GPU Crashing after overclocking CPU | Desperatly need help!

JamezL · Jul 5, 2013

Hey everyone,

I'm new to these forums but have been a reader of the excellent guides you guys post for various things, so i thought this would be the perfect place to ask my frustrating question.

I have built a gaming rig, based roughly off one of the guides on here, which includes:

Intel Core i5 3570K Unlocked 4-Core 3rd Gen Processor
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB Video Card
Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB DDR3 RAM
ASUS P8Z77-M Motherboard
Thermaltake TR2 Bronze 600W TR-600PCAU Power Supply
Thermaltake Frio Universal CPU Cooler

Let me first start by saying that this has been an excellent gaming rig on a medium budget! Have been running it stock since March this year and everything has been going swimmingly.

Then i decide to kick things up a notch and overclock my CPU (Which was what i intended to do with this build from the beginning)

So i get my overclock running at a stable 4.5ghz. Stress tested using Furmark and Prime95 running at the same time. Temps are getting no where near the average stopping point of 70-80C.

So i reached my goal and decided to go back to playing BF3 and Skyrim.

No more than 5 minutes into Battlefield and i get a red screen crash and sound-loop.

After digging round through countless forums and youtube videos i still can't get this damn crash to go away.

It either crashes to said crash, or gives me a "game has stopped responding" error.

I have done everything from flashing the CPU's BIOS to changing CCC and in game settings, to updating drivers, but i can't get the damn thing stable while playing games.

I'm pretty new to overclocking still just to let you know and i'm at my wits end now

Please, I need help big time!

Sorry if this was "TL

R" but i thought it was best to give you as much detail as possible.

Thanks in advance.

MEMOFLEX · Jul 5, 2013

Have you changed the pci-e frequency at all in your overclock?

unksol · Jul 5, 2013

How long did you run prime 95? It needs to be several hours at least. You're checking to see that its stable, not just the temps. In any case your overclock is unstable. Increase the voltage or decrease the frequency

Roland Of Gilead · Jul 5, 2013

JamezL :

Both unksol, and memoflex have made valid points.

Regarding your OC. Did you just bump the multiplier up? Or did you also use BCLK to get extra out of it. If so, increasing BCLK can also have the effect of raising the PCIe frequency above 100, which can then overclock your card, and can lead to problems, and if pushed to far can fry the card, and other hardware parts.

Again, with your CPU OC: I normally stress test over night, and leave it running upward of 8 hours to ensure stability. Pain the neck I know, but better it being stable than not, and having problems further down the line trying to trouble shoot.

BF3 is notorious for crashing with OC components, don't' ask me why (prob bad coding or something) but it's something widely reported on forums. My 560ti is a great little over clocker, but even putting 50mhz on the core and mem caused BF3 to crash very frequently. So for that game I set up a profile to keep the card at stock, and since then no more problems.

With your system though, you have no need to overclock. Your CPU is definitely not holding back the GPU, so OC your system is only gonna get a few extra FPS, not some kind of massive leap in performance.

MEMOFLEX · Jul 5, 2013

Roland Of Gilead :

Overclocking is very rarely a hit the bullseye on the first attempt process, at least not in my experience and despite your overclock seeming stable it seems that it isn't. As both unskol and keith12 said the longer periods of stress testing are really the best way to test system stability at various overclocks. I have always tested for 5+ hours depending on time available and although it seems a long process the rewards of finding a stable system far outweigh the potential issues that can be thrown up by not doing enough or assuming everything is ok. If it will run at 100% for these longer runs you should be fine for everything you need to do, especially gaming and general computing as even video encoding and rendering software that would put as much strain on the cpu as the tests.

I would personally dial your overclock back to stock speeds, run your games and make sure they work at this setting. If everything is ok do a couple of benchmarks and make a note. If you want to overclock which you don't really need to but overclocking is sometimes more of a hobby than a necessity, certainly for myself at times, then slowly go up in increments and test at each stage. Not only through a stress test with prime95 / intelBurn test / Lynx but also in your games with a benchmark recording. By doing this you will get a better idea not only of where a 'sweet spot' will be in terms of your processors speed (as they all overclock differently as well as motherboard factors, cooling etc) whilst also having references to your gaming benchmarks at the corresponding speeds to see if you have any increase in fps / general performance. If there is little or no difference you can decide where you would like to keep your overclock.

Don't forget though that it is not always as simple as just raising multipliers and BCLK, as voltages will start to come into play as well. Getting these right is quite often the key to a stable overclock and whilst wanting to keep them as low as possible sometimes you have to give it what it needs (keeping in within stated limits).

I haven't tried overclocking any of the sandy bridge, ivy bridge, haswell series chips as I am still using an overclocked i7 930 which is still a great little chip but have had this running at 4.2ghz for 3 years now without an issue. It was a long winded process tweaking miniscule voltage amounts and then retesting but for what took me probably a week or so resulted in never having to touch it again till this day which in my opinion is worth it. My point is that if you want to overclock your cpu then take the time and do it properly even with one of the many guides to overclocking it on the internet (try the stickies in overclocking). If you don't or can't be bothered, which is understandable, then leave your chip at stock and be issue free (hopefully) as its a good chip which at stock is probably faster than mine by a fair margin

......and you can always save the overclocking for when you need it.

JamezL · Jul 5, 2013

Thank you all for posting so diligently and in such detail! I know what you mean about it being a "want" rather than a "need" but it's been a really fun process and I've been learning a lot more about the ins and outs as a slowly go along.

I'll give you guys some more detail into my process, as I overclocked it over the space of 2 weeks, taking my time and stress testing the system overnight and during the day while I was at work. Not one crash happened all week due to stess testing (would have been running 15hrs+ each time).

I wasn't touching the PCIE Frequency at all, that stayed at 100 the entire time. I only slowly increased the multiplier by 1 at a time. The only time I found I needed a voltage increase because of a blue screen CPU crash on boot was round the 4.1/4.2ghz (round abouts) so I changed the offset voltage to 0.010 (increasing by 0.005 at a time). Was monitoring the entire thing using AIDA tools while I stress tested etc and the voltages were never getting above 1.35. So this process was smooth sailing all the way up to 4.5ghz on a 45 multiplier – with the long stress tests in between.

I also set my LLC to high/ultra high and read it was okay to have C1 and C3 disabled. I also made sure that my graphics display option was set to PCIE only so the igpu wouldn't interfere. Just trying to remember what else I did. That's probably enough info for now. Oh and yes the computer runs great stock with no problems with the games, this was just me wanting to get to know overclocking and my computer better.

Thanks again for all the responses!

MEMOFLEX · Jul 5, 2013

JamezL :

Thank you all for posting so diligently and in such detail! I know what you mean about it being a "want" rather than a "need" but it's been a really fun process and I've been learning a lot more about the ins and outs as a slowly go along.

I'll give you guys some more detail into my process, as I overclocked it over the space of 2 weeks, taking my time and stress testing the system overnight and during the day while I was at work. Not one crash happened all week due to stess testing (would have been running 15hrs+ each time).

I wasn't touching the PCIE Frequency at all, that stayed at 100 the entire time. I only slowly increased the multiplier by 1 at a time. The only time I found I needed a voltage increase because of a blue screen CPU crash on boot was round the 4.1/4.2ghz (round abouts) so I changed the offset voltage to 0.010 (increasing by 0.005 at a time). Was monitoring the entire thing using AIDA tools while I stress tested etc and the voltages were never getting above 1.35. So this process was smooth sailing all the way up to 4.5ghz on a 45 multiplier – with the long stress tests in between.

I also set my LLC to high/ultra high and read it was okay to have C1 and C3 disabled. I also made sure that my graphics display option was set to PCIE only so the igpu wouldn't interfere. Just trying to remember what else I did. That's probably enough info for now. Oh and yes the computer runs great stock with no problems with the games, this was just me wanting to get to know overclocking and my computer better.

Thanks again for all the responses!

OK matey well you are doing the right thing anyway. Does this happen at any overclock or just at the 4.5ghz?

JamezL · Jul 5, 2013

Hey memo, this is exactly what happens to my PC: http://youtu.be/pJG3NIOK-70

This happens with any overclock of my CPU bar stock

that's why I'm scratching my head!

Edit: although mine either: 1. crashes to a violent red screen /w sound loop and then it restarts my PC 2. quits the game safety telling me that it has stopped responding or 3. Crashes to a direct X error which ill get more info about for you guys when it happens again.

MEMOFLEX · Jul 5, 2013

JamezL :

Yeah it is a head scrathcher but we will soldier on

Quick question before i start writing a memoir but does the crash happen on all games or just certain ones?

Either way here we go :

We know that at stock everything works fine so although we cant count out defective components I would start by focusing on the items that are directly affected by the overclocking process. So we have the CPU, RAM, GPU and not yet talked about the PSU. The motherboard technically comes into this but lets come to this after trying individual components. Now I would run all of these tests at stock, again to make sure everything is rosy, but run them again if no problems occur as we start to systematically build the overclock.

PSU:
You mentioned in your original post that you have used both prime95 and furmark at the same time. Is that correct? The reason I ask is related to the PSU and the stress it may be put under. When running prime95 we are not stressing the gfx but when playing games I would expect your power requirements to increase and if this was the case then once even a moderate overclock is attempted then the requirements of the whole system (cpu/ram/hdd/gfx/motherboard) is at a higher load than during prime. I have heard mixed things about the Thermaltake PSU's although not from personal experience and from issues posted here or elsewhere. This could not be an issue but I don't think it should be overlooked. However a PSU is not normally something that you have lying around to swap out and is a hassle so not easy to test.

RAM:
Load up a bootable version of memtest and run this to check for errors. This again is not a definitive test but at least gives us the knowledge that it has passed or hasn't.

CPU:
The primary component that is being overclocked but has passed stress testing at overlocked speeds so may not be the problem but still keep an eye on temps etc and cannot be discounted completely.

GFX:
Now this is puzzling. When you have overclocked can you run something like the Heaven \ Valley benchmark and complete? This relates back to my question earlier regarding do all games or just some crash. If all games crash and it won't pass a valley test then we can rule out software error.

That is a lot of possibles and no definites but I have no problem about trying to work through this bud. Keep it going and lets try and get to the bottom of this.

Ball ache? yes. Necessary to resolve the problem.? definitely

JamezL · Jul 6, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

Haha indeed! Still want to soldier on with this OC build

I set everything back to stock, and I'm going to put it through its paces playing BF3 for a couple of hours then when I go out ill run the heaven / valley test you speak of. Haven't heard of them myself but I'll look them up. Ad yes that's correct, I ran both furmark and prime95 at the same time.

In regards to the PSU, my friend who pointed me in the right direction for the build did a power consumption calculation and my build fell well within the 600w mark.

I not sure about all games, but I know I've been playing BF3 and Skyrim both in Ultra (which both out a heavy strain on the system) completely fine on stock, it's only until I OC the CPU to anything does the games give me a crash with sound loop.

My mate and I are playing BF3 on stock as I type this so will report back if any crashes occur.

Thank you again for your posts!!

MEMOFLEX · Jul 6, 2013

JamezL :

MEMOFLEX :

Haha indeed! Still want to soldier on with this OC build

I set everything back to stock, and I'm going to put it through its paces playing BF3 for a couple of hours then when I go out ill run the heaven / valley test you speak of. Haven't heard of them myself but I'll look them up. Ad yes that's correct, I ran both furmark and prime95 at the same time.

In regards to the PSU, my friend who pointed me in the right direction for the build did a power consumption calculation and my build fell well within the 600w mark.

I not sure about all games, but I know I've been playing BF3 and Skyrim both in Ultra (which both out a heavy strain on the system) completely fine on stock, it's only until I OC the CPU to anything does the games give me a crash with sound loop.

My mate and I are playing BF3 on stock as I type this so will report back if any crashes occur.

Thank you again for your posts!!

B

No worries buddy. Do your tests and come back with results.

JamezL · Jul 7, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

JamezL :

MEMOFLEX :

Haha indeed! Still want to soldier on with this OC build

I set everything back to stock, and I'm going to put it through its paces playing BF3 for a couple of hours then when I go out ill run the heaven / valley test you speak of. Haven't heard of them myself but I'll look them up. Ad yes that's correct, I ran both furmark and prime95 at the same time.

In regards to the PSU, my friend who pointed me in the right direction for the build did a power consumption calculation and my build fell well within the 600w mark.

I not sure about all games, but I know I've been playing BF3 and Skyrim both in Ultra (which both out a heavy strain on the system) completely fine on stock, it's only until I OC the CPU to anything does the games give me a crash with sound loop.

My mate and I are playing BF3 on stock as I type this so will report back if any crashes occur.

Thank you again for your posts!!

B

No worries buddy. Do your tests and come back with results.

Hi Memo!

Hope you had a good weekend

So i put my PC through its paces as you said. Had a good solid couple of sessions playing BF all on stock settings, not one crash to be seen. Then when it came to going to bed, i left the heaven / valley stress test run over night. Woke up each morning with it still running and no crashes.

Then no doubt, if i even bump my CPU OC up a little, i'll start to get those crashes again.

MEMOFLEX · Jul 8, 2013

Hello buddy.

Sorry to take so long getting back to you. Had some good weather and it doesn't happen very often so had to grab the opportunity while i can

In terms of the computer its good to know that at stock everything is fine but the whole overclocked crashing is annoying. The fact that it only crashes in games is puzzling as well as you would expect furmark / heaven / valley benchmarks to prime95 to crash the computer.

I would try a small overclock (one that normally crashes battlefield / skyrim) and try the heaven / valley test again. Just want to give another point of reference.

JamezL · Jul 9, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

Where in the world are you? I'm in Sydney and its cold and raining!

Just to make sure, I left my computer running heaven all day on stock while I was at work. Came back and it's still running smooth. Just over clocked my CPU from stock 3.8 to 3.9ghz and currently running heaven again. Pretty sure any overclock crashes Skyrim and battlefield so will see how this test pans out. The system is reading the GPU going flat out at 99% (which is even more harsh then what BF3 does to it (usually jumping up and down between 60-99) but I'm almost certain if I go stop it soon and start up BF it will give me the weird red screen crash with sound loop no more than 5mins in. I'll report back again after I confirm this.

Update: so I ramped up my CPU to something that I knew I'd get a crash on, 4.5ghz, which was fine running furmark and prime 95 overnight when I first did my OC testing. But this time I got a "unigine stopped responding" error in heaven after a couple of mins (temps and everything was normal). Just down clocked to 4.3 and going to test again.

Update: forgot to set my LLC from auto to ultra high (there is extreme but I had it stable on ultra high) so have set the CPU multiplier back to 45 and running heaven again. Not seeing that "not responding" error yet.

MEMOFLEX · Jul 9, 2013

JamezL :

Haha I am in England so know all about it being cold and raining as that is our default climate. We only get about a week of summer so has to be grabbed with both hands.

In regards to the heaven / valley benchmarks you will quite often see 100% GPU usage which was why I suggested it as it will put your GPU under more strain than your games so if it makes it through it fine then you would expect the GPU to be ok. Although not guaranteed.

Keep testing with the new overclock and see what happens.

I am going to have a good scour around and see what I can come up with in terms of getting this sorted as it is puzzling. Was hoping for a few more people to jump in on this thread to help out but maybe it has just taken them this long to read through it

Will post back later

JamezL · Jul 9, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

JamezL :

Haha I am in England so know all about it being cold and raining as that is our default climate. We only get about a week of summer so has to be grabbed with both hands.

In regards to the heaven / valley benchmarks you will quite often see 100% GPU usage which was why I suggested it as it will put your GPU under more strain than your games so if it makes it through it fine then you would expect the GPU to be ok. Although not guaranteed.

Keep testing with the new overclock and see what happens.

I am going to have a good scour around and see what I can come up with in terms of getting this sorted as it is puzzling. Was hoping for a few more people to jump in on this thread to help out but maybe it has just taken them this long to read through it

Will post back later

Okay I have come to the conclusion (could be premature) that my PC is not built on logic, and is a box of nothing but black magic. It has been running smoothly on 4.5ghz OC without a crash... Usually it crashes within the first 10 mins!

The only thing I can remember doing differently this time was flash my CPU's BIOS to the most update version. Besides that I followed the same OC process as I did before. I am so puzzled.

Going to let this play out a bit longer before I can say its solved though. But do you think it's possible that the BIOS wasn't reading the drivers correctly until updated? Dunno if that makes any sense.. Still a noob. Can't think of anything else logical.

Roland Of Gilead · Jul 9, 2013

JamezL :

MEMOFLEX :

Okay I have come to the conclusion (could be premature) that my PC is not built on logic, and is a box of nothing but black magic. It has been running smoothly on 4.5ghz OC without a crash... Usually it crashes within the first 10 mins!

The only thing I can remember doing differently this time was flash my CPU's BIOS to the most update version. Besides that I followed the same OC process as I did before. I am so puzzled.

Going to let this play out a bit longer before I can say its solved though. But do you think it's possible that the BIOS wasn't reading the drivers correctly until updated? Dunno if that makes any sense.. Still a noob. Can't think of anything else logical.

it's totally possible that the BIOS update has fixed something. Memory incompatibility, Voltages etc. I have a P5NE-sli mobo, and anything baove my 0608 bios causes major problems for me. 0608 is steady as a rock. 0803 wont even allow my pc to boot at stock!! so, yes, bios is important.
Saying that, it's a good rule of thumb, not to upgrade bios, if you have no problems. If it aint broke don't fix it.

Anyway, well done on your fix. Hope you have happy bug free gaming

MEMOFLEX · Jul 9, 2013

Roland Of Gilead :

JamezL :

MEMOFLEX :

Okay I have come to the conclusion (could be premature) that my PC is not built on logic, and is a box of nothing but black magic. It has been running smoothly on 4.5ghz OC without a crash... Usually it crashes within the first 10 mins!

The only thing I can remember doing differently this time was flash my CPU's BIOS to the most update version. Besides that I followed the same OC process as I did before. I am so puzzled.

Going to let this play out a bit longer before I can say its solved though. But do you think it's possible that the BIOS wasn't reading the drivers correctly until updated? Dunno if that makes any sense.. Still a noob. Can't think of anything else logical.

it's totally possible that the BIOS update has fixed something. Memory incompatibility, Voltages etc. I have a P5NE-sli mobo, and anything baove my 0608 bios causes major problems for me. 0608 is steady as a rock. 0803 wont even allow my pc to boot at stock!! so, yes, bios is important.
Saying that, it's a good rule of thumb, not to upgrade bios, if you have no problems. If it aint broke don't fix it.

Anyway, well done on your fix. Hope you have happy bug free gaming

As Keith says a BIOS update can change the stability of components etc and at the same time can make things worse or unstable. If everything seems rosy now then try your games and if everything seems ok you might be good to go. If you have stress tested it again as well then I would guess that it has fixed it and if so thank god

Fingers crossed if so matey and hope its fixed

JamezL · Jul 9, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

Roland Of Gilead :

As Keith says a BIOS update can change the stability of components etc and at the same time can make things worse or unstable. If everything seems rosy now then try your games and if everything seems ok you might be good to go. If you have stress tested it again as well then I would guess that it has fixed it and if so thank god

Fingers crossed if so matey and hope its fixed

I left the Heaven benchmark running all night last night on a 4.6 OC (Voltages sitting at about 1.33-1.34) and woke up in the morning and it was still going... i am so baffled. Left it running, as i'm at work now, just to stress it out as much as i can.

What i adjusted in my OC settings this time:

Updated CPU BIOS
CPU multiplier: 46
Offset voltage: 0.060 (Gives me the stable 1.33-1.34 volts for 4.6ghz)
Adaptive Thermal Monitoring: Disabled
C1, C3 power reports: Disabled
Load Line Calibration: Ultra High (second from highest)

Swear that's all i changed. Time will tell though. I'm so afraid to do anything with my PC because the problem might come back... I bet if i speak bad about my PC while in the same room, think negative thoughts around it, tell it it wasn't loved by its mother, its going to just not work for me again.

Thanks for that info to Keith, i was highly warned about the problems of flashing the CPU's BIOS (as it could have turned my motherboard into an expensive brick), but i just didn't know what else to do

It was fine running everything at stock, but its just when i OC'd that it didn't want to play ball (and that was sorta the reason why i bought this build, to OC)

Thank you all for your help! And ty Memo for talking me through the whole process. I'll report back again after i am 100% certain this is fixed.

MEMOFLEX · Jul 9, 2013

No worries buddy. Hope that its all good now. I wouldn't have recommended a BIOS update until exhausting all other issues but if it has worked then happy days. I have updated mine in the past when i added additional memory, and it improved in lowering my voltages but in terms of the issues you were having it is not something I would have suggested at this stage. Fair play for technically resolving this issue yourself (fingers crossed.

Lets hope you don't bum out half way through a killing spree

JamezL · Jul 9, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

^THIS!

Thanks Memo! Absolute champion.

JamezL · Jul 22, 2013

MEMOFLEX :

God damn it... just as I thought we had miraculously fixed it, it crashes again. Same thing. Red screen with sound loop. What to do... what to do...

Roland Of Gilead · Jul 22, 2013

JamezL :

As much fun as overclocking can be, it can be immensely frustrating at the same time. It's important when overclocking to record your data, so you have a set of base variables to work with. Your last stable overclock for example. Or else just start the whole process from scratch. Ensuring as best you can, stability at all points along the way. Even then when you have things stable, you can still get times when a game may still crash the PC. Not necessarily down to the OC, maybe the game is poorly coded. Its hard to be 100% stable given all the components and variables one has to manage when overclocking. But keep trying, and best of luck. Perseverance is the key

JamezL · Jul 22, 2013

Roland Of Gilead :

JamezL :

As much fun as overclocking can be, it can be immensely frustrating at the same time. It's important when overclocking to record your data, so you have a set of base variables to work with. Your last stable overclock for example. Or else just start the whole process from scratch. Ensuring as best you can, stability at all points along the way. Even then when you have things stable, you can still get times when a game may still crash the PC. Not necessarily down to the OC, maybe the game is poorly coded. Its hard to be 100% stable given all the components and variables one has to manage when overclocking. But keep trying, and best of luck. Perseverance is the key

Thanks for the moral booster keith

It is frustrating at times, but it is also so damn addictive and fun!

I'll keep on keeping on and see what eventuates.

GPU Crashing after overclocking CPU | Desperatly need help!

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