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Hi! Built a new computer, need it for work. Context: - New parts: i7 14700k + Maxsun Z790 + 64gb ram corsair 6000mhz + MSI MAG A850GL 850W. - Old parts: RX590 TDP 175W (need to use old GPU, I test games). Cleaned and put new thermal paste. Extra info: Updated bios, drivers, everything. Mobo has 2 CPU power headers, I plugged both of them in. Extra info: CPU is not overheating (PS120SE), GPU is not overheating, memory is not overheating. Problem: - Computer crashes if I leave the RX590 at 100% power limit. Mouse/image freezes and I need to reboot manually. - Stable if I leave the RX590 at 85% power limit. - Stable if I put my old PSU (old model CX600M) even with the GPU at 115% power limit. Tests I did (all with stock CPU/mobo, except for first): Hypothesis: a) New 850w PSU is optimized for PCI-E5 (16pin) so it can't "deliver" much through a 8pin (6+2) RX590. b) Some stock config is letting the mobo pull insane amount of powers (its at default/stock). c) Faulty 850W PSU. d) RX590 (TDP 175W) + 14700k is "too much" for a the MSI MAG A850 850W (gold rated, tier A) - this would make no sense as the CX600M was holding the same setup fine. e) I'm dumb and I'm missing something obvious. Questions: I) What should I do? I'm tweaking for 5 days and getting insane, I can't return the PSU now as I need this pc to work, I got a newborn baby and money is short. II) Does it make "sense" that the new PSU is optimized for new cards and deliver "too little" on the old 6+2 pci-express cable GPU? III) Does the type of "crash" with the image freezing, fans still spinning means something in particular? Or is it generic? Every error I had was 41-(63) Kernel-Power. I'd love to test a PCI-E (16pin) GPU as it would be de definite test but I don't have money for one. Thanks, sorry for the wall of text, trying to make it as organized as possible. Extra: PSU specifications, I don't know how to check how much power it delivers through the 8pins pci-e default (the "main" one is the 16pins)

I put together a new system with a ryzen 9 5900x and a pro WS x570 ace that had been sitting on a shelf for the past 2.5 years. This board is terrible, I have to restart my system 10 times before it will boot, after then, it will reboot by itself after 0.5-5 minutes (or BSOD), assuming that it will even recognize my boot SSD. I've spent like 15 hours over the past 2 days trying to get the POS to work, installing new PCH drivers, new bios, NADA. So much for being a workstation board when it's got the stability of a family of alcoholics. What do I do?

###### EDIT: FIXED - added solution to the end of this comment. Hello guys... I'm really out of options at this point. I've tried troubleshooting this problem for weeks and it's insanely hard because I can't reproduce my issue. specs: Gigabyte b550m-D3SH, Patriot Viper Steel 3200mhz (16gb 2x8 dual Kit), R5 3600, GTX 1660super, 600 Watt be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM Modular 80+ Gold I've submitted a Ticket to AMD on monday in hopes that they'll help me (while I still had some ideas to try left). But they did not answer, yet and I'm officially fully out of ideas now. 1. So what is the issue? My PC will sometimes roughly (0-4times a day at ~12h usage). Sometimes it happens a few times in less than an hour ... but that might be by chance. Or not. The crash doesn't produce a BSOD, nor can I extract any insightful errorcode anywhere. Windows manager logs only event ID 41 with no additional info. (System probably down too quickly to do anything). After my PC crashes it will just show "no video signal" on my screen, my keyboard lights go off and I can't hear any sounds any more etc. but my fans are still running. So power seems to have been taken away from my whole board but not the fans. Of course this might all be because of a faulty PSU but I sadly do not have replacements with me and I also recently moved into a new town because of a job and know almost no one here. So it's really hard to "swap out a part". Also I have researched and found a lot of similar cases with similar problems. Some apparently were fixed with some setting or uninstalling monitoring software, etc. some weren't. None of the fixes and suggestions I found worked for me, though. More in this regard later let's move on to observations first. 2. Patterns that seem to have increased the likeliness of my crashes It rarely ever happened during gaming, but sometimes straight after gaming and sometimes it happened during idle (I went away for 2-3minutes). Stress-testing never seemed to crash my system and the performance seemed in line with the setup I have. So the only pattern I could observe had to do with a change of system load from higher to lower. 3. Conclusions drawn and fixes tried Because of this behavior I assumed it might have to do with my system being unable to deal with the load going down, entering various forms of low power modes or just having issues when certain algorithms at play match perfectly into an unstable condition. This might all be wrong and it might even just be the PSU or something else failing but here is what it led me to try so far: Next to the first few standard things I tested (multiple 5-10min Stress tests of CPU, GPU and memtestx86 over night) I tried to - change power settings on Windows and my GPU to prefer performance, to not go into sleep modes and - change power settings in BIOS e.g. disable global C-States or Power Loading (which adds a dummy load on my system during low load). - uninstall monitoring software - disable XMP And a few more I don't remember. I also did not enable any overclocking or anything. Note that testing even just one setting can take more than a full day due to randomness of crashes. I have read up that some systems also have problems with RAM timing especially for the Ryzen processors but I couldn't find anyone with similar issues to mine related to RAM timings. 4. One thing that seems to help but I didn't test it long enough yet (and might be biased because of my assumptions and wishful thinking): I found this odd "solution" one person had for a problem that sounded exactly like mine. He uses Prime95 to permanently stress-test one of his cores. This apparently sets his system in a stable condition and he didn't crash for 11 days. I have crashed once since I tried that (2days now) but I think I have chosen a different stress test by mistake so it might work with the "correct one". However this is no real long-term solution I just want to test if this helps to at least minimize the occurences of my crashes. If it does do that to a noticable amount it might help push anyone with more knowledge than me into the right direction of a possible cause (and hopefully fix). I know I wrote a lot and I tried to be thorough but I am not perfect at getting "directly to the point" so I apologize for the long read. I hope my info provided is sufficient and gives you an idea. Do not hesistate to ask me for more information. I'd be really happy if anyone was able to help! ############EDIT############### !!!UPDATE (solved) !!! For me the issue got fixed when I enabled "Typical current idle" in my BIOS settings for the PSU. Apparently my PSU thinks my board doesn't need any power when it goes below a threshold in some sort of powersaving/efficiency mode.

To preface this, I've done a ton of research into this problem. I'm not the only one and RMAs don't seem to help. Whatever's going on here is just considered a normal operating quirk of either the Dark Hero, the higher end Ryzen 5000 chips or both. Simply put, the system will crash at a firmware level every so often. It doesn't matter if it's under load or idle, it can just lock up with no response to even holding the power button. This immediately makes me think motherboard, but it was suggested by others that RAM could be the cause. I've tried disabling Gear Down mode as well as DDR Power Down - this had no effect, and may even have made it worse. Someone else suggested increasing the DRAM Voltage, and that yielded some really interesting results. In Asus's BIOS, if you're not familiar, you get your input field for the voltage and a little box to the left showing what voltage would be applied by default. Normally, this field is set to "Auto". When you enable DOCP, this field changes to whatever the DOCP profile sets. What's interesting, however, is that the default value in that little box keeps changing. One boot, it might be 1.27V. Another, it could be as high as 1.38V. Often, after a crash, it'll read above whatever you try and set indicating that the BIOS seems to think the memory needs more voltage. Surely, though, 1.38V is enough? I even tried redlining it at 1.4V but it still wanted more (which I was not willing to give it, I don't believe that's safe). It was also suggested to me that 5950X CPUs can sometimes be very badly binned, and when using PBO it can cause significant instability where certain cores (or even entire CCDs) are less up to the task. Someone even suggested that the IO die could've been badly binned, and that was causing the apparent memory instability. If this is the case, there's little I can do because I've passed my return window now. I'm not necessarily looking for a solution, although I'll take it if you have one, but rather just second opinions that might help me piece together a picture of what's going on in my little box of thinking sand. System Specs: AMD Ryzen 5950X (PBO Enabled, Core Enhancements Enabled) Noctua NH-D15 chromax Corsair Vengence LPX 3600Mhz/C16 (DOCP Enabled) Asus Crosshair Dark Hero VIII X570 Samsung 980 Pro 1TB x2 LG Optical Drive Hotplug 2.5 inch SATA Bay Samsung 870 Evo 2TB Nvidia RTX 3090 Founders LSi 9211-8i HBA 5x Seagate IronWolf Pro 6TB Corsair HXi 1000W PSU

CPU: R5 3600xt GPU: Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5700xt Mobo: Gigabyte B450 AORUS Elite rev 1.0 PSU: Corsair RM850x (850W 80+ gold) RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600mhz CL 16 GPU Driver versions: was using 21.11.3, currently using 21.10.2 OS: Windows 10 pro 64bit Version 10.0.19044 Build 19044 BIOS version: F61 (@bios will not let me update) So ever since I built my computer (almost a year ago) I have had issues with driver timeouts. I have done everything. It will not go away. RMA'd my GPU 3 times to no avail. Reinstalled windows. Did the whole DDU shenanigans multiple times. Disabled XMP. Pretty sure it is not my power supply since I ran furmark and cinebench to draw a lot of power at once and it did not crash. (maybe that is not a definitive answer for psu stability) I feel like I am losing my mind, and it just got worse. Out of nowhere my drivers started to act up and timeout a bunch of times before AMD crash defender enables GPU driver safe mode. This started happening little by little until now as soon as I get into windows it immediately times out. I can't use my computer until the drivers enter safe mode. And yes I did try reinstalling my drivers, 2 times with DDU and AMD driver cleanup. Windows does not install drivers automatically since I disabled that. My options are: - my motherboard is defective - GPU is defective (somehow) - maybe my PSU is defective? - maybe everything is defective I am losing my mind.

So I have a couple games crashing on me, sometimes during heavy load, sometimes when simply doing an install or while just idling. (ARK, Valorant, Sea of Thieves, Apex Legends etc.) I reached out to some of my community members and friends and there seems to be a consensus that it wasn't just the games that's acting up but also the PC itself which was built 7 years ago. I agree. However some of them said it could be a bad power supply. This baffled me. how can a power supply, that carries no data and only supplies pure voltage to the components cause games to crash? Is there such a thing? Granted it is a locally sourced part that came with my v. cheap case and it isn't exactly rated nicely or anything. But I can't wrap my head around how a psu can affect software. Can anyone shed some light on this?

I got my 5950x about 8 months ago, and I used Asus's AI Suite 3 to auto-overclock the chip ("5-way Optimization"). Now to preface, I'm not that well-versed in CPU overclocking, I've really only OC GPUs before and this was my first foray into CPU overclocking, so I decided to just have the software do it for me. I got a nice boost in performance, and everything worked perfectly up until about a few weeks ago, when suddenly my PC began freezing randomly. Like full system hangs, either the display would completely freeze up and I would not be able to do anything (the fans still kept spinning at normal pace though), or the display would turn black and the fans would ramp up to 100%. Either case, I would have to force shut down the PC, either through the power button, or the power supply switch because sometimes even the power button wouldn't work. First it was like once every few days, but now these freezes happen every day, and I don't want to harm my PC by needing to force shut it down so frequently, so I'm now looking for a fix. My first thought was that perhaps it had to do something with the OC on the CPU (since I've OC GPUs before and never has this type of failure happened), even though everything was perfectly fine for the last half year of 24/7 usage. In my research I've heard a ton of conflicting information (high voltage/low voltage, software/no software, etc.) and it was also a bit of information overload. So what I first did was lower the clock speed from all-core 100.0x45.50 (set by AI Suite) to 100.0x45.00, and also increased the CPU voltage from the AI Suite-set 1.250 to 1.275 V (heard it helped with instability). Worked fine, no significant difference, but the PC froze again the next day. So then I just switched the voltage clock from manual to auto, and now my CPU is at 1.419 V, which is strange because I keep hearing that anything above like 1.4 V is harmful to your CPU. Tried a cinebench run with that voltage and temperatures immediately spiked up to 110 C, which is absolutely insane because I've never seen a CPU go past the temp limit without any thermal throttling, and with my previous settings the temperature capped around 85-88 C (I know that's high, but I like my z73 cooler and I rarely ever run all-core loads, idle is usually 45-50 C). So obviously something's wrong here. Is there any recommendations for how to proceed? How to "properly" OC my 5950x? Or more importantly if you've heard of this freezing problem before, what could I do to fix it? I appreciate any and all help and thanks in advance. System specs: - 5950x - 3090 FE - Crosshair VIII Hero - 4x8gb TridentZ Neo RGB 4000 MHz CL16 (clocked at 3733 right now) - Kraken Z73 Current AI Suite settings attached.

Hello, I've tried to undervolt my cpu with intel xtu, I went down to -0.100, after that, I've tested the stability in some games and it went pretty bad I was getting frame drops in games then I turned back the voltage to 0/default and I was still getting frame drops and instability in games. I have tried everything to fix this, I even reistalled the windows and stiil get frame drops in games. I did't get frame drops in games before installing intel xtu. Can you help me? I didn't touch anything exept cpu voltage offest and turbo boost power max, now they're back to default. I don't have problems with cpu temperature but my gpu temp is 90-95 degrees My cpu is: i3 8130u My gpu is: MX150

Have been having severe problems with my 1 month old rig. With factory optimized defaults it will BSOD when playing games and if I run a benchmark (very random but quite a lot). I have tried messing around with some bios settings with no luck. Since day 1 it has been giving me issues. Not really sure were to start but I would like to get it to a 4.5-4.6 overclock eventually. It seemed to get worse when I upgraded to the F20 Bios so I reverted back to F8 (i think thats it). It also had some severe issues with CPU temps (90+C) but those haven't been bad as of lately (70c max) Mobo - Gigabyte z170x Gaming 7 (rev 1.0) CPU - Intel 6700k CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212x Turbo Memory - Corsair Vengeance 16gb (4x4) GPU - Evga GTX 1070 PSU _ Cooler Master silent pro gold 1000W

My GTX 1070 Ti keeps crashing, switched slots with no change. This is the second 1070 Ti I've tried with the same issues, no OC has been done. Crashes on all games except for the original DOOM trilogy. I've attempted all drivers from 417.71 up to the newest 425.31 straight from Nvidia with no change. This is my first build so I'm a bit lost at this point, with everything else functioning properly and stable the only thing I can think of is the PCIe slots on the motherboard being the issue. The GPU is an Open box MSI Duke from newegg, and the motherboard is a refurbished Z370 MSI gaming pro carbon from newegg. Each crash either black screens with a few giving me blue screen.

I'm using a 2700x on an ROG x470-f motherboard. It's not overclocked but on pbo/xfr. I'm using a negative offset of -0.1v with LLC 4. I'm seeing this kind of voltage at idle. I recently saw this Reddit post which really concerned me of the longevity of my chip. Although I didn't fully understand whether it applies to my case where it's not a fixed voltage but something that always fluctuates ranging between 1.34 - 1.41v and even sometimes drops down to 0.5 - .7v. After seeing this post, I went from LLC 4 to LLC3 with the same offset and didn't see a lot of difference in terms of my voltage behavior. Only what happened is that I started getting crashes again. I will be thrown a rounding error in prime95 within first round on few cores (in-place large FFT tests) I also tried manually OCing it to 4.1 - 4.2ghz, the stability was better than automatic but still wasn't perfect. Now I'm on what I was originally on which had me a stable system and I don't know whether it's going to as stable as before, neither if this kind of voltages is safe for long term usage. I really need someone's opinion and help on this. (And also one other thing to mention. I started getting these crashes after I installed 2 extra DIMMs of 8gb with the existing ones (total 32gb) and I had to reset CMOS and I lost my previous stable settings. Although I remember what those settings were but I didn't have their saved profile, idk if this has to do with my problem)

So I want to change the voltage to my 4790k from my B43-G43 GAMING so I can increase my stability at higher frequencies. I've played with ring frequency (I understand I'm not hurting anything but I have no idea if I'm helping with stability). I'm pretty sure I'm on the wrong path with ring frequency though - just from what others have said. Here's the meat of the question: which voltage option(s) do I modify? CPU core voltage? Do I also increase ring voltage? Voltage offset? I'm not bluescreening or anything, just getting errors in WoW every now and again. I suspect a very small 8mV jump would probably do it but I'm not overly afraid to play around. The purpose of this is to get better FPS in WoW and other games, because I've learned that the CPU is probably my FPS bottleneck (gtx 970 btw). Though even if I'm incorrect about that, I am enjoying myself and want those dank high temps. Before overclocking, I could never get my CPU over 70C. Which just seems...like a waste.

Hi to everyone, this is my first post, I hope I got everything right. I have a strange problem overclocking a 7600k to 4.9Ghz and higher. In short, stress testing it with prime95 (AVX version and not), with Aida64 and with Cinebench (to simulate burst workloads), it is fine, but launching Rocket League and sometimes other DX9 titles they just crash on load after a sudden increase in cpu fan speed. Increasing the voltage seems to help a bit. I can't see why I am stable on prime with 1.325v and yet have to crank up the Vcore to over 1.36v to be stable in these scenarios. Tried to clean install Windows and updating graphics drivers without any change. The problem seems to be more consistent with a warmed up system. My question finally is: Do I have to set up something in particular in the bios to help this kind of load? The memory controller (VCCIO and System agent) is forced to stock voltages, 0.950v and 1.05v (rising the multiplier for some reason makes the motherboard to rise this voltages automatically) All Turbo Core power limits are disabled Power phase control is set to optimized Power duty on extreme LLC on 5 VRM Spread Spectrum is disabled Current Capability on 140% The Vcore is fixed on 1.325v Cache multiplier to 42 I am pretty new to Intel overclocking while I have a lot of experience on AMD FX platform and I find Intel's very tricky. AMD processors just crashed the whole system if they were unstable, this Intel ones seems to behave in a very "gray" way sustaining burst workloads in some apps and crashing others. The PC config is: - 7600k - ASUS Maximus VIII Ranger Z170 - G.SKILL Trident Z RGB 3200MHz CL14 - ASUS Strix GTX 970 - XFX XTR 750w PSU (this one is having some problems booting the pc lately, if the pc was recently booted up and shut down, trying to switch it on again produces a coil whine like sound and nothing happens, unless the rear switch is switched off and on rapidly) not a mobo problem, did the same on the amd system. - Hyper 212 Plus (push pull config, temps seem ok, 70c package on prime95 avx monitored with hwinfo64) Detailed BIOS Config: 180712171914.BMP 180712171928.BMP 180712171937.BMP 180712171953.BMP 180712172021.BMP 180712172059.BMP

Hi, I've been having issues with my radeon RX 480 8gb grapics card made by sapphire being unstable in high loads. This includes beamng drive, PC building simulator and more loads of similar size. In beamng drive it's making the physics slow down with uneven spaces and if I have too many particles my pc crashes, in the form of my monitors going black and not coming on again unless I restart the system. When it's crashing the fan on the card ramps up almost like it's thermal throttling, this leads me to believe it's a cooling issue in my case. then you might say to add more fans, but I can't really since it's filled already. It's not filled in that sense, but at least it has two fans, there are three open slots, these slotss are either covered or I'm saving them since my plan for the future is to water cool some part of my system, Leading me to: if it's a cooling issue I'd like to water cool it and since I fist saw it it was my dream to water cool my gpu, and I thought it looked really cool Now here's the juice: if I'd water cool it I definetley want a cusrtom soft line soluton issue: It's really expensive, so if anyone knows a place where I can get cheap, reliable water cooling gear, please tip me. -Daniel

What causes system instability when overclocking a CPU above a certain clock with adequate water cooling? I ordered an NZXT Kraken X52 and I plan to overclock my Intel Core i7-8700K but wanted to know what the highest achievable clock is without causing system instability.

THE PROBLEM ---------------------- My brand new build is unbelievably unstable. It will either crash or restart within a couple of hours of use. Nothing is Overclocked and I've tried many things to resolve the issue (see below). The crash/restart does not seem related to what I'm doing on the computer, it crashes sometimes when I'm doing nothing, other times when the system is under light load (watching youtube etc), other times under heavy load (running stress-test etc). When it crashes there is no blue screen or any error message, whole system locks up and I can't even restart it by holding down the power button, I have to switch off the PSU and turn it back on again. When the system restarts, again there is no error message. It's approximately 50-50 whether it will crash or restart. SYSTEM SPECS ----------------------- OS: Windows 10 Home 64Bit Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B350-F Gaming (BIOS version 3803) CPU: Ryzen 5 1500X Memory: 16 GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB for AMD (F4-2933C16D-16GTRX) Graphics Card: Asus Strix Radeon RX 570 PSU: Corsair CX550M (550W) THINGS I'VE TRIED --------------------------- Replaced motherboard Replaced PSU with both 650W and 550W Replaced RAM using G.Skill Trident Z RGB both the AMD version and non AMD version (F4-3000C16D-16GTR, F4-2933C16D-16GTRX) Replaced the monitor (not that I thought this was the problem, it had a dead pixel) Re-seated every component Monitored temperatures (CPU never gets above 50C, GPU rarely gets above 55C, motherboard stays below 40C, PCH hovers around 50C) Removed all peripherals except the keyboard (also replaced keyboard) Tried 2 different power sockets Removed case front panel from mobo header pins to rule out a short from the case Upgraded BIOS to latest version (3803) Reinstalled Windows Switched power mode settings in Windows from performance to balanced Tried various RAM settings in BIOS: D.O.C.P 2933 (16-16-16-36) 1.35v D.O.C.P 2666 (16-16-16-36) 1.35v Auto 2666 (16-19-19-44) 1.2v Auto 2400 (16-17-17-40) 1.2v Please help! I'm at my wits end with this build. My suspicion is that the CPU or Graphics card are faulty but I'm also wondering if it may be a Windows problem?

Hey guys, Is there a BIOS setting, which lower the voltage of the Ram while idle? Running into System instability just at idle... seems to be Ram related but stresstest doesn't crash the system. So is there a setting for that?

For some reason the AMD A10 APU in my laptop, which has a maximum clock of 2.1Ghz, is suck above it's maximum clock according to Task Manager. This causes system instability as the system will freeze and lock up, even crashing the whole system. I've tried a system reset, reinstalling the drivers, everything. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening or how to stop it?

I've recently put together a pfsense router, repurposing a Fujitsu Primergy something something server. It's a Bulldozer-era Opteron server with some DDR3 RAM, an SSD, and an add-on 4-port gigabit NIC. Before PFsense, this PC did nothing for months, and before that it ran Windows Server 2012 R2 I believe, non-stop for 6 months or whatever the trial period was (probably more, since it doesn't shut down automatically when the trial expires ). No issues. Some 10 days ago, I installed PFsense on it: other than next-next-next, set WAN port, set LAN port, set the remaining ports, I did nothing to it. Hooked WAN to the IPS router, everything else to ethernet jacks around my house, and boom, everything seemed to be working. I may stress at this point (after many Google dead ends ) that I have not installed any add-on, plug-in, you name it. it's pure download, rufus to USB, install, plug cables. The problems started a few days later: every now and then (and it can be zero times for hours, and then 6 times in 20 minutes) I would lose connectivity on my ethernet connections. Internet is working (wifi is still going through the ISP thing), but I don't have internet, nor access o the PFsense interface, on ethernet. If I just wait, connection comes back, both to the PFsense and to the internet (didn't time it, but it takes a few seconds - a minute). Once it back, it can work just fine or do the same thing 2 minutes later. I'd love to start digging more into how to configure PFsense and test what I can do with it, but so far I can't get past the most basic: working stably. It's driving me crazy and I don't know how to diagnose it as I can reproduce it on purpose, and I don't do anything to fix it. it just comes and goes at will. Did anyone encounter similar issues? What could possibly be the reason? In case it matters, my current layout is: ISP modem >>single ethernet>> PFsense >>LAGG (2 ethernet in LACP)>> Cisco Switch from hell >> 2 ethernet in LACP to main computer >> single ethernet to another computer The PFsense is also connected directly to other 2 ethernet jacks (no LAGG) elsewhere in the house, currently unused. Before installing PFsense, the layout was: ISP modem >>single ethernet>> Cisco Switch from hell >> 2 ethernet in LACP to main computer >> single ethernet to another computer and was working with no issues. Any suggestions?

So I'm trying to help a friend of mine overclock his 4790k to around 4.7Ghz. He's using an H100i V2 to cool it, so he has plenty of headroom for overclocking. But for whatever reason, he can't get it to run it stable at that speed. Not without turning up the voltage really high. It's only able to run stable when cranked up to an uncomfortable 1.425 volts, which puts it at around 90°C under full load. This puzzles me, because I've seen stable overclocks for that chip go up to 4.8Ghz at around 1.3-1.325 volts. So I have no idea what's holding his chip from reaching that point. The only thing I can think of, is that before he got his H100i V2 around a month ago, he was using the stock Intel cooler. He had it installed ever since he bought the PC, which was nearly a year ago. I've always told him that he should be using a water cooler, but only recently has he taken action on that. My only theory, is that because he was using the stock cooler for so long, it may have degraded the chip's performance due to inadequate cooling. However I'm not sure how well that theory holds up, so I need a second opinion. I'm not a very experienced overclocker, so I hope you guys can help.

Hi LTT community! The computer I built about 4 months ago has had issues since day 1, but things really came to a head this week so I'm going to chronicle my misadventures here along with asking some advice from those who have been here before. Starting off, The specs: Motherboard: MSI x99 Sli Krait edition Ram: 32(4x8gb) crucial ballistix ddr4 2400 I think Video: Gigabyte Radeon hd 7950 windforce 3x (bought used) Power supply: Corsair AX850

I built my own computer a couple months ago. I installed Win7 on it, but upgraded to the free copy of Win10. Every now and then it will just start running very slowly. Pages that are already open continue working just fine, but new pages and windows take ages to open and load. Also the start menu opens very slowly. The cursor doesn't lag. I have run numerous full system virus scans to no avail. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be the issue? My build is: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H LGA 1150 Intel i7-4790k (Base clock) Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming 2GB Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB DDR3 Cooler Master 212 EVO Seagate 2TB HDD (For documents and games) Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD (For OS and frequently used programs) Thank you!

I'm fed up with my current Windows install. It is so goddamn unstable, that I can't even render a fucking video for school, let alone record it. I have on major issue - I kind of have a lot of programs installed. I want to, need to re-install. I simply just have so much stuff on my SSD's that will be hard to download again, and configure. Any tips, easy solutions for this?

Hello there. I just built my new gaming PC and as many other users of ASUS's Z170 chipset motherboards, I'm facing some issues with the stupid ASUS Anti-surge system. When the first failure occurred I was under almost idle load on my system, just installing some Steam games, and suddenly my system shut itself down (with 1 or 2 seconds showing some changes on my fans behavior, what makes me think that it was not a simple power outage, but an "intentional" shutdown mechanism triggered by my motherboard (which is a ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme). After the system shutdown, I notice several tries of boot (without my interference, just the PC trying to turn itself on), with no post at all. Just turning on and off repeatedly for about 4 or 5 times, until I switched my PSU off. After that, the system booted properly (with NO error messages during the boot process), and was working fine, until approximately 24 hours later. One day later I faced a system reset, and the system posted with a ASUS anti-surge system error notification. The message was "Asus anti-surge was triggered to protect system from unstable power supply". I honestly don't think the problem is on my PSU... I have a Corsair AX1200i 80 Plus Platinum (a pretty decent power supply). After that, using Corsair Link software, I spent a long time monitoring/logging my 12v, 5v and 3.3v power lines, and they're pretty stable... 12v: oscillating between 12.0v ~ 12.06v 5v: oscillating between 5v ~ 5.03v 3.3v: oscillating between 3.3v ~ 3.34v After this issue, I already spent about 8 straight hours playing The Division on ultra quality (quite a heavy/resource consuming game), with no instability at all, but after that, I faced the problem once again with my system absolutely idle. System shutting down abruptly and a post right after that giving me the anti-surge warning. After searching for some posts on ASUS's RoG forums, I noticed a lot of users complaining about ASUS's anti-surge system, and many of them was suggesting that this feature should be disabled on it's UEFI option to avoid the problem. Here lies my concern... Is it safe to run my system without this feature? To be honest, this "new" feature doesn't seem to be working properly yet, and it seems to be causing more problems than protection to the system. I'd like to have some thoughts about that. Have you guys faced similar problems with Z170 chipset based motherboards? Additional information: The system is not overclocked at all yet. The only changes I've made on my UEFI was to activate XMP Profile 1 for my DDR4 (Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB - 4x4GB - 2666Mhz), and to set my Corsair Carbide 540 case fans to be at a fixed 900 RPM. (BTW: In despite of having a 4 channel memory kit, CPU-Z says my memory is working in dual channel mode). *** EDIT *** possibly related issue: I'm using Windows 10 Pro 64bits, and I can restart my system, but when I try to shut it down from Windows, it prepares itself to shut down, turns off my video card signal, but the system (fans, leds on motherboard) keeps running with no video. I already saw some posts related to similar issues, but all of them mentioning Windows 7 specific problematic services. Thoughts? Thanks in advance guys! Full System Specs: CPU - Intel Core i7-6700 Motherboard - ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme RAM - Corsair Dominator Platinum Series 16GB (4x4GB) GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti SC+ ACX 2.0+ Case - Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Silver Edition Storage - Kingston HyperX Savage 480GB PSU - Corsair AX1200i 80 PLUS Platinum Here follows some CPU-Z screenshots.

Basically, the title. What actually causes the higher clock frequencies to cause CPU instability? And why does higher voltage rectify this problem?