Instability with new build

[shiftychuck]

Hello,

I recently built a computer for the first time. I picked up the G3258 + MSI Z97 bundle from microcenter, with 8 gb of corsair vengeance 1866, and a saphire r7 260x.

I'm currently using the stock cooler, and I was able to OC to 4.0. I passed the torture test on prime 95 with a max temp of 75c. This worked well, but I wanted to see how far I could push it, and failed at 4.4 and even 4.2 was unstable, so I went back to 4.0. However, when I returned to 4.0 with the original settings, my mouse now feels stuttery even on the desktop. I don't know if this is a CPU or GPU issue, but my CPU is showing <3% usage and the mouse is still shaky.

Does anyone have any tips or advice for things that I should look into to get this machine running smoothly? I'm not expecting a killer machine with such a low level gpu, but I definitely think it should be able to handle lower tiered games.

(Also as an aside, in BIOS my ram showed up as 1333, so I changed it to 1866. But when I changed it, my timings changed from 9 9 9 28 to 13 13 13 34. Do I need to manually change the timings, or is there a way to just change the speed without having to change the timings as well?)

Thank you.

 

[envy14tpe]

Yes, big tip. Don't use the intel stock cooler. It is fine for stock but you need to invest $30 in a Cooler Master EVO to reach 4.4GHz stable.

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ OutletPC)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste ($3.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $33.96

RAM: Did you change the XMProfile? If so it should manually change the timing to match what it is. I assume your RAM is CL9, and not 13. I'd investigate the BIOS options again. I'm not familiar with MSI's BIOS.