MSI Intel Extreme Tuning + i5-4690K = Instant blue screen

n00blet73

Honorable
Jun 4, 2015
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2
10,535
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Hello all.

I've had my new PC for a few months now and I've been wanting to try overclocking it. I was a tad hesitant to go poking around in the BIOS so when I heard about the Intel Extreme Tuning app I decided to give it a try.

As you can see from the above picture my cpu multiplier maxes out a 39. I decided to start real slow.

I opened the utility, went to basic tuning, clicked I agree. In all tutorials I've seen I've only seen a slider for "Processor Core Ratio" so I was surprised to see an additioanl slider for "Processor Cache Ratio".

The Core Ratio slider was set to 37x while the Cache ratio was at 39x.

Tipping my toe into the pool a nudged the Core Ration slider to 40x and hit "Apply"

Instant blue screen.

Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I go back into the utility upon reboot and this time moved both sliders to 40x and hit apply.

Victory dance.

I started messing around with the sliders. I think the last successful application was the Cache Ratio around 43x and the Core Ration around 45x. At this point I blue screened again and decided that mayhap I should reach out to those with more knowledge on this than I.

I've done some digging here on the forums and also sought advice from the Oracle Google but nothing seemed to specifically explain my situation.

Any insight? Do I have a bad chip? Am I flubbing something up?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Edit #1
So like the overtired goober that I am, I forgot to adjust the cpu voltage. I believe that is what caused the blue screens. When I went into the Advanced setting in the Extreme Tuning App and increased the core voltage from "default" things went much better.

I've now got a maximum multiplier of 45 and a core voltage of 1.230. I can probably lower the voltage some and will experiment with how far I can drop it before I experience instability again but right now temps under stress load are comfortably under 58C during stress test. I haven't run any extensive tests yet. I just used the stress test on the "Bench" tab of CPUZ.

Once that was all done, I booted into BIOS and checked to see that all the values I set in the software transcribed over. They had so yay for that.

I think I'll keep the 4.5 as my max. I tried kicking it up to 4.7 while in BIOS and while it was stable at 4.6 she reacted badly booting out of 47. I'm not sure if that was due to core voltage issues or just hitting the max my cpu can obtain but I'm happy with what I've done here. I think this is a good first step, right?

One thing that really messed me up in all of this is the diversity of language. Almost all the guides, forums posts and articles I've read over the past few months have mentioned thinks like "CPU Clock", "BCLK" or "Multiplier" but then I go into my BIOS and I don't see any of that. I see "CPU Ratio" and other things I've never seen mentioned.

Makes a guy like me rather nervous when things don't line up like I expect.
 
Solution
Some motherboards do have their own terms for the same thing so it can make it confusing. So long as the changes are being applied to the bios then using intel extreme tuning utility is fine. It's still better than 'auto' overclocking such as selecting 'turbo performance' in the bios offered by the motherboard and allowing it to choose its own presets. Often they raise the core voltage higher than necessary as an attempt to provide a stable (no bsod's) experience. However it results in more voltage than usually necessary and causes higher temps.

Base clock (bclk) is the base speed, for most intel cpu's it's 100mhz. Then a multiplier is applied to achieve a given speed. If you look at your cpu-z image you'll see where it says multiplier...

n00blet73

Honorable
Jun 4, 2015
27
2
10,535


Wow!

Thank you for that incredibly condescending response. You could have tried to be helpful but instead you just went ahead and decided to piss all over me. Greatly appreciated.

And just FYI, I've been reading guides for the past year or two on this but when those guides reference "CPU Clock" but your BIOS doesn't list that, one can be a trepidatious about poking around in the BIOS. This fear is only compounded when one goes to forums, asks if they are the same and instead of getting either a unanimous "yes" or "no" they get conflicting yes/no responses peppered with arrogant, condescending comments from preening peacocks.

But again, thanks for your awesome advice. It was really appreciated.
 
Some motherboards do have their own terms for the same thing so it can make it confusing. So long as the changes are being applied to the bios then using intel extreme tuning utility is fine. It's still better than 'auto' overclocking such as selecting 'turbo performance' in the bios offered by the motherboard and allowing it to choose its own presets. Often they raise the core voltage higher than necessary as an attempt to provide a stable (no bsod's) experience. However it results in more voltage than usually necessary and causes higher temps.

Base clock (bclk) is the base speed, for most intel cpu's it's 100mhz. Then a multiplier is applied to achieve a given speed. If you look at your cpu-z image you'll see where it says multiplier x16 (8-39) meaning at that very moment the cpu was running at a multiplier of 16, x16. The parenthesis show the range, it can go as low as x8 (800mhz) or up to x39 (3900mhz or 3.9ghz, same thing).

If you change the base clock then everything else changes. 100mhz x16 = 1600mhz = 1.6ghz. Changing base clock to 105mhz x16 = 1680mhz = 1.68ghz.

Cache ratio is also sometimes call 'uncore ratio' and by default it's a little over the core ratio. It doesn't have to be, it can be the same speed or it can even be slower. Sometimes an overclock that's unsteady will benefit from a lower cache ratio which controls things like the cache overclock and memory bus.

Cpu clock depending how it's used can reference either the base clock (though usually specified) or the frequency/speed of the cpu. Such as what are your cpu clocks? 4.3ghz. A bsod usually means you don't have enough vcore or core voltage to support the overclock. As clock speed goes up voltage has to be supplied. Most people consider 1.3v core voltage (vcore) or less to be safe for 24/7 operation. Usually you'll hit a brick wall where instead of a small increase in core voltage it'll take a hefty amount to get to the next multiplier.

For example, 1.22v 4.4ghz (x44) then 1.24v for 4.5ghz (x45) then 1.31v for 4.6ghz (x46). Suddenly having to jump that far in voltage just to reach 100mhz faster signifies you're reaching the physical limitation of that chip. Each chip is different, some can hit 4.6 at 1.26v others can only reach 4.5 at 1.3v. There's no hard and fast use this multiplier at this voltage to reach this speed and have it work for every cpu. Try to stay at 1.3v or less vcore and try to stay under 75c or so when stress testing. Those figures I mentioned are just made up (though within the realm of possibility) to give an idea.

Once you reach a given target like 4.5ghz, try to back off the vcore a little at a time and stress test the cpu again. Rinse and repeat, if it crashes, go back up a little. For instance, you leave it at x45 (for 4.5ghz) and test it at 1.26v, ok, 1.25v ok, 1.23v, ok, 1.22 and bsod - go back to 1.23v. If using prime95 use version 26.6 (not the latest) and use small fft's for a steady temp. Asus rog realbench is a good overall system stability test. The idea is to push the system a bit, stress different combinations of cpu, memory, gpu etc to make sure it doesn't crash. Then you'll be stable whether surfing forums or playing gtaV.

Here's a pretty in depth guide to overclocking haswell/devil's canyon.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1411077/haswell-overclocking-guide-with-statistics
 
Solution