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Can I improve my settings to make my overclock more stable?

RecklessNL
Level 7
Hi guys,

A little intro - I purchased the RIVE a week ago and I've been loving it. I have built a dedicated studio PC for professional audio editing. I do this for a living so my goal was to build a system that was capable of handling the insanely big projects I'm currently working on. I use DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) like Cubase and Ableton to produce music, and my previous PC couldn't handle the projects anymore, so I went ahead and invested in the following PC:

Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Intel Core i7 3930k
Corsair Hydro H100i
Corsair Dominator Platinum 64GB 2133Mhz RAM
+ A Samsung SSD and 2 Velociraptors

Now I don't play games on this PC, so the video card is a cheap ~100$ GeForce, nothing special. I am using 64 gigs of RAM for running Ramdisk and Ramcache, since both greatly speed up my workflow. I have my DAWs installed on the RAMDisk, alongside the projects I am currently working on, so they load up extremely fast and the response time is incredible.

Since in audio production, CPU speed is the most important performance dictating part of the computer (followed by RAM, which I got covered), I choose to buy the H100i to properly cool the 3930k so I can overclock it. This is also one of the reasons I bought this board, since it was aimed at overclockers. Now I'm very new to overclocking, but I do know for a fact that overclocking speeds up a lot of the tasks in audio processing, like render time, the amount of plugins I can load and use, etcetera. So for me, the extra overclock mileage really helps in day to day situations.

Now I've overclocked the 3930k to 4.6GHz. It runs stable, but today I got my first BSOD crash while working on music. These BSODs are killers for me since I run my music editing program for the RAMDisk. Which means that a BSOD means I lost the work that I've been working on that day. I've implemented automatic backup systems and the like, so all is not lost thankfully, but this still is a workflow killer and it's pretty uncomfortable to be thinking about it.

Now I wonder if the BSOD had something to do with my overclock settings, which is why I've come here to ask the experts amongst you if the settings I've put in the Bios are correct and decent, and if I can edit certain things that will improve stability and reduce the chances of getting BSODs. Below are the screenshots:











Is the vCore of the CPU alright for every day use for at least 2 years? Any tips on improving stability on this overclock would be greatly appreciated.
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5 REPLIES 5

Nodens
Level 16
I'll give you a few pointers since you're into audio production:)

First of all I'd suggest that you drop the CPU Load line calibration to Medium, High LLC will cause you throttling or crashes unless you're actively cooling the VRM area. Still, you don't need High LLC for 46 multiplier. Since you'll drop the LLC, you'll also need to adjust a different offset, start testing around +0.010 and do not go to negative offsets with medium LLC.

The automatic values for VCCSA, VTT and PLL are too high. Set PLL to 1.8 and for VTT and VCCSA start with 1.25 and tweak downwards until you find the lowest stable.

Apart from that, since you're doing prof audio, you ABSOLUTELY need to disable ALL C-States and Speedstep (EIST) as those will cause you issues with any prof audio interface and low latency (because they directly affect DPC latency which translates to extra latency on the audio driver).
This platform is great for audio. My RME Fireface UCX does 1ms latency completely artifact free, on this platform, no matter how much I load Cubase.

EDIT: When it comes to safety..try to keep your vcore to lower than 1.4V
RAMPAGE Windows 8/7 UEFI Installation Guide - Patched OROM for TRIM in RAID - Patched UEFI GOP Updater Tool - ASUS OEM License Restorer
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't!

RealBench Developer.

RecklessNL
Level 7
Hey Nodens, thanks so much for your reply man! It's a funny coincidence that I also bought the Fireface UCX with this system, I upgraded from the Focusrite Saffire 6 and I couldn't believe how much better the latency has become, couldn't be happier about this interface! If you don't have it already, I suggest you buy the remote control for it too, I have the volume knob right next to my keyboard now and I can't believe I didn't work like this before.

Thanks for the tips, I will try to improve these settings and report back when I have found stable settings. One question: will disabling Speedstep not decrease the lifespan of the CPU since it will always be running at full speed? I will probably upgrade in 2 years from now, but I just want to make sure.

Cheers bud!

Nodens
Level 16
I do not have the remote but I was thinking of getting it at some point. 🙂 When it comes to engineering and driver quality, you really can't beat RME (You may find better, more expensive DACs but you won't find better drivers anywhere) 😉

Regarding Speedstep, no it won't affect the lifespan of the CPU, just your power bills. But since this is a business rig, I imagine it will be doing work 90% of the time it's turned on, so there won't be much difference in power bills either.

To further elaborate on why EIST and C-States are bad for audio. When an audio driver has something for playback it is queued in the Deferred Procedure Call queue. The DPC queue is the place where secondary code that needs real time or close to real time access of the CPU, waits until the CPU can execute it. It's a Windows mechanism. So the audio driver executes parts of its kernel code that needs to run absolutely when the interface's interrupt request is thrown and it places everything else in DPC waiting to be executed. With "DPC latency" we measure the average time a DPC routine takes to be executed and moved out of the queue so the next DPC routine can be executed. This is the latency that gets increased by having EIST and C-States enabled. The smaller your audio buffer is, the more DPC are generated and if those don't get executed in time you'll get dropouts or artifacts (depending on how the audio driver handles stuff and how long it is delayed) 🙂

You should also set HPET as the only clock source in Windows to further improve DPC latency. Windows by default uses a combination of timers and some of them are slow. There are only 2 fast timers available. TSC (a CPU timer) and HPET (a platform timer). TSC is faster than HPET but it's unreliable and there's no option to enable it exclusively. You can enable HPET exclusively though by running this command under a command prompt with admin rights: "bcdedit /set useplatformclock true" and reboot.

Let me know if you need anymore help with anything:)
RAMPAGE Windows 8/7 UEFI Installation Guide - Patched OROM for TRIM in RAID - Patched UEFI GOP Updater Tool - ASUS OEM License Restorer
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't!

RealBench Developer.

RecklessNL
Level 7
You are the MAN! Thanks so much, I've been using your settings now and they are very stable. Ran IntelBurnTest without a problem, and I feel saver working with RAMDisk everyday now. Also did the clock source change you recommended - didn't test if it was faster, but I trust you that it is!

Do you have any other tips to optimize Windows 7 Ultimate for audio production? It's a clean install (2 weeks now) so it's still very new, and I only have my DAW with a ton of plugins installed. If you got any, it would be great!

Thanks again man! Cheers 🙂

Nodens
Level 16
There are only 2 other pieces of advice I can give you in regards to audio:

1) Disable any hardware options in the UEFI that you don't actually use (eg Asmedia Controller, on board sound etc etc). Doing this further reduces DPC latency.

2) Switch to Windows 8 if you can stand it (ClassicShell helps with this http://www.classicshell.net/) as it provides a faster audio path. You may want to read this blog by a Cakewalk developer: http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/ I think you'll find it interesting:)
RAMPAGE Windows 8/7 UEFI Installation Guide - Patched OROM for TRIM in RAID - Patched UEFI GOP Updater Tool - ASUS OEM License Restorer
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't!

RealBench Developer.