Can a stable OC cause the PC to reset on its own?

Rafael Mestdag · Jul 26, 2016

Lately my pc has been resetting itself no matter what I'm doing, games, idling on the desktop etc... I think this only happend after an OC but I'm not sure. Also the last time it happened I was using my Windows 10 partition. Now I'm on 7 and so far so good.

Could it be the OC?

My Rig

FX6300
8GB RAM DDR3
Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 motherboard
Onboard ATI Radeon HD 3000 video
500W PSU

Snipergod87 · Jul 26, 2016

Its possible it may not be stable under every condition. Easy way of testing of removing the OC.

Rafael Mestdag · Jul 26, 2016

Snipergod87 :

I went back from 4.6Ghz to 4.1Ghz(Turbo Boost) and so far so good.

bigpinkdragon286 · Jul 26, 2016

Computers don't self-reset when stable, or not instructed to do so. Your question self answers.

Snipergod87 · Jul 26, 2016

If 4.1 proves to be stable (Give it some time) start upping the OC again and find the point where it crashes, and drop it below that.

Black_Ho1e · Aug 14, 2016

Theres a million reasons a pc could reset. A part could be spiking or grounding out. Also you are trying to OC a pc the ram might not be compatable for OC whats the speed of the RAM 2100, 2133, 2400, 2666 etc... you didnt list that and are you OCing that also? Ive had a pc reset before from OCing ram that wasnt capable of an OC? Does this make any sence?

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 14, 2016

Black_Ho1e :

Hi there, thanks for the response. Well, I have 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz ram and I don't even know how to OC ram so I leave it alone.

When I OC my cpu the ram seems to be OC'd as well automatically by the BIOS, because its listed speed on the POST screen increases according to the OC I do on the cpu.

Could this be it? Is my ram somehow inadequate for OC'ing?

Black_Ho1e · Aug 15, 2016

Rafael Mestdag :

Black_Ho1e :

Hi there, thanks for the response. Well, I have 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz ram and I don't even know how to OC ram so I leave it alone.

When I OC my cpu the ram seems to be OC'd as well automatically by the BIOS, because its listed speed on the POST screen increases according to the OC I do on the cpu.

Could this be it? Is my ram somehow inadequate for OC'ing?

Black_Ho1e · Aug 15, 2016

Ok just 1 last thing is the ram 2x4Gb meaning 2 sticks 4 gigabytes each or just 1 single stick of 8 Gb? Because if you have 2 sticks things could cause problems if they arent in the correct motherboard slots. If you have 2 sticks you want to use slot 1 and 3 or slot 2 and 4. Not slot 1 and 2. This can cause resets definitely if rams not seated in correct slots. And im guessing you have 2 sticks of 4Gb if this is the problem. Ok also your ram is not meant to OC any higher then its speed. Thats what your over clocking. Its rated for 1333 mhz so if thats raising along with the cpu overclock you need to check settings to revert the speed back to 1333 mhz ok. Ill wait for your reply. Sorry so many edits...

Karadjgne · Aug 15, 2016

Win10 home can reboot a pc without warning, no matter what you are doing after an update. The anniversary update is supposed to have fixed this by giving warning that your pc will reboot in 30mins. Depends a lot if you have 'quiet hours' set wrong etc.

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 15, 2016

Black_Ho1e :

Hey there, I've got 2x4GB sticks on the black slots(the other ones are grey). These black slots are listed on the motherboard as being slots 4 and 3, the grey ones are listed as being 2 and 1, at least according to the way the writing on the motherboard is appearing:
DDR3_4 - black
DDR3_2 - grey
DDR3_3 - black
DDR3_1 - grey

I guess it's right this way, or maybe not?!

As for the rated speed of the ram going up with the cpu OC, how do I make the ram keep its 1333Mhz rated speed despite the cpu being OC'ed?

Karadjgne · Aug 15, 2016

have to manually set the speed of the ram in the bios, not leave it on auto

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 15, 2016

Karadjgne :

That's what I tried to do, but on manual I could only set the ram speed lower or higher than 1333Mhz, there wasn't an option which kept it at 1333Mhz, so I left it on auto and it went up along with the cpu OC as usual.

Black_Ho1e · Aug 15, 2016

Are you checking the software or booting in UEFI bios? Unless the board dosent have that setting avalible, thats the only way you would NOT be able to set to a specific Mhz. For example my mother board can only clock to (DDR4timings) 2100, 2400, 2600, 2800, 3000. Ok now my board is now saying these are the overclock numbers we tested this board to overclock too. So I wouldnt want to get ram timed at 2166 or 3200 speed because its not recommened to run on that. Dosent mean it cant, and would apear to look stable at times. But would crash the system easily and reset everything. Thats what ram issues do. Crash and reset!! need to research you board more. And the slots you have are correct. Use either the 2 black slots, or the 2 grey slots. They just have them numbered rigght to. I was think what i ultimately meant was skip a slot between them. I just didnt explain that well..

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 18, 2016

Black_Ho1e :

Thanks. I'll search my manual for those settings for the ram later. So far, though, I've been using my pc OC'ed to 4.6Ghz with the ram on Auto and although it went up to 1444Mhz or something, nothing's gone wrong. I'll keep you posted if anything goes wrong.

Karadjgne · Aug 18, 2016

Several things I've noticed are not quite right.
For one, you can use any ram in any slot. What happens is you have 4 slots all running at single channel but there's only 2 buss links (forget the exact name). So if you put a ram stick in slot 1 and slot 2, you run both sticks in single channel mode. Still see 8Gb, runs fine, no crashes. If you separate the sticks, 1-3 or 2-4 you run both sticks in dual channel mode. Usually somewhere about 10% better performance as the sticks aren't competing in the same channel. There is a thing called flex mode, which was Intel first, then adopted by amd which when using 3 sticks, like 1-2-4 or 1-3-4, you'll get 2 sticks in dual, and the odd stick in single. In dual channel, both sticks will run at the speed and timings of the lowest stick.

In boards rated for certain speeds like 2100, 2400, 2600 the ram will run the speed clocked down, so 2133 will run at 2100, 2400 will run 2400 and 2666 will run 2600. This can mean a slight loss in performance as the timings won't change, but the loss is minimal. This again, won't crash the system.

What can crash the system is overclocked ram that can't handle the OC or doesn't have enough voltage to run right. So if your 1333 @1.5v is OC to 1444 by the buss multiplier of the cpu, try adding 0.05v to the dram voltage. Might take a full 0.1v. If this improves things slightly, you can also relax the timings a notch, so instead of 8-8-8-21 2T, run 8-9-8-23 2T or as much as 9-9-9-27 2T which is good for 1600MHz ram.

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 19, 2016

Karadjgne :

Several things I've noticed are not quite right.
For one, you can use any ram in any slot. What happens is you have 4 slots all running at single channel but there's only 2 buss links (forget the exact name). So if you put a ram stick in slot 1 and slot 2, you run both sticks in single channel mode. Still see 8Gb, runs fine, no crashes. If you separate the sticks, 1-3 or 2-4 you run both sticks in dual channel mode. Usually somewhere about 10% better performance as the sticks aren't competing in the same channel. There is a thing called flex mode, which was Intel first, then adopted by amd which when using 3 sticks, like 1-2-4 or 1-3-4, you'll get 2 sticks in dual, and the odd stick in single. In dual channel, both sticks will run at the speed and timings of the lowest stick.

In boards rated for certain speeds like 2100, 2400, 2600 the ram will run the speed clocked down, so 2133 will run at 2100, 2400 will run 2400 and 2666 will run 2600. This can mean a slight loss in performance as the timings won't change, but the loss is minimal. This again, won't crash the system.

What can crash the system is overclocked ram that can't handle the OC or doesn't have enough voltage to run right. So if your 1333 @1.5v is OC to 1444 by the buss multiplier of the cpu, try adding 0.05v to the dram voltage. Might take a full 0.1v. If this improves things slightly, you can also relax the timings a notch, so instead of 8-8-8-21 2T, run 8-9-8-23 2T or as much as 9-9-9-27 2T which is good for 1600MHz ram.

I might try this later, but just in case something goes wrong, which it hasn't so far.

I don't know whether my ram is in dual channel mode or not, how do I check that? By the way, the sticks are of different makes, one is Kingston, the other one is Markvision if I'm not mistaken, does that make any difference?

Karadjgne · Aug 19, 2016

It's never really a 'good' idea to mix ram sticks. Sometimes they play well and there's no problems at all. Sometimes they don't play so well and might need a slight voltage or timing adjustment to sync them nicely. Sometimes they just don't want to play at all. This is true of any ram. I've had ram from the exact same vendor, the exact same model, size, speed etc the ram sticks looked identical. And wouldn't work. Different kits. I've mixed no-name brands with open IC chips with brands with huge heatsinks, totally mismatched size, speed, everything, and all 4 sticks worked great. It really is pot-luck and there's exactly no way of telling just what will happen til you try it out. This is why it's highly recommended to buy ram in 1 kit, either 2x or 4x sticks. Those single box kits are factory tested and guaranteed to work together. Anything else isn't.
As for dual channel, easy. There's 4 slots. For dual channel, use (from the cpu out) 1-3 or 2-4. Most boards recommend slots 2-4 simply because it leaves the most amount of space around the cpu for larger cpu coolers that'll sometimes infringe on the space above slot 1.

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 19, 2016

Karadjgne :

It's never really a 'good' idea to mix ram sticks. Sometimes they play well and there's no problems at all. Sometimes they don't play so well and might need a slight voltage or timing adjustment to sync them nicely. Sometimes they just don't want to play at all. This is true of any ram. I've had ram from the exact same vendor, the exact same model, size, speed etc the ram sticks looked identical. And wouldn't work. Different kits. I've mixed no-name brands with open IC chips with brands with huge heatsinks, totally mismatched size, speed, everything, and all 4 sticks worked great. It really is pot-luck and there's exactly no way of telling just what will happen til you try it out. This is why it's highly recommended to buy ram in 1 kit, either 2x or 4x sticks. Those single box kits are factory tested and guaranteed to work together. Anything else isn't.
As for dual channel, easy. There's 4 slots. For dual channel, use (from the cpu out) 1-3 or 2-4. Most boards recommend slots 2-4 simply because it leaves the most amount of space around the cpu for larger cpu coolers that'll sometimes infringe on the space above slot 1.

Then I guess mine are in dual channel mode since I've put them on the black slots which are slots 1-3 if I'm not mistaken. And so far my ram seems to be working fine that way.

Karadjgne · Aug 19, 2016

Cpu-1-2-3-4
Sometimes in programs like cpu-z it'll be referred to as
Cpu #0 #1 #2 #3, so in the program, even though the ram is in the 2md and 4th physical slot away from the cpu, cpu-z will call it dimm #1 and dimm #3.
Asus recommends slots 2,4 for best dual performance, which h is a safe bet for most modern motherboards.

Can a stable OC cause the PC to reset on its own?

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