Overclocking and BIOS/Windows - Questions

[Kaean]

Heya,

I'm new here, so I hope it's OK if I ask some questions!

I've had some problems with my Windows 10 recently — and I think it's somewhat linked to my overclock even though it's working perfectly fine.

What I'm running on is:
* ASUS X79-Deluxe
* 4930K @ 4.5 GHz
* I have all BIOS settings set-up correctly to my likings without any problems, water-cooling as well.

So when I try to boot up Windows 10 without overclock (default BIOS settings) it just freezes over and over and refuses to start up. I recently got stuck in this kind of chain again, it happened before and I had to format back to Windows 7 then upgrade back to Windows 10 again.

When this happened again yesterday, I put in my Windows 7 cd again as the Media Creation Tool couldn't repair my Windows 10. And even when Windows 7 installation was loading up, it frooze as soon as the Windows Icon appeared.

I'm running the latest BIOS version. I even tried resetting CMOS to see if that would fix anything, but with default settings in BIOS my PC will not get past the Windows 10 flag with those rotating orbs/balls — it just hard-locks. And I have to reset the PC.

And then there's the other thing: If I apply the overclock it will boot up WITHOUT any kind of problems, working perfectly fine.

Does anyone have any idea what's causing this? I kind of wanted to boot up without overclock to check if my sound card would be working without problems, as I'm getting a lot of buzzing noise when launching any game, and as soon as it goes past 30 fps the buzzing gets even worse. (but I guess this could be more related to my GPU because as soon as it's being used the buzzing starts.)

Cheers.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Hi Kaean 🙂

I have heard similar stories before....most often the problem is that default settings aren't giving enough voltage to RAM...some kits rated at 1.2v don't seem to be happy that low and the XMP 1.35v seems to sort them out...

Might be your case..or something similar..

You could check by setting F5 BIOS defaults but changing RAM voltage to XMP level...?

Probably best to post full PC specs

[Kaean]

Heya Arne,

Cheers for your reply.

I did second thought the voltages at some point, but I didn't really think that would be the main reason causing this, as everything was set to *Auto* — so I kind of figured that it would choose by itself what would work the best for the default settings.

I have my RAM settings following the XMP #1 settings - which *Auto* doesn't use for its default settings, I'll give it a go once again when I reset the settings, and I'll apply the XMP profile on the RAM and try play with the voltage levels.

Cheers again. 🙂

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Yeah well, these days the CPU memory controller (IMC) plays a big part in the voltage that RAM needs to work properly so it's like a combo of RAM and exact CPU characteristics that determines if RAM is working or not.

Some kits rated to run at 1.2v even at XMP don't play nice with some CPU IMCs and people end up having to adjust to 1.25 or higher. Sometimes you have to play with VCCSA (SA volts)

Sometimes the default 1.2 profile doesn't work but the 1.35v XMP profiles do

Something like this might be your case...so yeah, have a play around...

If you mix kits of course like even running two kits of "same" make and model then stuff like this can happen more often....