/DOCP profiles as overclocking memory is a lot of work for very little actual performance gains) or the graphics card.

As to the Intel burn test, not my favorite method of testing. If you have not yet, I would highly recommend that you read my guide on overclocking for beginners. Just in case it's a case of TLDR, I'll post the quick and dirty version here for you. This is the result of a lot of overclocking trial and error, with testing, asking questions of other long time overclockers and reading various guides around the web, to come to a consensus on what the most expedient yet reliable test methods should consist of.

Quick and dirty overview of overclocking/stability validation procedure.​

Set CPU multiplier and voltage at desired settings in BIOS. Do not use presets or automatic utilities. These will overcompensate on core and other voltages. It is much better to configure most core settings manually, and leave anything left over on auto until a later point in time if wish to come back and tweak settings such as cache (Uncore) frequency, System agent voltage, VCCIO (Internal memory controller) and memory speeds or timings (RAM) AFTER the CPU overclock is fully stable.

Save bios settings (As a new BIOS profile if your bios supports multiple profiles) and exit bios.

Boot into the Windows desktop environment. Download and install Prime95 version 26.6.

Download and install either HWinfo or CoreTemp.

Open HWinfo and run "Sensors only" or open CoreTemp.

Run Prime95 (ONLY version 26.6) and choose the "Small FFT test option". Run this for 15 minutes while monitoring your core/package temperatures to verify that you do not exceed the thermal specifications of your CPU.

(This should be considered to be 80°C for most generations of Intel processor and for current Ryzen CPUs. For older AMD FX and Phenom series, you should use a thermal monitor that has options for "Distance to TJmax" and you want to NOT see distance to TJmax drop below 10°C distance to TJmax. Anything that is MORE than 10°C distance to TJmax is within the allowed thermal envelope.)

If your CPU passes the thermal compliance test, move on to stability.

Download and install Realbench. Run Realbench and choose the Stress test option. Choose a value from the available memory (RAM) options that is equal to approximately half of your installed memory capacity. If you have 16GB, choose 8GB. If you have 8GB, choose 4GB, etc. Click start and allow the stability test to run for 8 hours. Do not plan to use the system for ANYTHING else while it is running. It will run realistic AVX and handbrake workloads and if it passes 8 hours of testing it is probably about as stable as you can reasonably expect.

If you wish to check stability further you can run 12-24 hours of Prime95 Blend mode or Small FFT.

You do not need to simultaneously run HWinfo or CoreTemp while running Realbench as you should have already performed the thermal compliance test PLUS Realbench will show current CPU temperatures while it is running.

If you run the additional stability test using Prime95 Blend/Small FFT modes for 12-24 hours, you will WANT to also run HWinfo alongside it. Monitor HWinfo periodically to verify that no cores/threads are showing less than 100% usage. If it is, then that worker has errored out and the test should be stopped.

If you find there are errors on ANY of the stability tests including Realbench or Prime95, or any other stress testing utility, you need to make a change in the bios. This could be either dropping the multiplier to a lower factor or increasing the voltage while leaving the multiplier the same. If you change voltage or multiplier at ANY time, you need to start over again at the beginning and verify thermal compliance again.

A more in depth but general guide that is still intended for beginners or those who have had a small amount of experience overclocking can be found here:


*CPU overclocking guide for beginners​

 

[sobakowa19]

Yes, CPU overclock can be done first, and probably should be. When overclocking the CPU you don't want ANYTHING else to potentially be a factor in instability. Memory, graphics and OS should all be baseline stable so that if there are any problems at all you can be fairly certain that they are related to whatever you are doing with the CPU. Once THAT is fully stable and thermally compliant, then you can move on to other things such as setting up the memory XMP profile or overclocking the memory if that's something you decide to do (Recommend just setting XMP/AMP/DOCP profiles as overclocking memory is a lot of work for very little actual performance gains) or the graphics card.

As to the Intel burn test, not my favorite method of testing. If you have not yet, I would highly recommend that you read my guide on overclocking for beginners. Just in case it's a case of TLDR, I'll post the quick and dirty version here for you. This is the result of a lot of overclocking trial and error, with testing, asking questions of other long time overclockers and reading various guides around the web, to come to a consensus on what the most expedient yet reliable test methods should consist of.

A little too late with the benchmark of the CPU ha but good info none the less. I now am on to OCing the GPU because I am pretty sure I'm stable with the CPU clock. I was just running BO4 and played a bit of Assassins Creed Odyssey a bit ago with no crashes.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
Doing this GPU overclock is taking some time, I'm not able to get stable readings from 3DMark... the FireEx bench is good and I score in the 20500 range but its not stable in TimeSpy at all.... the screen tears and flickers a lot so I keep backing off the mem clocks and the GPU clock. So the FireEx in 3DMark and the Heavenly benches are good but not TimeSpy? I have dropped the core down to like +50 and the mem clock down to +500 (running that as soon as I finish typing). Hopefully that works? But the dude was saying that you could reasonably expect the core to clock fine at around 140 and the mem to clock upwards of 700 so I dont know what Im doing wrong?


EDIT: Its now like 230, been at the GPU for like 4 hours ha... I cant get TimeSpy to be stable at any OC? The screen flickers and looks obviously like something is wrong, majority of people say the memory is clocked too high... so, after turning that down to 0 as well as 0 (no OC on the GPU) it still flickers?? So does that mean the OC on the CPU is wonky cause it tests good everywhere else?? Im stuck ha

Another hour later
So I went back and reset the GPU and ran just a basic OC scan (auto) and it gave me a curve on MSI Afterburner. Went to bench straight after that and got scores damn near what I had trying to manually do it... problem being that TimeSpy STILL flashes and junk, but whats strange is that it gives me a valid score at the end of just shy of 11k. What do I do? Fire Extreme is just shy of 21k and Heavenly comes back with a score of just under 6k. All of which are good scores I take it (they are all ranking me in like the 94%)?? Should I tweak some more or what? Im going to game for a bit and see if anything out of ordinary happens (hopefully not)....

 

[Darkbreeze]

Let me bring in somebody with more experience on that card.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, apparently he has not overclocked any RTX cards yet either.

Honestly, I can't tell you a lot. Usually I don't overclock my graphics cards. If a card doesn't do what I need it to with the factory overclock, then I need a bigger card. If no bigger card is available, then I need to either wait or reduce settings. LOL.

One thing I WOULD suggest though, is maybe using the EVGA software instead of the MSI software. Indications are that the Precision X and OC scanner have gotten pretty good, and are meant for use with that card.

EVGA - Support - EVGA Software

EVGA Software

www.evga.com

EVGA - Software - EVGA OC Scanner

EVGA OC Scanner

www.evga.com

 

[sobakowa19]

Well, apparently he has not overclocked any RTX cards yet either.

Honestly, I can't tell you a lot. Usually I don't overclock my graphics cards. If a card doesn't do what I need it to with the factory overclock, then I need a bigger card. If no bigger card is available, then I need to either wait or reduce settings. LOL.

One thing I WOULD suggest though, is maybe using the EVGA software instead of the MSI software. Indications are that the Precision X and OC scanner have gotten pretty good, and are meant for use with that card.

EVGA - Support - EVGA Software

EVGA Software

www.evga.com

EVGA - Software - EVGA OC Scanner

EVGA OC Scanner

www.evga.com

Sounds good, thank you for your help... I searched all over trying to get good feedback for questions I had, you by FAR are the most help, thanks again you were a huge help.

 

[DMAN999]

Dark breeze has done an Excellent job pointing you to those guides and EVGA PrecisionX.
l don't have an RTX card But I did experience those exact same flickering screen and OC stability issues when I used the 2 newest drivers (with Ray Tracing support) for my MSI GTX 1660 TI Armor OC.
When I reverted to the older version 219.67 for my card the flicking was gone and my card was stable again even with +125 MHz on the GPU and +1000 MHz on the Memory clocks.
You might want to try either an older driver version or a newer version if there is one for your card and see if that fixes the flickering an OC stability issues.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And, it might be obvious, but it might not, that EVERY time you install a new driver you should, in my opinion and if you want the best results without building up a lot of cruft in the registry, use the DDU prior to installing the new Nvidia drivers. Every time.

I might not STRICTLY be necessary, in every case, but to avoid EVER having some of the problems that come from layers of driver installations, I recommend doing it every time.

Here are the first steps to take when trying to solve these kinds of hardware problems. If you have already tried these steps, all of them, exactly as outlined, we can move along to more advanced solutions.

If there are any you have NOT done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.​

First,

make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.

Second,

go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates.

IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.

The last thing we want to look at,

for now anyhow, is the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.

If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

Here are the full instructions on running the Display driver uninstaller and CLEAN installing new drivers.

Graphics card CLEAN install tutorial using the DDU


And another thing I recommend, is not using GeForce Experience. I like to use the stand alone drivers downloaded from Nvidia and not use GeForce exp. I've never had anything but problems with it, and so have a lot of other users. In fact, I'm pretty sure Steve over at Gamers Nexus ALSO recommends using the stand alone drivers and avoiding GFE, and I KNOW he does that when setting up a test system for a review.​

 

[DMAN999]

^ Great info darkbreeze.
I personly do not run geforce experience either because IMO it's minor convenience benefits are far outweighed by it's compatibility issues.
I will say that Updating to the newest BIOS is not always a good thing.
In many cases the newest BIOS can be buggy and introduce more issues than it solves.
It is always a good idea to search for posts by other people with your exact MB and see what issues they do or don't have with each BIOS version available for your MB.
For example I have a Strix B450-F Gaming mb and I use BIOS version 1201 because it is much more stable for RAM OCing than the 2 newer versions available so far. Also the 2 newer versions have cold boot issues that are not present in version 1201.

 

[Finstar]

If Turing works as Pascal does which I assume it does then the easiest way to boost your gpu speed is to just raise the power limit.
Gpu pverclocking after 10 series has kinda become redundant because the gpu does it for you with gpu boost 4.0
Raising the power limit basically gives the card more headroom to overclock itself further and you don't need to do any stability testing with it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, there are rarely any absolutes when it comes to modern PC hardware. I think the instances where being on the latest BIOS version might cause problems is far outweighed by the number of instances, especially on Ryzen with it's well known memory compatibility issues, where it resolves a lot of problems. Obviously, that won't be in every case and I NEVER recommend updating to a Beta BIOS/UEFI version unless it is absolutely necessary to correct a known issue that YOU have and that IT addresses.

Aside from that, I'd agree that it's usually a good idea to check around first, but honestly in the roughly 35 years I've been working with systems there has only been TWO occasions where a BIOS update did more harm than good, not counting one occasion MANY years ago where a BIOS update bricked the whole shebang. These days, updating the BIOS is practically a prerequisite and foregone conclusion, much like updating drivers. I'd prefer that it wasn't that way, unfortunately, in many cases, it is. So it's half one dozen of the other and as with anything PC related there is rarely anything that is always a yes or no situation.