i5 6600K crashing

[aubycek]

Hello guys.
I've recently bought a new HW for my PC:
cpu: i5 6600K
mobo: Z170 Gaming K3 (Gigabyte)
RAM: 16GB 2133MHz (HyperX)

I've done some overclocking, firstly to 4.5GHz with 1.260V and done 3 different stress tests and benchmarks (CpuZ, Prime95, Cinebench) and it seemed fine without any BSODs (stress tested for about an hour), also the temps wouldn't go over 50C.

After I played some games tho (CS:GO), my PC suddenly BSOD (after like 40 minutes of playing).
So I increased the voltage to 1.270, but it did the same. I was like well, whatever, let's decrease the frequency to 4.4GHz (with kept 1.270V) and it crashed again.

What do you think about this? From many threads I read people reported to have their 6600K running at 4.4Ghz with 1.250V without any problems.

If the problem is that I'm just unlucky and got one of the "bad" chips, and the problem is that I need to increase the voltages, why does the game lasts for so long (40 mins) and not crashes instantly?

Also, there is this message in the BSOD: "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." and some other info.

How much should I increase the voltages to keep going at 4.4Ghz? It bothers me, because 1.270V for 4.4Ghz seems to be so much.

 

[techgeek]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from krychlos : "i5 6600K crashing"

Hello guys.
I've recently bought a new HW for my PC:
cpu: i5 6600K
mobo: Z170 Gaming K3 (Gigabyte)
RAM: 16GB 2133MHz (HyperX)

I've done some overclocking, firstly to 4.5GHz with 1.260V and done 3 different stress tests and benchmarks (CpuZ, Prime95, Cinebench) and it seemed fine without any BSODs (stress tested for about an hour), also the temps wouldn't go over 50C.

After I played some games tho (CS:GO), my PC suddenly BSOD (after like 40 minutes of playing).
So I increased the voltage to 1.270, but it did the same. I was like well, whatever, let's decrease the frequency to 4.4GHz (with kept 1.270V) and it crashed again.

What do you think about this? From many threads I read people reported to have their 6600K running at 4.4Ghz with 1.250V without any problems.

If the problem is that I'm just unlucky and got one of the "bad" chips, and the problem is that I need to increase the voltages, why does the game lasts for so long (40 mins) and not crashes instantly?

Also, there is this message in the BSOD: "A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." and some other info.

How much should I increase the voltages to keep going at 4.4Ghz? It bothers me, because 1.270V for 4.4Ghz seems to be so much.

First thing I would do is get rid of the overclock. Reset everything back to defaults and try CS:GO again. Either this will eliminate the OC as the problem, or it is the problem. If it still crashes after going back to stock, then we can continue with troubleshooting.

Please don't be one of those guys that asks for help and when you tell them to first return everything to stock for troubleshooting, they get mad and tell you "it's not the OC, it's completely stable in stress tests, blah blah blah". Those guys are the worst. Nearly every person that helps with troubleshooting these types of issues will advise that troubleshooting needs to be done at stock speeds.

 

[aubycek]

MERGED QUESTION
First thing I would do is get rid of the overclock. Reset everything back to defaults and try CS:GO again. Either this will eliminate the OC as the problem, or it is the problem. If it still crashes after going back to stock, then we can continue with troubleshooting.

Please don't be one of those guys that asks for help and when you tell them to first return everything to stock for troubleshooting, they get mad and tell you "it's not the OC, it's completely stable in stress tests, blah blah blah". Those guys are the worst. Nearly every person that helps with troubleshooting these types of issues will advise that troubleshooting needs to be done at stock speeds.

Okay, so I just reset everything in BIOS to default values (3.5GHz with 3.9GHz boost; 1.200V) and see how it goes. Going to report back in 2 hours.

 

[aubycek]

First thing I would do is get rid of the overclock. Reset everything back to defaults and try CS:GO again. Either this will eliminate the OC as the problem, or it is the problem. If it still crashes after going back to stock, then we can continue with troubleshooting.

So, I've been constantly playing CS:GO 2 hours without any problems. As I said before, a BSOD would appear after 40 minutes of playing on this overclocked CPU. That being said, it was definitely the overclock causing the crashes.

So what are your thoughts on this situation, and my chip? I mean I'd love to have some decent frequency but stay under 1.3V at the same time (1.3V and everyday use - it is fine for 5 years+ of lifespan, right? ).

 

[techgeek]

While CS:GO can be somewhat CPU dependent since it's such an old game and most modern GPU's can push it to ridiculous framerates, at stock your CPU is plenty fast enough. Granted, you might get a higher framerate if you overclock, but if you are already getting 200+fps, getting more seems like an academic pursuit rather than a necessary one.

I've seen many overclocks that are Prime 95 @ 24+ hours stable that BSOD during gaming. One of the most sensitive games appears to be BF3 and BF4. It seems this series of games can point out even the most subtle instabilities.

As far as voltage, from what I've seen, Skylake runs with higher Vcore out of the box. Because the FIVR has been removed in Skylake, higher voltages don't push the temps as high as Haswell. I prefer to keep my Vcore as low as possible, but I think that 1.3V is relatively safe for a Skylake CPU. I've personally experienced motherboards set to Auto Vcore applying more than 1.3V at stock clocks. When I ran across this, I thought something was wrong. I did some research and found quite a number of reviews that showed Skylake CPU's running very high stock Vcore. Of course this is thermal dependent. If you are using a stock cooler or crappy aftermarket cooler and your temps are already fairly high at stock, pushing more voltage at it is definitely not recommended.

So as far as advice, I would push as much voltage as you feel comfortable with provided your temperatures are in check. If you are stress testing with Prime 95, use version 26.6 as this is the last version without AVX instructions enabled. Using newer versions will push your CPU into very high unrealistic temperatures. Once you have a target voltage in mind, then find out what your maximum OC you can attain with that voltage. Seems a little backward, but if you are more worried about the voltage, then I would find what works for your max voltage. Once you have your maximum stable OC, definitely test it with a wide variety of loads. Using one specific load / program to test for stability only give a very specific narrow view. As you've already found out CS:GO is sensitive to overclocking on your system, so that is definitely one stability test. I would also suggest running RealBench from ASUS. It combines a few realistic workloads of actual programs to stability test. It pushes the CPU and RAM fairly well to give an overall system stability check.