Question I need help with system overheating, XMP, and Resizable BAR ?

[Vektor9]

Okay, so first off, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

My system:
CyberPower PC
MSI Z590-A Pro (MS-7D09)
11th Gen i7-11700KF @ 3.60GHz
32GB RAM Patriot 3200 C16 Series
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
Windows 10

I mostly use my pc to do things like 3d animation, and high-end videogames, so I need it to be as fast as it can (safely) be the majority of the time. I keep my startup programs to an absolute minimum. All of my cooling is working properly as far as I'm aware, and she sits at about 35°C at rest, 45°C with light usage.

I came across some things that said I should have XMP and Resizable BAR enabled, so I enabled them. Then, while encoding some video, the cpu was getting throttled because it was running at 100°C. So, I disabled XMP and Resizable BAR. I have no idea if the system was overheating before I enabled them or not.

I installed MSI’s Dragon Center (Dragon-Center.jpg) which has three “User Scenarios,” Extreme, Balanced, and Silent, and the ability to customize a fourth. In customize, they have something called “Creator Genie” (Creator-Genie.jpg) with three options: CPU, XMP1, and XMP2. XMP2 is grayed-out - real simple stuff - so I activated CPU and XMP1. (I have no idea what “CPU” actually does though.) Restarted, started the encoding again, and it shortly overheated again.

I tried the “Extreme” setting. Same thing. I tried the “Balanced” setting, and while the cpu remained under 40°C, the encoding time went from 3hrs to 16hrs.

So, I need help in figuring out how to get all of this to work properly. Again, I have no idea what I’m doing with overclocking, but obviously, I’d like it to run as fast as it’s capable of without overheating, of course.

Here are screenshots from HWiNFO64:

https://imgur.com/a/87EnYr1

View: https://imgur.com/a/87EnYr1


Any help would be greatly appreciated. And I promise to never touch any settings without proper supervision ever again.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hotrod2go]

I have a few points for you to consider, & I also have a rocket lake rig with an MSI Z590 board as well.
1st: What kind of cooling setup do you have on this rig?
2nd: I would uninstall the MSI Dragon centre (aka 'bloatware') it's not needed for an effective OC. Clean up the windows registry after it too.
3rd: Your far better off OC from within the bios & testing stability in windows. Also, is the bios on this board up to date?
If you can supply that information, everyone here would be in a better position to help you.

 

[Vektor9]

Oh, cool! Okay. Thank you so much for responding.

It says I have:
DeepCool Castle 360EX ARGB 360mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ Copper Cold Plate [+40] (6 x Standard 120MM Fans)
There are two fans up front, (the liquid cooling,) three up top, and one in the back. And again, it's always been fine before as far as I'm aware, and everything appears to be in working order now. I can feel the liquid going through the tubes, I can feel the fan spinning on the cpu, and she sits at about 45°C-50°C idle right now, which I know is a little high, and can only assume it's due to the "Extreme" preset. (Again, she idles at 35°C with the "Balanced" preset.)
It also lists it as being "Ultimate OC (Ultimate Overclock 30% or more)."

"case.png" shows the case. What it doesn't show is that the entire top of it is a mesh like the one at the bottom of the front.

What's also odd is that I noticed that the CPU fan is listed as being at 0 RPM in the monitor ("CPU fan.jpg") and shows the same thing in the BIOS as well, despite the percentage adjusting according to how you have it set.

I uninstalled Dragon with Revo to get rid of any registry stuff.

Other than that, the BIOS is up to date, and I did happen to find this manual for it on the MSI website:
https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/Intel500BIOS.pdf
but I have no idea what most of that stuff actually means.

Thanks again.

 

[beyondlogic]

Oh, cool! Okay. Thank you so much for responding.

It says I have:
DeepCool Castle 360EX ARGB 360mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ Copper Cold Plate [+40] (6 x Standard 120MM Fans)
There are two fans up front, (the liquid cooling,) three up top, and one in the back. And again, it's always been fine before as far as I'm aware, and everything appears to be in working order now. I can feel the liquid going through the tubes, I can feel the fan spinning on the cpu, and she sits at about 45°C-50°C idle right now, which I know is a little high, and can only assume it's due to the "Extreme" preset. (Again, she idles at 35°C with the "Balanced" preset.)
It also lists it as being "Ultimate OC (Ultimate Overclock 30% or more)."

"case.png" shows the case. What it doesn't show is that the entire top of it is a mesh like the one at the bottom of the front.

What's also odd is that I noticed that the CPU fan is listed as being at 0 RPM in the monitor ("CPU fan.jpg") and shows the same thing in the BIOS as well, despite the percentage adjusting according to how you have it set.

I uninstalled Dragon with Revo to get rid of any registry stuff.

Other than that, the BIOS is up to date, and I did happen to find this manual for it on the MSI website:
https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/Intel500BIOS.pdf
but I have no idea what most of that stuff actually means.

Thanks again.

Pic of the case ? Fan set up ?

 

[Vektor9]

Pic of the case ? Fan set up ?

I'm sorry. Are you asking for a picture of the case, and what the fan setup is? Or are you asking why I included them in the reply you responded to?

 

[Hotrod2go]

Oh, cool! Okay. Thank you so much for responding.

It says I have:
DeepCool Castle 360EX ARGB 360mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ Copper Cold Plate [+40] (6 x Standard 120MM Fans)
There are two fans up front, (the liquid cooling,) three up top, and one in the back. And again, it's always been fine before as far as I'm aware, and everything appears to be in working order now. I can feel the liquid going through the tubes, I can feel the fan spinning on the cpu, and she sits at about 45°C-50°C idle right now, which I know is a little high, and can only assume it's due to the "Extreme" preset. (Again, she idles at 35°C with the "Balanced" preset.)
It also lists it as being "Ultimate OC (Ultimate Overclock 30% or more)."

"case.png" shows the case. What it doesn't show is that the entire top of it is a mesh like the one at the bottom of the front.

What's also odd is that I noticed that the CPU fan is listed as being at 0 RPM in the monitor ("CPU fan.jpg") and shows the same thing in the BIOS as well, despite the percentage adjusting according to how you have it set.

I uninstalled Dragon with Revo to get rid of any registry stuff.

Other than that, the BIOS is up to date, and I did happen to find this manual for it on the MSI website:
https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/Intel500BIOS.pdf
but I have no idea what most of that stuff actually means.

Thanks again.

Ok, thanks.
From your saying with the fans setup in the case & for your radiator is sounds fine but there is something wrong with the idle temps on that chip. What kind of ambients do you have? cause' 45-50C is too much for a rocket lake at idle. Speculating here, but perhaps the mount of the water block is not air tight & either too much or tool little TIM is used. You'll have to check that & compare with vids from YT of something.
The CPU fan speed in bios & the app is irrelevant unless one is of course using air cooling of course. For water cooling, I don't know I'm an air cooling man.
MSI with Z590 series (not sure about the others) have "CPU Cooler Tuning" so you'll have to pick the profile there that is applicable for H20 cooling

There's a bunch of many options for OC in these Z590 bios for rocket lake cpu range, so I don't want to get too complicated because there is over 50 different options for fine tuning here & gets very technical. But in saying that, can you find in CPU options menu something called "MCR" that's an acronym for multi core enhancement. If you can turn that on, the the motherboard will add a mild OC to all cores off the bat. That's probably the easiest way to OC without getting too fiddly. The Ring bus ratio can also be raised a little, 40 is default. but depending on chip quality, you can raise this up to 42 or 43, some chips can do up to 45 without issue so you'll have to experiment here.

What kind of PSU do have on this rig, this is very important because once Rocket lake cpu starts OC it demands some serious power & hence this is where the thermal challenges automatically come in. 14nm fabrication has it's drawbacks unfortunately.

One more thing, gear 1 & 2 for the RAM can have an effect on memory performance, once over 3200MHz it will automatically kick in to gear 2 by default which effectively half the memory controller speed. Manually set it to gear one & test at 3466MHz (loosen cas latency if necessary, depends on your kit) If you lucky with your chip you might be able to even get 3600MHz whilst in gear 1! but test & check first.

Anyway, I don't want to go overboard atm , so hope some of these tips will help.

 

[beyondlogic]

I'm sorry. Are you asking for a picture of the case, and what the fan setup is? Or are you asking why I included them in the reply you responded to?

Sorry didn't see the link to case that case is pretty sealed up at front not surprised as the airflow is very restricted by all that plastic even that small cover in front isn't going to allow much air since your radiator is already acting like a exhaust I would try switching rear fan other way around and see if it makes a different in temps

 

[Vektor9]

Sorry didn't see the link to case that case is pretty sealed up at front not surprised as the airflow is very restricted by all that plastic even that small cover in front isn't going to allow much air since your radiator is already acting like a exhaust I would try switching rear fan other way around and see if it makes a different in temps

Oh, okay.

I tried switching the fans around, but it didn't make much difference.

I'm pretty sure this just has to do with whatever I inadvertently did to it. I'm trying to figure out how to undo it, because the Dragon Center presets (which I've since uninstalled) apparently just screwed things up even more. The "Extreme" preset had it overheating with any stress, and the "Balanced" preset had it under 40°C when stressed, but 80% slower. I'm trying to find the 'middle ground' of whatever happened to it, and just get it back to being able to be stressed without immediately overheating.

 

[kira-faye]

If you've got two fans on a 360 radiator, that's the place to start. And if the case is especially restrictive (which it appears to be), replacing it is a relatively inexpensive (in the greater scheme) but annoying option, since you'll have to transplant all the components. If I were in your position I'd get something like the Fractal Design Torrent or Meshify and a big cheap (and incredibly capable) Thermalright air cooler. You'll be better off all around.

What's your ambient temperature like?

Also, is it overheating, or boosting up to tjunction? Because one is bad, and the other is the chip behaving as designed, giving you as much performance as possible. If it keeps working properly, it's fine, don't stress, I don't care how hot it's getting. If it's crashing or doing odd stuff, then you worry. That said, getting better airflow and cooling will mean more performance, so the new case may be worthwhile regardless.

 

[beyondlogic]

Oh, okay.

I tried switching the fans around, but it didn't make much difference.

I'm pretty sure this just has to do with whatever I inadvertently did to it. I'm trying to figure out how to undo it, because the Dragon Center presets (which I've since uninstalled) apparently just screwed things up even more. The "Extreme" preset had it overheating with any stress, and the "Balanced" preset had it under 40°C when stressed, but 80% slower. I'm trying to find the 'middle ground' of whatever happened to it, and just get it back to being able to be stressed without immediately overheating.

Turn pc off and remove the watch battery in the motherboard this should hard reset all your settings you need to keep the battery out the board for like 15 seconds before putting battery back in. This should clear anything in the bios.

You can also go into the bios on your motherboard and click set everything to default this will remove all ram etc overclocks.


Other thing you can do is back up your data.


And reset windows 10 in settings when it asks to keep files etc simple say no. This will put the pc into a full factory reset. So whatever email you used to register windows you'll need it. And pw

 

[Hotrod2go]

You won't be able to OC a rocket lake chip much on that board because it only has a 12 phrase VRM, so I wouldn't get my hope up too much. Rocket lake is a power hog & heat engine when OC unless your very very lucky in the silicon lottery.

 

[Vektor9]

Thank you so much for the responses!

These all sound great, but I was just trying to get her back to where she was before the MSI stuff seemed to screw everything up. I'm certainly not trying to format my entire pc or anything like that.

But I guess it wasn't necessarily 'overheating' so much as "boosting up to tjunction" as kira-faye suggested. Again, I have no idea what I'm doing, so I didn't know. I saw red under core and package/ring thermal throttling in HWiNFO, and freaked out.

In the end, I just got rid of the MSI stuff entirely, turned on "CPU boost" or whatever it is, XMP, and Resizable BAR, and everything is okay.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions, and I will definitely be refering to this as I look into cooling even more.