An isolated instance of "Overclocking Failed"

[Kaelon]

I managed to get my system humming along beautifully last week -- a Maximus VIII Hero with a 6700K and 64 GB of DDR4-3400 G.Skill TridentZs, using XMP. No other overclocking or settings. Tested successfully for 7+ hours of MemTest86+ without fail, and around 20 hours of nonstop gaming without issue.

Then, a few days later, I went to turn on my machine and I got an Overclocking error (and saw that the motherboard had stalled on code 32 -- Memory Initialization). I disabled XMP, was able to boot up fine at the stock 2133, and then went back to Overclock using XMP Profile #1 (the only option available). And now, I'm humming along great again.

What gives? Are these random Overclocking issues indicative of something I should be more worried about? Why would something like this be intermittent?

Thanks for your help!

[MeanMachine]

Hi Kaelon 🙂

You are using 3400MHz DDR4 "OC" RAM and the CPU is officially rated up to 2133MHz so your XMP profile may or may not be recognized.
If it happens again then it would be best to manually set your Primary Timings and voltage instead of XMP profile.
Also updating Bios to latest version can help. Bios updates are to address system stability, new RAM and some USB devices.

[Korth]

Kaelon wrote:
What gives? Are these random Overclocking issues indicative of something I should be more worried about? Why would something like this be intermittent?

These issues are not really "intermittent" nor are they "random". And they're not really something to be more worried about.

You're overclocking. Running over rated spec. Even though your "extreme-performance" memory is branded DDR4-3400, it's actually only "boring-performance" JEDEC DDR4-2133 or DDR4-2400 which has tested out higher bin. The dual-channel iMCs in your i7-6700K natively support up to DDR4-2133, but anything faster is "overclocking" lol, and you've populated them with the maximum 64GB load they'll natively support which just keeps them running that much hotter and busier.

If you're mostly gaming and can handle a BSoD or other system halt/crash every few dozen hours or every few days then your system is "stable" enough, don't worry about it.
If you're working on mission-critical data where every second of downtime can cost lives and money then your system is not at all "stable" enough, get it fixed.
My system isn't really mission-critical but I don't like downtime, I (and my employer) don't consider it "stable" unless it can run full stress tests for 24 hours, unattended, uninterrupted, whether it's overclocked or not.

But the whole point of overclocking is to push beyond rated specs, and while it's somewhat predictable it also comes with no guarantees at all. There is just no such thing as a perfectly 100% stable overclock. How many "nines" of service do you really need for the stuff you do, how much "random" downtime is acceptable, how much advantage do you gain from another +100MHz? I think most gamers can live with one or two "random" crashes per day, as long as it doesn't interrupt their standings during epic tournaments, but I assume they must get a significant "edge" in their game from burning 15C hotter to push that extra +400MHz.

You might need to bump VCCIO and System Agent voltages a little in BIOS for "increased" stability.

A sad truth is that DDR4-2133 is already "extreme" enough that faster isn't always noticeably better. Faster DDR4 can produce mighty impressive benchmark metrics and let you unzip that megasized monolithic archive faster but it otherwise doesn't do a whole lot to improve system performance in "real world" usage. And 64GB is overkill for today's software/games, even Win10 can't bloat itself enough to fill it all, hopefully you'll be running a ROG RAMDisk or ASUS RAMCache or somesuch to make some use of it.

[Kaelon]

Korth wrote:
A sad truth is that DDR4-2133 is already "extreme" enough that faster isn't always noticeably better. Faster DDR4 can produce mighty impressive benchmark metrics and let you unzip that megasized monolithic archive faster but it otherwise doesn't do a whole lot to improve system performance in "real world" usage. And 64GB is overkill for today's software/games, even Win10 can't bloat itself enough to fill it all, hopefully you'll be running a ROG RAMDisk or ASUS RAMCache or somesuch to make some use of it.

Tell me more about a ROG RAMDisk! I'm using an EVO 960 M.2 1TB drive from Samsung, and my load times are virtually non-existent. What sort of other applications would you recommend I use to push my machine to its limits?

[Korth]

Your ASUS disk probably came with ROG RAMDisk and ASUS RAMCache. If it didn't you can download it from the support pages on other ASUS/ROG motherboards - the "open secret" being that these (and some other) ASUS softwares only works on mobos with the magical ASUS "ROG Chip", but any one of them will work on any ASUS mobo which is equipped with this chip. You probably want the latest-and-greatest versions, of course.

Short version is that a RAM disk reserves a segment of physical RAM to be used as a virtual drive or virtual folder you can stuff some or all of your entire game folder into. So the game moves stuff from RAM-to-RAM during runtime instead of moving it from drive-to-RAM or RAM-to-drive. Much faster, provided you have enough physical RAM to allocate. ROG RAMDisk is pretty good, and it can dynamically resize itself as needed, so it won't hog memory needed for the operating system and running programs. (And, again, a 16GB system is already manly enough to do it all, there's hardly any other way for most people to actually make use of >16GB memory.)

ASUS RAMCache works as a cache for files and data stored on drives. It's pretty good and can "predictively" fill itself up when it detects patterns in file access, and modern caching algorithms usually boast at least 95% cache-hit accuracies, so it does improve actual performance (at least a little) in all but worst-case extremes.

Samsung's RAPID Magician software is functionally the same thing as ASUS RAMCache, but the software and firmware are better optimized for Samsung SSDs (they were designed and evolved together) whereas ASUS RAMCache is a generic product intended for use with any drives. I prefer Magician over RAMCache. I recommend experimenting with each of them for yourself to compare and determine which is actually better for your usage (one then the other, you can force them both to run simultaneously but I found they don't play nice together). And again, keep in mind that benchmark scores are not as meaningful as "real" observable changes in loading times, speeds, and performance - but some people want the brag and swag or believe the numbers more than they believe their own eyes.

Note that Magician lets you configure Read Caching and Write Caching separately. Read Caching is where most of your performance will be (since you'll rarely write or overwrite operating system, program, and game data files) and it's completely "safe" in the context of not losing/corrupting data in the event of sudden power loss. Write Caching helps a little in gaming and a lot with other things, but because it caches "new" data and changes to file systems and such stuff it can cause a lot of grief (wasted time, lost data, permanent damage to NVFlash blocks which diminish SSD capacity/performance/longevity) when the contents of volatile memory are killed by sudden power loss. I'd recommend avoiding Write Cache unless you have a proper backup power supply with enough juice to "gracefully" shut down the system, especially if you're primarily gaming and would realistically enjoy very little real performance gain from active Write Caching.

All of these softwares are "free", as in they cost you nothing extra and you can use them indefinitely, but you do need to own specific hardware (like ROG motherboards or Samsung SSDs) to make them work.

The official ASUS pages for RAMDisk and RAMCache are largely filled with grandoise marketing, but they cover the basics and provide some specific technical details. There are numerous other RAM disk and RAM cache products, but none of the free/trial ones are as good as these ASUS wares while all of the better ones are somewhat costly.