Weird behavior with 5950x overclock?

[hormelspam23]

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. 

[RONOTHAN##]

There's a couple things of note here

1. Ryzen does not scale past about 1.3-1.35V on VCore. It just gets way to hot. 
2. Ryzen overclocking really doesn't make any sense, since you lose out on single core performance and only gain maybe 100-200MHz. PBO gets you 98% of the way there. Focus on memory overclocking instead.
3. Do not use those auto OC programs, they just cause issues (see what you're experience). If you aren't comfortable enough to overclock manually, just don't do it at all.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I just enabled PBO in the BIOS and called it a day.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Focus on memory overclocking instead.

And with 4000 cl16 prob b die ram you do have good rams (albeit terrible config cause 4 sticks = rip imc)

 

Crank your freq as high as fclk will go, there are some volts that can help with fclk. Then lower timings, aim for cl14 minimum but lower is better, 1.5v max if you are not running a fan over your rams, upto 1.7v max if you are running a fan over your rams (though pref stay ~1.6v due to some b die kits being specced at 1.6v), 2.05v and above = prob insta death for ram so dont be stupid and set 2v+

 

 

Static oc is pointless on ryzen unless you are running <60c all times at volts upto 1.5v, pbo does its job very well boosting the cpu but you can tweak it with curve optimizer so you can run lower volt for lower heat output

[hormelspam23]

3 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

There's a couple things of note here

1. Ryzen does not scale past about 1.3-1.35V on VCore. It just gets way to hot. 
2. Ryzen overclocking really doesn't make any sense, since you lose out on single core performance and only gain maybe 100-200MHz. PBO gets you 98% of the way there. Focus on memory overclocking instead.
3. Do not use those auto OC programs, they just cause issues (see what you're experience). If you aren't comfortable enough to overclock manually, just don't do it at all.

1) Just out of curiosity, why did it auto set to that vcore then? Also, why did it allow itself to go past 90 C without throttling itself?

2) Majority of my use-case with my CPU is muticore, I only game periodically. A 4.5 GHz all-core OC gives me about an 18% increase over the stock 3.4 GHz in Cinebench R20, and I think that's worth it. 

3) The auto OC was fine up for a long time up until recently, any reason why it would have this instability recently after such a stable streak?

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

5 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

1) Just out of curiosity, why did it auto set to that vcore then? Also, why did it allow itself to go past 90 C without throttling itself?

See point 3. Also manual OC on Ryzen raises the thermal limits from 95C to 115C.

 

6 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

2) Majority of my use-case with my CPU is muticore, I only game periodically. A 4.5 GHz all-core OC gives me about an 18% increase over the stock 3.4 GHz in Cinebench R20, and I think that's worth it. 

Enable PBO, that will get you to 4.4GHz easy, and you won't have to worry about that terrible auto OC program

 

6 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

3) The auto OC was fine up for a long time up until recently, any reason why it would have this instability recently after such a stable streak?

It's possible your CPU just degraded. Those auto OC programs are usually thrown in last minute, just throw way too much voltage at the chips, and call it a day. 

[hormelspam23]

9 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

And with 4000 cl16 prob b die ram you do have good rams (albeit terrible config cause 4 sticks = rip imc)

 

Crank your freq as high as fclk will go, there are some volts that can help with fclk. Then lower timings, aim for cl14 minimum but lower is better, 1.5v max if you are not running a fan over your rams, upto 1.7v max if you are running a fan over your rams (though pref stay ~1.6v due to some b die kits being specced at 1.6v), 2.05v and above = prob insta death for ram so dont be stupid and set 2v+

 

 

Static oc is pointless on ryzen unless you are running <60c all times at volts upto 1.5v, pbo does its job very well boosting the cpu but you can tweak it with curve optimizer so you can run lower volt for lower heat output

I'm not that familiar with ram overclocking (though I've always wanted to get into it), all I did was enable DOCP and ran it at the fastest speed it could (3733 MHz, would not post on 4000 3866 or 3800). Would doing everything that you listed help with getting it to 4000 MHz?

 

And yes I knew that 2x16 would've been a better choice than 4x8 in terms of performance, but I liked the aesthetic of having all four ram slots filled though 

[hormelspam23]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It's possible your CPU just degraded. Those auto OC programs are usually thrown in last minute, just throw way too much voltage at the chips, and call it a day. 

Auto OC set the voltage to 1.250 V, isn't that lower than stock?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, hormelspam23 said:

I'm not that familiar with ram overclocking (though I've always wanted to get into it), all I did was enable DOCP and ran it at the fastest speed it could (3733 MHz, would not post on 4000 3866 or 3800). Would doing everything that you listed help with getting it to 4000 MHz?

 

And yes I knew that 2x16 would've been a better choice than 4x8 in terms of performance, but I liked the aesthetic of having all four ram slots filled though 

Just watch some buildzoid 32gb b die ocing vids which is pretty much all the info you need

 

Do not be overly conservative with volt cause that ruins oc, esp on b die where volt matters alot cause b die scales very well with volt, so pref run ~1.7v but if you wanna stay safe then ~1.6v w fan

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

Would doing everything that you listed help with getting it to 4000 MHz?

No. The Crosshair VIII has a fairly weak memory topology and getting 4 DIMMs above 3733MHz is very difficult. If you play around with ProcODT and some of the other termination resistances, maybe, but it's not worth the effort for 66MHz faster.

 

3 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

Auto OC set the voltage to 1.250 V, isn't that lower than stock?

Yes and no. At idle, Ryzen chips run at 1.4-1.5V. Under full load, however, they run at much closer to 1.2V

[Somerandomtechyboi]

34 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The Crosshair VIII has a fairly weak memory topology and getting 4 DIMMs above 3733MHz is very difficult

Atleast a meme tier xoc board should have good ram oc capability but apparently not, rip op you wasted your money on a complete paperweight, its not even good at ram oc ffs and these are like 300$+ boards, apparently even top tier is trash xD

 

If you cant get past 3733 i guess you can try aiming for cl13/12

[hormelspam23]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

No. The Crosshair VIII has a fairly weak memory topology and getting 4 DIMMs above 3733MHz is very difficult. If you play around with ProcODT and some of the other termination resistances, maybe, but it's not worth the effort for 66MHz faster.

Atleast a meme tier xoc board should have good ram oc capability but apparently not, rip op you wasted your money on a complete paperweight, its not even good at ram oc ffs and these are like 300$+ boards, apparently even top tier is trash xD

Damn and I thought the Crosshair VIII was a high-end good quality board from its popularity and what I've read from my reviews. damn

[RONOTHAN##]

7 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

Damn and I thought the Crosshair VIII was a high-end good quality board from its popularity and what I've read from my reviews. damn

It's more just the highest end ASUS board, and ASUS does have the reputation of having the best motherboards around (whether or not that's true is another story). ASUS's BIOS layout is the one that most tend to like the most, and plus they seed a lot of products to reviewers, so people tend to associate them with really good motherboards.

 

I'm not saying they make bad stuff, the Crosshair VIII is a very strong board if you ever plan on taking a CPU on LN2, but the memory topology design is the worst one from all the motherboard manufacturers, and it was never redesigned since the introduction of X570/B550. It's not worth swapping the motherboard out because of it, realistically the performance difference, even in very memory intensive workloads, between 3733MHz CL16 and 3800MHz CL14 is 2% at most. You'll get a bigger performance improvement by tuning your subtimings more (they sometimes have a bigger impact on performance than your primary timings)

[Somerandomtechyboi]

45 minutes ago, hormelspam23 said:

Damn and I thought the Crosshair VIII was a high-end good quality board from its popularity and what I've read from my reviews. damn

Same

 

i would have atleast also expected decent ram oc but oh well another reason to bash this sad excuse of meme hardware thatll be crushed by x570 dark or unify x anyways aka real overclocking boards and not dressed up wannabe boards

 

34 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It's more just the highest end ASUS board, and ASUS does have the reputation of having the best motherboards around (whether or not that's true is another story).

No wonder why the get away with stupidly overpriced meme hardware, though surprisingly enough there is some good deals on lowend asus boards so now its inverse and the top tier is trash or something? I mean crosshair will pale in comparison to a real oc board like x570 dark but to be fair thats a proper hardcore oc board while the crosshair is just fancy meme tier hardware that can xoc as a side bonus

[RONOTHAN##]

4 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Same

 

i would have atleast also expected decent ram oc but oh well another reason to bash this sad excuse of meme hardware thatll be crushed by x570 dark or unify x anyways aka real overclocking boards and not dressed up wannabe boards

 

No wonder why the get away with stupidly overpriced meme hardware, though surprisingly enough there is some good deals on lowend asus boards so now its inverse and the top tier is trash or something? I mean crosshair will pale in comparison to a real oc board like x570 dark but to be fair thats a proper hardcore oc board while the crosshair is just fancy meme tier hardware that can xoc as a side bonus

I'd argue there really aren't any Gen 4 AM4 XOC boards. The dark is OK, a true XOC board will use the B550 chipset since it's not limited in how BCLK works. The only somewhat XOC B550 board out there is the Unify-X, but that's missing IMO very important features for XOC like dual BIOS. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

7 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I'd argue there really aren't any Gen 4 AM4 XOC boards. The dark is OK, a true XOC board will use the B550 chipset since it's not limited in how BCLK works. The only somewhat XOC B550 board out there is the Unify-X, but that's missing IMO very important features for XOC like dual BIOS. 

Well the previous x470 crosshair vii can do 200bclk apparently so would that be any better? Still glorified meme hardware for all i know but atleast it did 200 bclk

[freeagent]

2 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Well the previous x470 crosshair vii can do 200bclk apparently so would that be any better? Still glorified meme hardware for all i know but atleast it did 200 bclk

Dude, some of these guys are brand new to overclocking.. you can’t get all hardcore with them telling them 1.7v is ok to daily with their uber silent systems with minimal airflow. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, freeagent said:

Dude, some of these guys are brand new to overclocking.. you can’t get all hardcore with them telling them 1.7v is ok to daily with their uber silent systems with minimal airflow. 

I did specify 1.7v if theres a fan over the rams or max 1.5v if theres no fan over the rams

 

Lmao i can run my 1x3 1066 cl6 extreem dark to 1520 7-9-6-10 at 2.34v and my generic samsung rev f 1gb ddr3 to 2200 9-11-11-24 2v full stable all w/o fan too, If they dont wanna use their rams then thats fine, im just telling what kind of volt to run for max performance and 1.7v is fine for samasung b die (though 1.6v is guaranteed safe due to some kits specced for 1.6v). Overly conservative with volt = rip overclock, esp on rams where they run cool anyways so even somewhat high volt will take awhile to degrade them

[Guest]

4 hours ago, hormelspam23 said:

Damn and I thought the Crosshair VIII was a high-end good quality board from its popularity and what I've read from my reviews. damn

Try and disable c-states and in memory timings menu, disable power down mode and see if that helps your hang ups.

 

The memory controller geared for speed is 2x8gb configuration by the way. The issue is the cpu, not the board.

 

Anyhow good luck. Oh and don't use 1.7v on anything. That was an absurd suggestion.

[freeagent]

44 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

I did specify 1.7v if theres a fan over the rams or max 1.5v if theres no fan over the rams

 

Lmao i can run my 1x3 1066 cl6 extreem dark to 1520 7-9-6-10 at 2.34v and my generic samsung rev f 1gb ddr3 to 2200 9-11-11-24 2v full stable all w/o fan too, If they dont wanna use their rams then thats fine, im just telling what kind of volt to run for max performance and 1.7v is fine for samasung b die (though 1.6v is guaranteed safe due to some kits specced for 1.6v). Overly conservative with volt = rip overclock, esp on rams where they run cool anyways so even somewhat high volt will take awhile to degrade them

You are confusing hardcore benching with real life.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, freeagent said:

You are confusing hardcore benching with real life.

If i was talking benching volt then ddr2 to 2.6-2.9v, ddr3 to ~2.4v, and ddr4 to 2.05v

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

If i was talking benching volt then ddr2 to 2.6-2.9v, ddr3 to ~2.4v, and ddr4 to 2.05v

2.0v ddr4 requires chilling. 1.9v is pushing ambient. 

 

And that voltage for DDR4 would have you running CL12 at 4000mhz, which nobody, and I mean nobody in this forum has accomplished, not even Linus (at least I've yet to witness this kind of OC from linus...) and requires more than just memory voltage to accomplish.

 

DdR2 and DdR3 isn't even a thing anymore.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, Guest 5150 said:

And that voltage for DDR4 would have you running CL12 at 4000mhz, which nobody, and I mean nobody in this forum has accomplished, not even Linus

How about ddr2 1520 7-9-6-10? Has anyone ever come close to that or do i have the highest freq oc for ddr2 on this forum? Im running 1x3 btw so i could go higher with just 1 stick but i dont really care about that, i actually want another stick so i have high clocking 4gb ddr2

 

Ive actually never given thought to my ram oc and how well it stacks up against most ddr2 ocs, 1520 is high but 7-9-6-10 is pretty garb. It is ambient but i may consider making a tec cooler for rams in the future

 

I run a p5q so i do have one of the best ram oc boards on 775 though it sucks ass with fsb

 

 

If noone has acheived that speed then maybe if i come across an opportunity to get a ddr4 platform and a good bin of b die for cheap ill try for 4000 cl12 xD

 

2v doesnt neccesarily require a chiller but i get that at some point volt just stops scaling and you need to chill the rams to go any further

[freeagent]

3 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

chill the rams to go any further

You forgot about Maxmem. You will need that..

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

How about ddr2 1520 7-9-6-10? Has anyone ever come close to that or do i have the highest freq oc for ddr2 on this forum? Im running 1x3 btw so i could go higher with just 1 stick but i dont really care about that, i actually want another stick so i have high clocking 4gb ddr2

 

Ive actually never given thought to my ram oc and how well it stacks up against most ddr2 ocs, 1520 is high but 7-9-6-10 is pretty garb. It is ambient but i may consider making a tec cooler for rams in the future

 

I run a p5q so i do have one of the best ram oc boards on 775 though it sucks ass with fsb

 

 

If noone has acheived that speed then maybe if i come across an opportunity to get a ddr4 platform and a good bin of b die for cheap ill try for 4000 cl12 xD

 

2v doesnt neccesarily require a chiller but i get that at some point volt just stops scaling and you need to chill the rams to go any further

dDr2 at 1520 CL7 ? 

 

1067mhz DDr2 is fast.

 

I think you meant DDr3.

 

Which ddr3 2000mhz at CL6 would be the sought after number....