Blue screens after CPU upgrade

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TJ Hooker

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Yesterday I upgraded to a 6600k (rest of my build in my signature). Ran some benchmarks at stock clocks, everything seemed fine, decided to try overclocking. I decided to try getting 4.0 GHz on all 4 cores without touching voltage. Wouldn't boot, so I set the voltage to 1.3V. System hung on the Windows icon screen. At this point I was thinking what the hell, set it all the way to 1.35V. Got into Windows finally, briefly ran P95, everything seemed fine, temps were below 70 C. Clicked stop on P95, and computer hangs and bluescreens.

At this point I decided to revert to stock clocks. Now I get blue screens even at stock, sometimes just at desktop or with Chrome open. The blue screens are always CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT. I noticed that at stock settings, when the PC is at desktop but still loading stuff, I get clocks of 3.7 to 3.9 GHz on all cores, which I didn't think was possible given that the turbo boost table only goes to 3.9 GHz on 1 core. I haven't had any bluescreens since I disabled turbo boost.

I've tried clearing my CMOS, updating my chipset drivers, and doing a Window's startup recovery (which just said it couldn't do anything). I have the 2nd latest BIOS for my mobo (the latest just adds Kaby Lake support).

Is it worth trying a re-install of Windows? Should I just write this CPU off as a dud and RMA it?
 
Solution
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Please reseat the CPU.

Please flash to the newest BIOS. Although it doesn't add functionality you're interested in, it would eliminate the possibility of your current BIOS being corrupt.

Do note that this error is usually hardware related, but can sometimes be related to faulty drivers. Have you made any changes to drivers just before this started happening?
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weberdarren97

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Please reseat the CPU.

Please flash to the newest BIOS. Although it doesn't add functionality you're interested in, it would eliminate the possibility of your current BIOS being corrupt.

Do note that this error is usually hardware related, but can sometimes be related to faulty drivers. Have you made any changes to drivers just before this started happening?
 
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TJ Hooker

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I'm hesitant to upgrade to the latest BIOS, just because it says that you can't down-rev if you do. I like having the option to flash an older BIOS so I can play around with non-k OC if I want. But I'll reflash the BIOS just in case it got corrupted, and reseat the CPU as well. Try and see if I can find any bent pins while I'm at it.
 
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weberdarren97

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Also look to make sure that no thermal paste has made its way into the socket. I can tell you that it's bad, but I can't really show you how to remove it with just text. I'd just do a YouTube search for your issue if you happen to find thermal paste down in the socket.
 
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TJ Hooker

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Yes, as mentioned in the OP, I cleared my CMOS.

After re-flashing, re-seating, and re-pasting, no crashes yet. It wasn't readily reproducible before, so I can't really call it yet, but it does seem to be lasting longer without crashing than it was before. Crossing my fingers.
 
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TJ Hooker

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Sigh, still can't even make it to desktop at 4.0 GHz and 1.3V. Not sure if the CPU is outright defective, but it sure seems to be a horrendous overclocker.

Edit: at 1.35V and high LLC, I can't even boot into Windows at 4.1 GHz...
I know the silicon lottery has winners and losers, but this is ridiculous. Combined with the bluescreens I was having earlier at stock, I would call this beyond a bad overclocker and just overall a faulty CPU. Just put in the RMA request, see where that goes. Apparently they charge a 15% restocking fee that they waive on DOA products 'at their sole discretion'. May just keep it if they refuse to waive the restocking fee I suppose...
 
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TJ Hooker

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I sure hope so. Unfortunately I bought it from an online retailer that seems to have pretty crappy customer service, so we'll see how it turns out.

I remember having somewhat poor results when playing around with non-k OC on my i3-6100 (although not this bad), so I'm a little worried my mobo or something else may be playing into poor overclocking. Guess there's not really any way to tell until/unless I get my hands on another 6600k.
 
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weberdarren97

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While your motherboard is definitely not the best overclocking motherboard on the market, it has all of the features that an acceptable OC board needs. It has six VRMs which are adequately cooled, has the Intel Z170 chipset, and has a nice stable BIOS.
 
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