XMP Instability

[PilotGW]

Hi,

For the better part of a week I’ve been battling (and failing) to try and get my 8700k stable. I’m only aiming for 4.8GHz. That’s the maximum I’m comfortable with in relation to temperatures (and I know I lost the silicon lottery anyway so I won’t bother).

My specs are:

8700K

Maximus X Hero

16GB Corsair Vengeance Red LED 3000MHz

MSI 1080Ti

Windows 10 Pro

I currently have the following BIOS settings:

BIOS 0802

MCE Auto

Sync All Cores

Ratio 48

AVX Offset 0

LLC 5

IA AC DC Load Line 0.01

Adaptive Voltage 1.312v

Offset -0.016v

These settings give me a VCore under load of 1.296v.

If I leave the memory at stock, it seems stable. However, if I turn on XMP or manually set the memory overclock things fall apart:

Prime95 26.6 Blend: One error detected within minutes (although I’ve only done this once overnight)

OCCT Linpack: Error detected at exactly the same time, every time (around 10 minutes 45 seconds)

ASUS Realbench: Instability Detected (7z), every time (usually between 20-40 minutes)

I’ve tried playing with the IO and SA voltages (XMP turns IO up to 1.34v and leaves SA at 1.1v!), same result.
I’ve also tried getting rid of the overclock with just XMP enabled, same result.

At the moment I’m thinking dodgy memory. I did run Memtest earlier in the week and after 7 hours threw 2 errors. Subsequent runs of Memtest however have come up clean so I’m not sure.

I’m at my wits end and don’t know where to turn next. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Silent_Scone]

I think there's a mixture of a few things happening here - for instance, you're lowering the auto values for VCCIO when enabling XMP. These values scale because the CPU can need the voltage in tow with memory overclocking. I'd recommend investing in some GSKILL TridentZ memory and returning the Corsair kit to the retailer.

[PilotGW]

Silent Scone wrote:
I think there's a mixture of a few things happening here - for instance, you're lowering the auto values for VCCIO when enabling XMP. These values scale because the CPU can need the voltage in tow with memory overclocking. I'd recommend investing in some GSKILL TridentZ memory and returning the Corsair kit to the retailer.

I was seriously considering getting GSKILL, they were just a little out of my price range and I already had the replacement kit on order. 😞

Early indications suggest the new kit has fixed the situation. I put my overclock and XMP on right off the bat. I didn't touch VCCIO or VCCSA. VCCIO still seems a little high. If I type in the same value manually it shows up purple instead of white or yellow. I'm assuming colour means (un)acceptable ranges?

Anyway, it passed RealBench for 2 hours multiple times, which would almost invariably fail at 20-40 minutes before. I know I should run it for longer I just need to find the time to sit and monitor it. I don't like leaving RealBench unattended as it seems to do weird things with my Corsair Link. It very often kicks my fans up to 100% and once it shut my AIO pump down. Not sure if that was related to the bad memory or just Corsair Link being buggy. I'm thinking the latter.

For good measure it also passed 1200% HCI Memtest, 6 passes of MemTest86 and Windows Memory Diagnostic. I've also reinstalled Windows just in case it got corrupted somehow.

Hopefully I won't be back in another week with more problems!

[Silent_Scone]

Nice, that much coverage with HCI is fairly solid, so sounds like you're good to go 🙂

[PilotGW]

Urgh...seems like I can't catch a break. 😞

Was aiming to run RealBench for 4 hours and had a BSOD after 2 hours with DRIVER_OVERRAN_STACK_BUFFER relating to ntoskrnl.exe.

I've got a feeling it may be related to the Corsair Link problem in my previous post because the AIO pump started making a funny noise as if were running really slow. When it restarted, my H110i GT was not detected. Had to uninstall the 'unknown device' in device manager and let it reinstall itself.

Could it be anything else?

[P-Dub]

Did you happen to have the CMU16GX4M2C3000C15R Corsair kit? We may have the same CPU/Mobo/Ram combo. I'm wondering because I have had random reboots after a cold boot at XMP and instability when trying to overclock slightly.

[PilotGW]

P-Dub wrote:
Did you happen to have the CMU16GX4M2C3000C15R Corsair kit? We may have the same CPU/Mobo/Ram combo. I'm wondering because I have had random reboots after a cold boot at XMP and instability when trying to overclock slightly.

Yes, same kit. I did have occasional boot loops when I first started but after reseating the RAM it seemed to subside. However the instability remained. The replacement kit hasn't exhibited this behaviour yet and it can be pushed further. The whole thing seems a bit flakey as even the seemingly 'bad' kit passed barrage after barrage of memory tests.

Silent Scone wrote:
You can always try the AVX offset function . If passing for 4 hours, setting a value of 1 should do it. Sounds more like CPU instability to me.

I did have a -3 AVX offset applied when I first started overclocking but turned it off as it seemed to be triggering while playing games too. I'll give it another go. 100MHz isn't going to hurt much in the grand scheme of things.

[Silent_Scone]

PilotGW wrote:
Urgh...seems like I can't catch a break. 😞

Was aiming to run RealBench for 4 hours and had a BSOD after 2 hours with DRIVER_OVERRAN_STACK_BUFFER relating to ntoskrnl.exe.

I've got a feeling it may be related to the Corsair Link problem in my previous post because the AIO pump started making a funny noise as if were running really slow. When it restarted, my H110i GT was not detected. Had to uninstall the 'unknown device' in device manager and let it reinstall itself.

Could it be anything else?

You can always try the AVX offset function . If passing for 4 hours, setting a value of 1 should do it. Sounds more like CPU instability to me.

[Deepcuts]

My 4x8 Corsair kit only works @ 3200 Mhz in Mode 2
Have you tried Mode 2?

[el_terrible]

My G.Skill tridentz 3600 mhz cl 15-15-15-35 does not work at all on XMP, I mean my computer boots just fine, I can run all kinds of tests with no errors, but when I try to actually game my computer will crash to desktop every 5-15 minutes, sometimes why whole computer will lock up and I even got a bluescreen once (haven't gotten that in years).

Currently running them at 3200mhz cl 17-18-18-36 at 1.344v and it has been stable for a few weeks with no problems.

Hoping it will get fixed in a bios update in the future

[Silent_Scone]

el terrible wrote:
My G.Skill tridentz 3600 mhz cl 15-15-15-35 does not work at all on XMP, I mean my computer boots just fine, I can run all kinds of tests with no errors, but when I try to actually game my computer will crash to desktop every 5-15 minutes, sometimes why whole computer will lock up and I even got a bluescreen once (haven't gotten that in years).

Currently running them at 3200mhz cl 17-18-18-36 at 1.344v and it has been stable for a few weeks with no problems.

Hoping it will get fixed in a bios update in the future

"All kinds of test" being what tests exactly? A BIOS update is not assured to resolve anything. You can try adjusting the VCCIO and VCCSA voltages starting from 1.15v. Memory overclocking on this platform is fairly straight forward, so aslong as the user is able to POST at XMP very little tuning should be needed unless shooting for the stars (4000Mhz+)