Post-Overclocking Questions

[Origin Saint]

Hi guys,

Had to go to Microcenter yesterday to pick something up for work and couldn't help myself, so I bought a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo while I was there. I installed the bad boy last night (all hail low temps), and then decided since I went out of my way to get the 4690K, I might as well overclock it.

Never having overclocked before, it being 9PM on a work night and the fact that the motherboard I bought happens to have an auto-overclocking tool built into the BIOS, I decided that would be the best way to do it.

So I opened up AI Suite 3, and loaded up the 5-way Optimization and let it mess around with my frequencies and turn the PC off and on and so on, and eventually, it was all finished. I obtained a 4.5 GHz clock once it was all said and done, and the temperatures are still lower than they were before, even with the OC.

My questions are these:

1. When I go to Task Manager, it lists my CPU as running at 800MHz, but if I open CPU-Z it lists it at the 4.5GHz (as does AI Suite 3), and loading and attempting a few minutes in Fallout 4 caused no framerate issues or anything, so I believe it is actually running at the 4.5GHz, but for some reason Task Manager isn't able to see it? Any resolution here?
2. Whats the best way to stress the CPU for about 2-4 hours? CPU-Z? I'm not looking to stress it overnight or anything, just something to start when I get home today and let run for a while. I'm pretty positive it's stable, but I just want to check at least a little.

Thanks for the help in advance guys, it's much appreciated.

 

[johnb35]

Check bios for Intel's speedstep and disable it. Speedstep is what keeps the speed low until its really needed and then ramps its up. When overclocking, you should turn it off anyway.

 

[beers]

1) as stated, soeedstep
2) Intel burn test has been decent for me. Usually 2-4 hours is a bit excessive

 

[Origin Saint]

Check bios for Intel's speedstep and disable it. Speedstep is what keeps the speed low until its really needed and then ramps its up. When overclocking, you should turn it off anyway.

Thanks, I'll do that as soon as I get home. Any suggestions on stress testing? I know that at some point in the auto-overclock, AI Suite 3 told me that if I tried to use a 3rd party application for stress testing that I would need to manually set some setting, but I can't remember what that was.

 

[Origin Saint]

Intel burn test has been decent for me. Usually 2-4 hours is a bit excessive

I'll try that then. If that's a bit much, then how long should I do it?

 

[beers]

It's whatever you're comfortable with really. If it's a stable overclock then it should be fine for whatever duration you can envision.

I usually do a 5 min test when exploring new clocks and a bit longer (like 15m) if it's looking like it will be a decent 24/7 clock. For me personally that's netted decent results while avoiding hours of additional testing. It's rare that your PC will be under 100% load for hours under normal usage patterns.

 

[Origin Saint]

Ran Intel Burn Test twice on Maximum stress. No crashes, temperature peaked at about 98 C, and dropped to 43 C within 2 minutes of closing.

After going into the BIOS and disabling Intel SpeedStep, and checking Task Manager again, it's still doing the same thing. It displays the "maximum frequency" as 800 MHz still, but I did notice during the test that it seemed like the graph went off of the chart, above the "maximum" that it was saying there was. Once again, CPU-Z and AI Suite 3 both say I'm at the 4.5GHz, which I'm sure I'm really at.

Any other ideas? Thanks for the help so far guys.

 

[beers]

No crashes, temperature peaked at about 98 C

What kind of vcore voltage is it giving you? Probably too much.

 

[Origin Saint]

What kind of vcore voltage is it giving you? Probably too much.

According to CPU-Z, 1.247 V.

 

[beers]

Odd, that should have the upgraded TIM on it over standard haswell. What method did you use to paste the heatsink?

 

[Origin Saint]

Pea-size sphere, didn't see anything come out of the sides and it idled in BIOS at 21 C, so I figured it was likely fine.

 

[Jiniix]

The Task Manager is unreliable. It's seemingly random which of the speeds in your CPU it will list.
With my 2600K @ 4.4GHz (still with speedstep at 800MHz, 3400MHz and 4400MHz) it's shown 3.4GHz and 4.4GHz randomly throughout various reinstalls. Use CPU-Z always for accurate readings.
It varies a lot for how long people recommend stress testing. For me it's 24 hours to deem 100% stable. I've seen AMD CPUs fail on one core after 19 hours, being fixed with a 0.025v increase.
My favorite validation software: GPU-Z, CPU-Z, HWMonitor (just got a great update) and OCCT. Just used AIDA64 recently, also seems like a great piece of software - tho I'm not sure what will happen when trial runs out.

 

[Origin Saint]

I'll do some more testing tonight with some other tools as well just to be a little more sure. But when playing Fallout 4 on the same settings as before the new cooler and OC, it runs at 45 C max, where it used to be at around 75-80 C max. Games aren't a absolute guarantee of stability, but I'd say it's a fair indication at least for a mild peace of mind.

 

[Darren]

I'll do some more testing tonight with some other tools as well just to be a little more sure. But when playing Fallout 4 on the same settings as before the new cooler and OC, it runs at 45 C max, where it used to be at around 75-80 C max. Games aren't a absolute guarantee of stability, but I'd say it's a fair indication at least for a mild peace of mind.

At least for me, Fallout 4 doesn't use more than maybe 60 percent of my CPU at once and barely gets it warm. Normally it floats around 40-50 utilization.. It uses all 8 threads evenly, just doesn't stress any of them hard. Highest temps I've noticed with that are about 45oC while a CPU bench puts me in the low mid 50's. You should try something else for "game stability".

GTA V Online was a pretty good stablility benchmark for my 8320. Kept getting instability until I bumped it down enough. Any game that stresses all your threads well is important. Cities Skylines stressed it pretty good too.

In my experience auto overclocks seem pretty flaky and made weird changes. I prefer manual overclocking, especially since it's relatively easy.

 

[Origin Saint]

Well I went ahead and loaded back to the BIOS defaults. I'll look into manually overclocking sometime soon and try at it again.

 

[Origin Saint]

I noticed, that since I reset the BIOS to the defaults, a weird issue occurs. When I boot the computer, and log into Windows, the taskbar doesn't highlight any of the icons/shortcuts, and clicking on the system tray arrow reveals that none of my start-up programs are launching on start-up. When I right click on the desktop, the context menu opens, stops mid-way and stays transparent until I click on it, but won't actually do anything. The Start button menu does the same thing. However, if I click on one of the shortcuts in the taskbar, Google Chrome for instance, everything loads up as if I just logged in (i.e. Skype opens up, Raptr, GeForce Experience, etc...).

Is this something I did?

 

[Darren]

My MSI board has a QuickBoot option that also uses an actual program within Windows. It's in my startup files and enables me to press a button and return to BIOS. Maybe you've got something like that. Sounds like you're startup order hangs on something, potentially Chrome, and then once it actually starts, it does the rest. *Shrug*

 

[Okedokey]

98oC is way way too hot.

 

[Origin Saint]

98oC is way way too hot.

I'm fully aware of that.

So, to add to the issues I mentioned earlier, with the booting problems, they seem to have gotten worse.

I booted into safe mode and uninstalled Google Chrome, and now i can't get anything to start whatsoever outside of safe mode. I also deleted AI Suite 3. I'm installing CCleaner and Malwarebytes to check the system out, but at the moment I'm out of a computer for the most part. I also tried using the Windows 10 "Repair my startup" troubleshooting thing and it tells me that it was unable to repair anything; I still need to check the log files it created, provided I can reach them in safe mode.

If anyones got any ideas on how to help, that'd be great.

 

[Origin Saint]

Well. Ran CCleaner and Malwarebytes. Malwarebytes found nothing and CCleaner cleared something like 470 registry files. Left safe mode and everything seems to be working fine. I'll post again if anything goes awry again.