i7-3930k, I cant read anymore, I need to ask before my head explodes

[Doz]

Hi Everyone, MC & HNY etc

First post so please be gentle.

Anyways, despite building a couple of years ago what I though was a decent system, Ive been shirking away from overclocking it for sometime as I wanted to enjoy it before I fried it to a crisp.

Having ran an Abit mobo before with a Q6600 at 3.4mhz 24/7 I know its nothing to be scared of if its done correctly.

So to cut a long story shot, id bought the RIVE board as a friend said u can overclock it with the press of a button and it does it all for you. in the last couple of weeks my curiosity has grown and i tried the CPU power up button in AI suite and it works fine. Having read on I decided to investigate the bios settings and having done many many hours of reading I have read that Vcore is important to preserve the life of the chip/prevent degradation.

I took the overclock option in the bios that gives me a turbo speed of 4.7mhz and noticed it sets individual mutipliers for each core.
At the moment these are :-
47
47
46
45
44
44

powering the machine up, everything, CPU-ID, Aida64, Coretemp all give a speed of 4400 mhz (44x100 it says in AIDA)

so Question 1 - Does the CPU speed get reported and the lowest core speed and not the highest, if the same multiplier was made to 47 across all cores I take it that it would register at 4700mhz. (but need a whole new set of tweaks)

I stress tested it at Auto settings using 3dmark, prime95. All was stable but due to the Vcore being autoset at 1.4v temps were a tad high on prime. (ill come back to that in a sec)

Ive never been able to get the ram to run at max speed on auto settings so thought Id have a go at doing it manually. so back into the bios and made the following changes::-

Ram speed 2400
Rampage mode 1
dram voltage 1.65v on both channels
current cap on ddr 120%
VTTcpu 1.2v
VCCSA 1.2v

Timings 10-12-12-31-2T

rebooted, retested and voila Ram seems to be ok.

In order to pull the vcore back down and therefore the temps, I started to use AI suite to make adjustments on the fly and retest then go change it in the bios to ensure a good cold boot.

I read about Aida64 being a better stress test than prime95 but notice a big diff in temps. so here are the other adjustments made and where I am today.

CPU current capability dropped from 180% (auto) to 140%
VCSSA load line calibration was extreme, now changed to High

	Prime95	Prime95	Prime95	Aida64	Aida64	Prime95
Vcore setting	1.4v	1.39v	1.38v	1.36v	1.35v	1.35v
	Temp	Temp	Temp	Temp	Temp	Temp
core0	85	84	83	73	71	77
core1	83	83	81	72	69	77
core2	76	75	75	68	66	70
core3	78	76	76	68	67	72
core4	87	85	84	74	72	79
core5	81	80	79	69	67	74

If i remember I havent changed any C states, offset is set to Auto and while Ive got the Vcore set at 1.35v atm duing the last stress tests Aida64 and Coretemps were showing the VID at 1.3611v AI suite showed it at 1.334v ????
As I write this, at idle, Aida64 and real temp are showing 1.334v and AI suite 1.344v but none peaking past 1.352v

I have read about the difference is quality and specs of the CPU's and each has its individual abilities, im just trying to avoid the higher voltages if possible.

Despite passing the last stress tests, ive encountered 2 problems, firstly I put the PC to sleep mode and when I returned it wouldnt reboot and at the unlock screen the mouse was dead - plugging it into another usb port didnt help.

On powering up this morning i got an AMIBIOS scrren saying 'Overclock failed! please enter setup to reconfigure your system'
I quickly checked the settings were as i finished with last night and I retried and got what appeared to be a power problem Starting from completely powered off, the fans started and ran for a couple seconds before power was lost/fans stopped and it did this about 6 times before it ran continually enough to post and enter windows as normal.

Is this down to me lowering the Vcore or is there another setting I need to tweak ? Im after a stable 24/7 overclock, not a 5.2Ghz benching monster. once I have a stable overclock and ive played with it a while I can look at pushing it a little further.

Ive read on one of the bazillion posts ive read that it may be a good idea to drop the VTT and VCCSA down to 1.1v if poss but whilst ive give myself a little pat on the back for not killing mp PC yet I feel im entering the deeper end of the pool and I cant swim properly yet.

Apologies its a long post and thanks for sticking with it this far, i did as much as I could before I cried for help lol.

Any info or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[Nate152]

Hello Doz and welcome to the ROG forum.

When overclocking it's best to do it in the bios and run all your cores at the same speed. I would get rid of ai suite as it conflicts with other temp monitoring programs and ai suite does not give you the core temp. After uninstalling ai suite run this cleaner.

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?28319-AI-Suite-II-uninstall-cleaner

I would suspect you got the overclocking failed message because either you need more vcore or you need more vccsa voltage.

How many GB of ram are you running?

[cytotek]

Have exactly the same cpu and mothreboard as well.

changing the cores individually does not work, it still comes up as lowest or higher core for some reason, individual cores do not change, Why ? Have no Efen idea.

Ai suite causes the overclocking failed msg, I use ai suite, its a very good program, and it helps with in OS voltage tweaks on vcore and vccsa, but make sure you return to OS defualt settings before rebooting, and thne you will not get overclocking failed, only time overclockign failed happens and you need to f1, cause the AI suite settings are not in sync with bios.

Best thing is to overclock from bios, and just usa Ai suite to tweak voltages and some minor Bstrap Adjustments e.g from 100mhz to 103 , but again make sure you return the OS defualt in Ai suite and apply them before shutting down or rebooting, or wil get overclocking failed.

Try not go above 1.3 1.35 for Vcore and 1.2v for VTT and VCCSA, and try to keep temps below 70c underload to preserve your processors life.

GL with the overclock.

[Doz]

Hi guys sorry for the late reply, We took a last minute break over xmas.

Natel, as my OP said, i was tweaking the settings and testing in OS using AI suite but then rebooting and making it a permanent profile in the Bios. In my understanding AI suite allows me to try things without having to reboot to Bios with every change. Once the Bios was stable i would retweak with AI and then test, save and make changes in Bios.

As far as the Ram goes im running 32gb of the Tridents (4x8gb). seem to be running fine at 2400mhz

Cytotek, those voltages are what im at ATM, they seem key in all the posts ive read, i was going to try and drop them further but I hit a stumbling block as per my OP.

My PC has been rebooted about 30 times now, id say on about 12-14 of those its gone through the stop/start (cough,splutter) as my OP described but has not once failed to boot into OS and runs stable once there.

Playing something like Elite Dangerous on max settings im hitting 50 degrees or so so Im not overly concerned about the temps atm.

Ive never put the PC back into sleep mode since id didnt like coming out of it the last time so those are my concerns atm.

Happy new year.