i5 4670k OC @ 4.2 BSOD please help

[HentaTenta]

Hello,
I'm trying to get a stable OC with my:
i5 4670k
MSI z97 Gaming 7
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970
Gigabyte Radeon Hd 7970 (crossfire)
750watts PSU
Win 8.1

I've read a couple of threads here, and I'll just attach some picures of my BIOS settings (pictures taken with my phone, sorry.)

So I ran IntelBurnTest for 10 runs that was a success, with temps (via Realtemp) maxing at ~77C.
However, keep getting BSOD when playing America's Army Proving Grounds, Battlefield4 or Dota2, with a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR message.
Also, when running cpuid, core speed and core voltage values keep fluctuating; I don't know if that makes a difference or not.
Don't know what to do anymore =( Please help.

 

[vortical]

Things i recommend changing for added 24/7 OC stability:

-set Cpu ratio mode to fixed instead of dynamic (likely your problem)
-OC genie is pretty meh, I'd disable but your mileage may vary
-Core voltage mode should be override (+ .005 is the setting i use)

if all else fails bump your Vcore a notch or two up or you ring ratio down one (as long as your within 300 mhz)

source: Same CPU/mobo running at 4.6

edit: typos

 

[zaysk]

I'm still very new to OC'ing myself, so take this with a grain of salt.

I was getting the same issue at 4.4GHz, (WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR) and I fixed it by raising my core voltage up from 1.215, to 1.265 (tested in increments of 10 until it stopped crashing in stress testing/games)

For 4.2, try raising your core voltage up to 1.225 and see if that helps. If not, raise it in small increments until your computer is stable. Edit: But keep your voltage below 1.3 unless you have either an EPIC air cooler or a liquid cooler.

 

[HentaTenta]

Things i recommend changing for added 24/7 OC stability:

-set Cpu ratio mode to fixed instead of dynamic (likely your problem)
-OC genie is pretty meh, I'd disable but your mileage may vary
-Core voltage mode should be override (+ .005 is the setting i use)

if all else fails bump your Vcore a notch or two up or you ring ratio down one (as long as your within 300 mhz)

source: Same CPU/mobo running at 4.6

edit: typos

Hey,
So I've tried what you told me to, yet still crashes; played a bit of all 3 games, crashed in AA Proving grounds only.
By saying "bumb Vcore a notch up", how much is a notch? =) I am trying now 1.21 for Cpu Core volt and brought Ring Volt down to 1.65

 

[vortical]

Things i recommend changing for added 24/7 OC stability:

-set Cpu ratio mode to fixed instead of dynamic (likely your problem)
-OC genie is pretty meh, I'd disable but your mileage may vary
-Core voltage mode should be override (+ .005 is the setting i use)

if all else fails bump your Vcore a notch or two up or you ring ratio down one (as long as your within 300 mhz)

source: Same CPU/mobo running at 4.6

edit: typos

Hey,
So I've tried what you told me to, yet still crashes; played a bit of all 3 games, crashed in AA Proving grounds only.
By saying "bumb Vcore a notch up", how much is a notch? =) I am trying now 1.21 for Cpu Core volt and brought Ring Volt down to 1.65

Sorry for not being clear, a notch is whatever quanta your motherboard uses as a single step upwards (i'm pretty sure it is .005). 1.21 vcore should be fine.

and as for your ring voltage change that back, i recommended you change the "ring ratio"down some
i.e down from 4100 to 4000mhz please read carefully as OC can be dangerous to you hardware if not done carefully.

ring frequency isn't nearly as important to performance as core frequency so it should be the first thing you try to lower when trying to add stability at a given OC (as long as you stay within 300mhz of the core frequency)
I hope this clears things up more.

 

[HentaTenta]

vortical
Sorry, I rushed with the Ring core...
So I set the Ring RATIO to 40. And brought back the Ring voltage.
Also, this what my voltage section of bios looks like now

Is that correct?
Thank you for "spoon feeding" me the info

 

[vortical]

I don't mind helping since i likely have the most relevant knowledge of your situation,
That looks better and hopefully stable, however eveyone's system and cpu overclocks differently so there is no "correct" that anyone can give you in overclocking. If you have any further instability the voltages cam both safely go up another couple steps as well as the ring ratio can down 1 more step. These are generalizable things that people have found lead to better stability in everyone's case. if IBT doesnt crash you
there are other more difficult test you can/should test with before gaming or something else that might corrupt saves etc. Prime95 is free and a popular choice, as well as the thing that crashes my system the most during testing, it'll go till you stop it, so if you last an hr you can be reasonably assured you wont crash during gaming or really for any other reason.

/rant

 

[HentaTenta]

I don't mind helping since i likely have the most relevant knowledge of your situation,
That looks better and hopefully stable, however eveyone's system and cpu overclocks differently so there is no "correct" that anyone can give you in overclocking. If you have any further instability the voltages cam both safely go up another couple steps as well as the ring ratio can down 1 more step. These are generalizable things that people have found lead to better stability in everyone's case. if IBT doesnt crash you
there are other more difficult test you can/should test with before gaming or something else that might corrupt saves etc. Prime95 is free and a popular choice, as well as the thing that crashes my system the most during testing, it'll go till you stop it, so if you last an hr you can be reasonably assured you wont crash during gaming or really for any other reason.

/rant

Dammit...Was playing Murdered Souls Suspect and got bsod...
Another thing...If i keep the 4.2 OC, but put all settings to Auto, will the mobo take care of the voltage and make it stable? Will it chose the STABLE settings on its own?

 

[vortical]

I don't mind helping since i likely have the most relevant knowledge of your situation,
That looks better and hopefully stable, however eveyone's system and cpu overclocks differently so there is no "correct" that anyone can give you in overclocking. If you have any further instability the voltages cam both safely go up another couple steps as well as the ring ratio can down 1 more step. These are generalizable things that people have found lead to better stability in everyone's case. if IBT doesnt crash you
there are other more difficult test you can/should test with before gaming or something else that might corrupt saves etc. Prime95 is free and a popular choice, as well as the thing that crashes my system the most during testing, it'll go till you stop it, so if you last an hr you can be reasonably assured you wont crash during gaming or really for any other reason.

/rant

Dammit...Was playing Murdered Souls Suspect and got bsod...
Another thing...If i keep the 4.2 OC, but put all settings to Auto, will the mobo take care of the voltage and make it stable? Will it chose the STABLE settings on its own?

Thats a question which a has a long answer which i'll try to shorten. the motherboards auto feature are made to do just that, however i find that the more you push your system overclocking wise, the worse these features preform. At 4.2 you may find the simplest solution would be to do just that and see how it works out for you AS LONG AS you trust your cooler. The main problem i have found with the auto settings (besides them plain not working @4.4 and higher) is their tendency to raise voltages unnecessarily high and cause higher temps as a result.

tl;dr give it a shot BUT
1) watch your temps, make sure they NEVER get to 90c
2) its unlikely you can rely on auto settings if you up your overclock higher in the future.

 

[vortical]

Also i was bored so here is some bonus screen of my stable 4.6 (your voltages may vary), maybe they'll provide some insight i am forgetting and if/when you upgrade coolers ( you'll need it, i'm water cooling mine and i still get high 70's during prime95)and are feeling adventurous you can give try out some higher end OC

 

[vortical]

ignore accidental extra post

 

[Y0GI]

Thanks for posting your settings, Vortical.

I'm curious. Why do you have EIST disabled?

Yogi

 

[vortical]

EIST = Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, which gives your operating system the ability to switch the core frequency and voltage up and down, im pretty sure its to save power during idle, but i don't trust it to do it well enough not to crash me. You might well try turning it off also, though it is not likely to be an issue unless you see crashes soon after opening/closing games etc.

 

[Y0GI]

EIST = Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, which gives your operating system the ability to switch the processor's speed and voltage up and down, im pretty sure its to save power during idle, but i don't trust it to do it well enough not to crash me. You might well try turning it off also, though it is not likely to be you issue @4.2 and since yur crashes happen most often when your under load. I would expect it might be EIST if you crashed opening/closing games or when IBT stop/started etc.

My system runs fine with EIST Enabled at 4.6 GHz. Voltage pretty much depends on Adaptive or Override setting with Override being more reliable and stable. With EIST enabled, my CPU will throttle down to 0.6- 1.2 GHz during idle or low load web surfing. I figure it saves wear and tear on the CPU but maybe not so much.

Thanks,

Yogi

 

[vortical]

EIST = Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, which gives your operating system the ability to switch the processor's speed and voltage up and down, im pretty sure its to save power during idle, but i don't trust it to do it well enough not to crash me. You might well try turning it off also, though it is not likely to be you issue @4.2 and since yur crashes happen most often when your under load. I would expect it might be EIST if you crashed opening/closing games or when IBT stop/started etc.

My system runs fine with EIST Enabled at 4.6 GHz. Voltage pretty much depends on Adaptive or Override setting with Override being more reliable and stable. With EIST enabled, my CPU will throttle down to 0.6- 1.2 GHz during idle or low load web surfing. I figure it saves wear and tear on the CPU but maybe not so much.

Thanks,

Yogi

I'll try turning it on again a see how it goes, but the 4.6 and 4.7ghz (prime still crashes this after 40 min) OCs have been a battle for my chip. I fear that 4.6 might just be something i have to lock down specifically in order for my tempermental 4670k to achieve. Hopefully i can get a better overclocker on my next upgrade cycle (skylake maybe).

will post results on how turning on EIST goes.

 

[Y0GI]

When you enable EIST, it also enables the "Turbo Multipliers" in the CPU Features page. Set your CPU ratio to "Auto" in the first OC page then set your desired max CPU Ratio under CPU Features.

Yogi

 

[vortical]

When you enable EIST, it also enables the "Turbo Multipliers" in the CPU Features page. Set your CPU ratio to "Auto" in the first OC page then set your desired max CPU Ratio under CPU Features.

Yogi

so letting turbo and eist handle the OC @4.6 hasnt crashed in prime for a 30 min run, but it also isnt downclocking at all now that im done and only in chrome, (according to cpuz and windows 8.1 task manger)

 

[Y0GI]

When you enable EIST, it also enables the "Turbo Multipliers" in the CPU Features page. Set your CPU ratio to "Auto" in the first OC page then set your desired max CPU Ratio under CPU Features.

Yogi

so letting turbo and eist handle the OC @4.6 hasnt crashed in prime for a 30 min run, but it also isnt downclocking at all now that im done and only in chrome, (according to cpuz and windows 8.1 task manger)

The downclocking also depends on settings in Windows. I don't know about Win 8.1 but in Win 7, in Advanced Power Options, you have to select "Balanced" instead of "High Performance". HP will constantly maintain max clock speeds.

Yogi

 

[vortical]

When you enable EIST, it also enables the "Turbo Multipliers" in the CPU Features page. Set your CPU ratio to "Auto" in the first OC page then set your desired max CPU Ratio under CPU Features.

Yogi

so letting turbo and eist handle the OC @4.6 hasnt crashed in prime for a 30 min run, but it also isnt downclocking at all now that im done and only in chrome, (according to cpuz and windows 8.1 task manger)

The downclocking also depends on settings in Windows. I don't know about Win 8.1 but in Win 7, in Advanced Power Options, you have to select "Balanced" instead of "High Performance". HP will constantly maintain max clock speeds.

Yogi

Lol windows, that was it i was set to HP, and Its downclocking nicely now. Cheers, if this runs stably for a while (need to do a longer prime run), you might well have saved me a few $/mo in power bills. 😀

 

[Y0GI]

EIST = Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, which gives your operating system the ability to switch the processor's speed and voltage up and down, im pretty sure its to save power during idle, but i don't trust it to do it well enough not to crash me. You might well try turning it off also, though it is not likely to be you issue @4.2 and since yur crashes happen most often when your under load. I would expect it might be EIST if you crashed opening/closing games or when IBT stop/started etc.

My system runs fine with EIST Enabled at 4.6 GHz. Voltage pretty much depends on Adaptive or Override setting with Override being more reliable and stable. With EIST enabled, my CPU will throttle down to 0.6- 1.2 GHz during idle or low load web surfing. I figure it saves wear and tear on the CPU but maybe not so much.

Thanks,

Yogi

I'll try turning it on again a see how it goes, but the 4.6 and 4.7ghz (prime still crashes this after 40 min) OCs have been a battle for my chip. I fear that 4.6 might just be something i have to lock down specifically in order for my tempermental 4670k to achieve. Hopefully i can get a better overclocker on my next upgrade cycle (skylake maybe).

will post results on how turning on EIST goes.

When you enable EIST, it also enables the "Turbo Multipliers" in the CPU Features page. Set your CPU ratio to "Auto" in the first OC page then set your desired max CPU Ratio under CPU Features.

Yogi

so letting turbo and eist handle the OC @4.6 hasnt crashed in prime for a 30 min run, but it also isnt downclocking at all now that im done and only in chrome, (according to cpuz and windows 8.1 task manger)

The downclocking also depends on settings in Windows. I don't know about Win 8.1 but in Win 7, in Advanced Power Options, you have to select "Balanced" instead of "High Performance". HP will constantly maintain max clock speeds.

Yogi

Lol windows, that was it i was set to HP, and Its downclocking nicely now. Cheers, if this runs stably for a while (need to do a longer prime run), you might well have saved me a few $/mo in power bills. 😀

Good luck!

My royalties are a lot cheaper than Bill Gates, BTW.

Yogi

 

[HentaTenta]

vortocal
It is so so weird =) At some times I';m getting 2-2.5 hrs of un-interrupted gameplay in BF4 without a single hiccup...and other times I bsod after 15 min...
So I've brought the voltage up till 1.22 and testing it with prime95. So if it fails, as you said, I can bring the ring ratio down another step and that's it as far as ring ratio goes, right? The rest, its only cpu core voltage tweaking? And I should not touch ring VOLTAGE ?

 

[vortical]

vortocal
It is so so weird =) At some times I';m getting 2-2.5 hrs of un-interrupted gameplay in BF4 without a single hiccup...and other times I bsod after 15 min...
So I've brought the voltage up till 1.22 and testing it with prime95. So if it fails, as you said, I can bring the ring ratio down another step and that's it as far as ring ratio goes, right? The rest, its only cpu core voltage tweaking? And I should not touch ring VOLTAGE ?

yes your ring ratio can come down to 3900 mhz and operate well. You can adjust your ring voltage up a few ticks if you want but lowering the ring frequency should really negate the need to do so.

try 3900 ring ratio -prime test.
bump ring voltage up- test
finally vcore up some - test

stopping when/if prime can run atleast an hr (time consuming stuff)

 

[HentaTenta]

Well there is something new now... Or maybe it was there all along =)
I keep getting bsod with the previous settings; after another bsod, I realized that my Vcards are not in crossfire anymore... There is NO crossfire tab under Gaming options in CCC...And also the gpu-z tool says that crossfire is dissabled. I know it was there for a fact, that i set up the xfire.
So I've reinstalled the CCC (could not get the xfire sub-menu to show up), activated xfire, and after another bsod- it disappeared again.
Soooo...what now?

 

[vortical]

Well there is something new now... Or maybe it was there all along =)
I keep getting bsod with the previous settings; after another bsod, I realized that my Vcards are not in crossfire anymore... There is NO crossfire tab under Gaming options in CCC...And also the gpu-z tool says that crossfire is dissabled. I know it was there for a fact, that i set up the xfire.
So I've unistalled the CCC (could not get the xfire sub-menu to show up), activated xfire, and after another bsod- it disappeared again.
Soooo...what now?

I dont think there is anything like that in this mobos bios but often times there are settings to disable pci slots and similar things, so the easiest thing time wise would be to scan you bios to make sure you didnt accidentally toggle a relevant setting. Next thing to try would be to uninstall and re install you video driver as possibly something got confused during a BSOD while you were gaming gaming (this is why stability testing is best done with CPU loading tools, so as to minimize the number of things that might be affected by a system crash). The install/uninstall file is located in the C:\AMD folder. reinstalling your drivers is almost certainly the solution.

 

[HentaTenta]

Well there is something new now... Or maybe it was there all along =)
I keep getting bsod with the previous settings; after another bsod, I realized that my Vcards are not in crossfire anymore... There is NO crossfire tab under Gaming options in CCC...And also the gpu-z tool says that crossfire is dissabled. I know it was there for a fact, that i set up the xfire.
So I've unistalled the CCC (could not get the xfire sub-menu to show up), activated xfire, and after another bsod- it disappeared again.
Soooo...what now?

I dont think there is anything like that in this mobos bios but often times there are settings to disable pci slots and similar things, so the easiest thing time wise would be to scan you bios to make sure you didnt accidentally toggle a relevant setting. Next thing to try would be to uninstall and re install you video driver as possibly something got confused during a BSOD while you were gaming gaming (this is why stability testing is best done with CPU loading tools, so as to minimize the number of things that might be affected by a system crash). The install/uninstall file is located in the C:\AMD folder. reinstalling your drivers is almost certainly the solution.

The reinstalling fixes the problem until the next bsod... I took out one of the Vcards, I'll use only one for now and see if I'll be getting any bsods, who knows, maybe it's the Vcards fault.
Another thing, the dual bios button on my Vcards...Should they both be in the same position? Should they be in 1 or 2?