Question In regards to overclocking and heat production

[punkncat]

I have tried to read as much as I can about OC'ing here and other sites. I have found that I completely understand parts of it, and others not so much....but with the reading I have done I have successfully and have stable OC higher than I have been able to achieve before. I read guides specific to my motherboard and CPU which was really helpful.

I was curious about one aspect.

If you OC and the voltage isn't high enough I know it can lead to instability, which I understand. If the voltage is too low does it also generate MORE heat, not less?

 

[TJ Hooker]

No, voltage too low would produce less heat.

 

[punkncat]

No, voltage too low would produce less heat.

This is what I thought, so riddle me this....

I am OC'ing on a R7 1700 ASRock Taichi X370 on a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. Two intake fans, two exhaust fans. Using Prime95, CPU-Z, and Cinebench 15 to test.

If I set to anything above 3.5/1.2150 volts it will "act" ok until I run a stress test or more specifically run a certain game. The core temps run up past mid 70's and then shutdown. I had it set at 3.8/1.34 ran fine all winter and suddenly it would overhead and shut down. When "warm" out my ambient is 74F in the house.

Just for the heck of it I tried 3.9/1.4 and it benches perfectly, gets no hotter than 70C. Even in the certain game, the highest I saw was 67C which it was surpassing on the 3.5 OC.

Not really sure what's going on as I haven't gotten so deep into it as to change advanced settings in the BIOS.

 

[TJ Hooker]

When it runs up to mid 70s and then shuts down, does the game/benchmark hang for a bit first as temp runs up? Or does everything run totally normal (other than temperature starting to climb) until it abruptly shuts down?

 

[punkncat]

In game it's usually a slight stutter then hang, game crashes return to desktop where it may or may not be hung. Sometimes black screen restart. When running a bench it is more often "your pc" blue screen restart.

 

[TJ Hooker]

My semi-educated guess is that the CPU experiences an error which causes it to basically run out of control (hence the temp climbing), before a watchdog timer kicks in and you crash to desktop/BSOD.

 

[punkncat]

Well, apparently I am just not meant to OC this chip.

As above it ran fine for several days. Was on 3900ghz, 1.4 V with the RAM set at 2933 OC on the Taichi. Was playing a game and the system blue screened. I restarted, ran a few tests and temps were quickly jumping to ~83C and lockup/shutdown. Ended up that I am having to run the proc at stock clocks on "auto" and can only run the RAM at 2800 or it will BSOD.

I actually swapped to this motherboard thinking that the previous mobo VRM were the problem. It seems there is something more at play. I have incredible headroom for more temps on the stock clock. I can't make it reach 60C with any test on the current cooler. The moment I put any manner of OC on it wants to climb till shutdown.

Come on Zen2