Overclocking Instability Issues D:

BradBoiii · January 2, 2015

I've had my rig for around 6 months now and I'm enjoying the experience I'm having on it... but I'm having over clocking difficulties.

I watch people on YouTube get some decent overclocks out of there hardware but mine is a different story and is soo demanding on my system compared to what I watch, everyone else does it with ease but my system doesn't. I don't even want to push my hardware to the limit, but I atleast want abit off a decent overclock.

I have a i7 4770k and a MSi Gaming Edition R9 290X and both off these don't seem to clock high compared to what I watch. I have had to leave them at the "out of the box overclock" with 4Gigs on my 4770k using MSi command Centre and 1040Mhz using MSi's gaming app. ATM I've bumped some things up, got my 4770k to 4.2Gigs but it saps power, I gradually upped my voltage due to instability and I refuse to go past 1.26v for such a little overclock, with the voltage on adaptive. CPU-Z Says my voltage is still going up to like 1.29v, I'm not stupid enough to know or I hope I'm not that if your system is unstable, give it more power in small increments until it becomes stable in my case because I'm not going for major overclocks. When I got my overclock I stress tested it with Intel's extreme Tuning Utility for 20 minutes and all seems fine but then when I'm gaming it just crashes.

It's similar with my GPU, Ive got the core clock at 1080Mhz and my memory speed at 1275Mhz and even this is unstable and Ive only turned it up a little, using MSi Afterburner. I've put the Power supply Dial to 25% extra power to the card and on Occasions I see the squares on my screen which signals I'm pushing the card to hard but I'm not.

Is there anything I can do?!?!?! I know there are lots of other factors that can affect it. It can't be temperature because it's always chilly in my room with good ambient temperature and my cooling on my CPU and in my case is good, with really good idle temperature at like 20c and under full load my system never goes over 60c at no given point. My Motherboard can't be a factor because its good for overclocking, an MSi Z97 GD-65 board. I also can't see it being my PSU Choking out or something because I've got an RM 750w Corsair one which are really good. All my components just seem to sap power for no reason.

It's still a good rig to use but it should be even better! I hope I'm not the unlucky person who got all the shit chips; because I understand that overclocking can vary but I hope not this much, can anyone help? Thanks for your time