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[longdi]

According to the article, Skylake design decoupled BCLK from most other components save memory. So as long as you turn off the iGPU, you're golden. Downside is Z mobo and premium memory are still needed.

It will be fun once techsites start stretching the modest i5-6400.

http://overclocking.guide/overclocking-non-k-intel-skylake-cpus-performance-tests/

Boom! i5 6400 overclocked to 4.72Gigahz!

Btw you can use H motherboard to overclock too! The first discovered BCLK overclocking was done on Supermicro modesy H170M matx board.

Unless Intel decides to clamp down on all this, we could be in for an interesting time with Skylake and future revision.

 

[Timedog]

A few things:

1) My god, 4970k runs hot as shit on load with prime95. Maybe I seated my Noctua u14s wrong or the thermal paste is all fucked up, but I'm getting almost 90C on load with stock speeds (it does seem to go into turbo mode when all of the cores are loaded, which i find weird!?). Now I'm reading that people don't really use that for overclocking with haswell? What should I use/do to test my overclock stability?

2) How much of a problem is data corruption when overclocking? From google, most discussion about data corruption on overclocked machines is pre 2009, when the first core i5 and i7 came out. I'm assuming a lot of the data corruption concerns come from the days when you had to overclock the entire bus in order to OC your cpu. I haven't noticed anything weird with my 6 year old i5, but that thing is stable as hell (I accidentally ran an old version of prime95 for a full week on it a few days ago, with no errors, despite it being overclocked 1ghz for 6 straight years). Is this still a big problem on modern systems?

3) Don't be afraid to admit that you kind of like an MC Hammer song or two non-ironically.

 

[Jharp]

Looking at both of these CPUs. What are GAF's thoughts?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117402
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117559

edit: comparison
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1|19-117-402^19-117-402,19-117-559^19-117-559

 

[RGM79]

A few things:

1) My god, 4970k runs hot as shit on load with prime95. Maybe I seated my Noctua u14s wrong or the thermal paste is all fucked up, but I'm getting almost 90C on load with stock speeds (it does seem to go into turbo mode when all of the cores are loaded, which i find weird!?). Now I'm reading that people don't really use that for overclocking with haswell? What should I use/do to test my overclock stability?

2) How much of a problem is data corruption when overclocking? From google, most discussion about data corruption on overclocked machines is pre 2009, when the first core i5 and i7 came out. I'm assuming a lot of the data corruption concerns come from the days when you had to overclock the entire bus in order to OC your cpu. I haven't noticed anything weird with my 6 year old i5, but that thing is stable as hell (I accidentally ran an old version of prime95 for a full week on it a few days ago, with no errors, despite it being overclocked 1ghz for 6 straight years). Is this still a big problem on modern systems?

3) Don't be afraid to admit that you kind of like an MC Hammer song or two non-ironically.

The latest versions of Prime95 utilize AVX instructions and that can cause Haswell processors to run quite hot due to the added voltage. Don't worry about it, either try another stress testing program like Intel Burn Test or play a stressful game like GTAV.

I've never run into corruption, but then again my overclocking experience is limited. I wouldn't expect an overclocked processor to cause data corruption at all.

Looking at both of these CPUs. What are GAF's thoughts?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117402
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117559

edit: comparison
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1|19-117-402^19-117-402,19-117-559^19-117-559

Good luck trying to get an i7 6700K. They're in high demand and low supply, and what little supply there exists is being priced high. Technically the i7 5820K is the higher end processor, and it's available now. Go for the 5820K if you want to build soon.

 

[hateradio]

I forgot that one of my HDDs is IDE. What's a good SATA adapter?

 

[lostsupper]

A few things:

1) My god, 4970k runs hot as shit on load with prime95. Maybe I seated my Noctua u14s wrong or the thermal paste is all fucked up, but I'm getting almost 90C on load with stock speeds (it does seem to go into turbo mode when all of the cores are loaded, which i find weird!?). Now I'm reading that people don't really use that for overclocking with haswell? What should I use/do to test my overclock stability?

Delid, bro.

 

[RGM79]

I forgot that one of my HDDs is IDE. What's a good SATA adapter?

Looks like this is what you want if you want an external enclosure for your IDE hard drive. Otherwise, there is this IDE/SATA adaptor that will let you use it inside your current PC. Both are the cheapest models I could find with decent review scores.

 

[Timedog]

Delid, bro.

I'd rather not throw 300 dollars down the toilet, if possible. What is the temp difference like, and how easy is it to fuck up?

 

[Jharp]

edit: ignore post

 

[Jimrpg]

Sounds like something is shorting out. It'd a common issue so I would just google it. I would for you but I'm on my phone.

Did you install the motherboard standoff screws? They sit between the board and the case.

Just a quick update. 3 problems that I resolved with the PC building.

1/ Yep it was the motherboard standoff screws... I didn't know that could short circuit the board. It was driving me crazy.... I moved the motherboard a couple of inches to the left or right and the PC would turn on. Haha.

2/ I also plugged a 4 pin socket cable into 4 pin sys_fan on the motherboard... which stopped the PC from turning on. had to test every cable.

3/ Turned on fast boot and then couldn't get into BIOS. (had to plug in a wired instead of wireless keyboard to press the delete button fast enough to get into BIOS solve the problem)

Typing on my new office PC now! Thanks for the help.

 

[Shoyz]

My first PC I built a few years back was a budget build with an i3-2100 and a GTX 660TI, but I'm working on building something higher end that'll be suitable for VR (Vive specifically, and immediate preferably). It sucks they're so tight-lipped about the pricepoint because I don't know how much money to save.

I've made the advance purchase of an EVGA NEX750B 750W bronze PSU (for only $25 shipped from b-stock, hopefully not a mistake?), and a Corsair 760T Tower (I thought looked great, $143 on sale). I'm planning to grab a discounted 970 when I see one (around 200 ideally, 970 is Oculus's recommended card and I'd prefer to wait for Pascal to go any higher)

I also have the opportunity to get a 6700K for MSRP ($350+tax) which given the scarcity makes me feel like I'd be wasting an opportunity by not buying it, but in the event that restocks happen by January I'm not sure if it's worth the additional $120 over a 6600K for use in just gaming (on one hand, up to a 10% difference isn't amazing, on the otherhand, VR needs 90FPS locked. But 6600K overclocked pulls very close..). I feel a bit iffy about buying 3 year old components instead.

But beyond that, for the Motherboard/RAM/CPU Cooler (air), I'm a bit lost. This Guide lists a Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 Mobo ($150) and 16GB Crucial DDR4 ($84, could I temporarily skimp and grab just one 8GB?).
But it's the only build on that list which uses a Skylake CPU, and goes overboard in respects I've deviated from (2x 980TIs, no 950 Intel SSD, etc). I'd rather stick with air cooling, and Cooler Master Hyper 212 seems popular ($30). Are all these components still the best choices together?

 

[lostsupper]

I'd rather not throw 300 dollars down the toilet, if possible. What is the temp difference like, and how easy is it to fuck up?

15-20 degrees Celsius. Hammer/vise method worked great on Devil's Canyon. Very hard to fuck up, unless you've never held a hand tool or something.

 

[Blitzhex]

I'd rather not throw 300 dollars down the toilet, if possible. What is the temp difference like, and how easy is it to fuck up?

Like RGM79 says, that's AVX for you. Use x264, games, realbench or prime95 26.6 and older to stress devil's canyon, there's no need to de-lid. New IBT also uses avx2.

 

[RGM79]

Here's the current build. I need you guys to critique it for me:
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=20790465

Can't see the list. Take a screenshot or use PCPartPicker, please. I assume you prefer to order everything from Newegg if you're using Newegg to find the parts?

My first PC I built a few years back was a budget build with an i3-2100 and a GTX 660TI, but I'm working on building something higher end that'll be suitable for VR (Vive specifically, and immediate preferably). It sucks they're so tight-lipped about the pricepoint because I don't know how much money to save.

I've made the advance purchase of an EVGA NEX750B 750W bronze PSU (for only $25 shipped from b-stock, hopefully not a mistake?), and a Corsair 760T Tower (I thought looked great, $143 on sale). I'm planning to grab a discounted 970 when I see one (around 200 ideally, 970 is Oculus's recommended card and I'd prefer to wait for Pascal to go any higher)

I also have the opportunity to get a 6700K for MSRP ($350+tax) which given the scarcity makes me feel like I'd be wasting an opportunity by not buying it, but in the event that restocks happen by January I'm not sure if it's worth the additional $120 over a 6600K for use in just gaming (on one hand, up to a 10% difference isn't amazing, on the otherhand, VR needs 90FPS locked. But 6600K overclocked pulls very close..). I feel a bit iffy about buying 3 year old components instead.

But beyond that, for the Motherboard/RAM/CPU Cooler (air), I'm a bit lost. This Guide lists a Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 Mobo ($150) and 16GB Crucial DDR4 ($84, could I temporarily skimp and grab just one 8GB?).
But it's the only build on that list which uses a Skylake CPU, and goes overboard in respects I've deviated from (2x 980TIs, no 950 Intel SSD, etc). I'd rather stick with air cooling, and Cooler Master Hyper 212 seems popular ($30). Are all these components still the best choices together?

What you've described will all work together. As for whether it's the best choice for your money.. no one will know until we see more results on how well VR works. Even then, we still have the factor of not all games being optimized or well coded.. or even running the same.

The EVGA power supply isn't bad, especially for that price. It's difficult to say for certain whether you will need the i7 6700K, we don't know how well games in the future will be optimized. The only concrete things I can say are that VR is somewhat similar to multi-monitor gaming, and the higher the PC's specs, the better equipped you are to deal with the demands of VR. According to these posts [1][2] by someone who has experience working with games with the Oculus Rift development kit 2, they found twin GTX 970s to be a bit lacking when it came to VRAM.

That Gigabyte motherboard is fine, but there are cheaper alternatives you could look at, the motherboard itself doesn't affect performance much unless you're overclocking the processor on it. Yes, you can temporarily go with 1x8GB and then pick up an second identical stick later for a total of 2x8GB running in dual channel mode.

The Hyper 212 Evo comes well recommended from us. It's hard to beat the performance you get from it for such a low price.

If you'd like part list recommendations, can you tell us some specifics about your situation? Country, budget, etc? There's a short questionnaire you can fill out from the first post of this thread.

Like RGM79 says, that's AVX for you. Use x264, games, realbench or prime95 26.6 and older to stress devil's canyon, there's no need to de-lid. New IBT also uses avx2.

Whoops. Wasn't aware the latest versions of IntelBurnTest did that now. Thanks for the correction.

 

[BossDarkseid]

Eugh. Started PC this morning and it said Overclock failed please press f1 to enter setup etc etc. Did that and nothing in particular leapt out at me as wrong...however I think the error code on the mobo's LED display was bd, or something like that (Asus X99)...restarted it and no error, went to Win 10 but yet to check what the max clock of the CPU is, but it's just annoying as hell to have these problems in what is a new PC, that I need to be stable before too long

Has anyone had that sort of problem and knows what the cause of it was? Since I'm new to Overclocking etc I'm not even really sure what to look for with the problems as it were.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7OoLfY054mUY2dudGFLbEdqQzQ/view?usp=sharing

Is a link to the CpuZ report...no idea if that will shed any light on things. I had problems with the ram about a week ago and had to send it back and they said it was incorrect overclock or something so they did a new set of Kingston Hyper X and that didn't get any errors on Windows memory Test or a pass of MemTest86 etc.

Gonna try out a few games to see if things are as normal, but thanks anyway

Edit: Booted Witcher 3 up and it ran like normal (pretty well), no drops etc.

 

[RGM79]

Your Current Specs: i7 920 / 6gigs of 1366 / Some ASUS Mobo from when I got the i7 ie its old too, haha / GTX 750Ti / Corsair TX750W / super basic and cheap case /

Budget: 1300ish maybe? Canadian bucks.

Main Use: Gaming and NeoGAF, haha.

Monitor Resolution: 1080p, but I will be getting a Oculus Rift (or maybe a Vive I guess) as well.

List SPECIFIC games or applications that you MUST be able to run well: Nothing specific, I generally just play everything that new.

Looking to reuse any parts?: If I can use my PSU still that would be nice, and I will be using my SSD and HDD in the new system for sure. Also I have a cheap disc drive I will be bringing over, just in case I accidentally buy something that has a disc, haha.

When will you build?: Soon, maybe Boxing Day.

Will you be overclocking?: Naw.

I think I'm leaning towards a GTX 970 and probably a i5 6600k, my i7 920 has been so god damn amazing all these years, I honestly dont even want to upgrade it yet, but it would be holding me back if I got a GTX 970, so I will kind of have too

I love mucking about on the Memory Express website, but I kind of have no idea what I'm doing. haha.

Does that include taxes or not? Rebates before or after $1300? Do you need a copy of Windows as well? Do you prefer to order from Memory Express or are other retailers okay? Keep in mind that Memory Express and NCIX both offer pricematching, but I'm sure ME has the better pricematching policy.

Here's a starting list of parts to consider. There's always room for change.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($259.01 @ Vuugo)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($145.40 @ Amazon Canada)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($76.99 @ Canada Computers)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 390 8GB Nitro Video Card ($399.88 @ Canada Computers)
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 230T Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($71.19 @ Amazon Canada)
Total: $952.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-12 04:19 EST-0500

Most of the parts are quite good for price to performance. I went with the i5 6500 because you said you didn't have much of an interest in overclocking, although it appears that it may be possible to overclock it in the future if needed [1][2], although in a more limited and less capable manner than the i5 6600K would allow for. The Z170 motherboard was chosen because it's at an excellent price right now (normally retails for closer to $200 CAD), and there actually aren't a lot of reviews for the cheaper H170 and B150 motherboards so I'm a bit hesitant to recommend any of those.

The R9 390 is my recommendation if you think you'll be interested in VR. It has comparable performance to a GTX 970 yet has more than enough VRAM to spare for VR. If you prefer Nvidia, then I recommend the Asus Strix GTX 970 for $414 after $20 rebate.

That should come in at well under your budget, just in case you do need Windows or any other changes to the parts list.

Eugh. Started PC this morning and it said Overclock failed please press f1 to enter setup etc etc. Did that and nothing in particular leapt out at me as wrong...however I think the error code on the mobo's LED display was bd, or something like that (Asus X99)...restarted it and no error, went to Win 10 but yet to check what the max clock of the CPU is, but it's just annoying as hell to have these problems in what is a new PC, that I need to be stable before too long

Has anyone had that sort of problem and knows what the cause of it was? Since I'm new to Overclocking etc I'm not even really sure what to look for with the problems as it were.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7OoLfY054mUY2dudGFLbEdqQzQ/view?usp=sharing

Is a link to the CpuZ report...no idea if that will shed any light on things. I had problems with the ram about a week ago and had to send it back and they said it was incorrect overclock or something so they did a new set of Kingston Hyper X and that didn't get any errors on Windows memory Test or a pass of MemTest86 etc.

Gonna try out a few games to see if things are as normal, but thanks anyway

Edit: Booted Witcher 3 up and it ran like normal (pretty well), no drops etc.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help, but I feel your pain, brother. My new build stopped working just after a month due to what I assume is a bad motherboard.. so I went back to my old PC for the time being, but with my new graphics card installed.

Probably the first and only time I'll ever pair a graphics card that costs ~12x more than the CPU did.

 

[BossDarkseid]

I'm sorry I can't be of more help, but I feel your pain, brother. My new build stopped working just after a month due to what I assume is a bad motherboard.. so I went back to my old PC for the time being, but with my new graphics card installed.

Probably the first and only time I'll ever pair a graphics card that costs ~12x more than the CPU did.

Hah, well - touch wood- but at least I'm not getting any more BSODs saying "MEMORY_INITIALIZATION_ERROR" or stuff like that. I'm pretty sure I'm fine on the cooling front (they changed it from a h100i to an asetek 360mm for free/by accident) and everything looks ok inside the PC. The memory is OC'd to 3000Mhz, apparently, but its a bit weird.

 

[Shoyz]

What you've described will all work together. As for whether it's the best choice for your money.. no one will know until we see more results on how well VR works. Even then, we still have the factor of not all games being optimized or well coded.. or even running the same.

Considering how overboard the build my source listed was, I was just afraid that I might be sticking with components that were only necessary for other components I removed, like "Here's an identical motherboard without NVME SSD support for $30 less" or something. Very reassuring to hear, thanks!

LinusTechTips seems to really like 'IC Diamond' brand thermal paste. Would it be a good idea to splurge for it or do you just stick with the tube Cooler Master includes? (Or Arctic Silver or such, I read a few unnerving warnings about IC Diamond spreading a bit too far)

 

[MANGOD]

Coming from a console gamer and not knowing a thing about the pc side of things. If I had a budget of £1000 tops and was looking for a machine strictly for gaming purposes, Ideally that could run 1080 60fps what would be the machine to get?
Im in the uk if that helps and a pre configured pc would suit best. The smaller the better, I quite like the look of the BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case. Or something along that size wise.
Cheers for any input

 

[lostsupper]

Like RGM79 says, that's AVX for you. Use x264, games, realbench or prime95 26.6 and older to stress devil's canyon, there's no need to de-lid. New IBT also uses avx2.

Unless you want cooler cpu temps.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

According to the article, Skylake design decoupled BCLK from most other components save memory. So as long as you turn off the iGPU, you're golden. Downside is Z mobo and premium memory are still needed.

It will be fun once techsites start stretching the modest i5-6400.

Ah, neato. I want to see what they can do with the i3-6100, haha.

 

[RGM79]

Coming from a console gamer and not knowing a thing about the pc side of things. If I had a budget of £1000 tops and was looking for a machine strictly for gaming purposes, Ideally that could run 1080 60fps what would be the machine to get?
Im in the uk if that helps and a pre configured pc would suit best. The smaller the better, I quite like the look of the BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case. Or something along that size wise.
Cheers for any input

If you were willing to build it yourself, you could get quite a powerful PC. Do you have any preference on the color of the Bitfenix Prodigy M?

http://imgur.com/gxueEci
1 x Western Digital WD Blue 1TB, 64MB cache, SATA 6Gb/s (WD10EZEX)
1 x Intel Core i5-6600, 4x 3.30GHz, boxed (BX80662I56600)
1 x GeIL Dragon RAM white IC DIMM kit 8GB, DDR4-3000, CL15-17-17-35 (GWW48GB3000C15DC)
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Windforce 3X, 6GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, 3x DisplayPort (GV-N98TWF3OC-6GD)
1 x ASUS Z170M-Plus (90MB0M60-M0EAY0)
1 x Scythe Kotetsu (SCKTT-1000)
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M black (BFC-PRM-300-KKXSK-RP)
1 x Cooler Master G750M 750W ATX 2.31 (RS-750-AMAAB1)
Total of all best prices: £ 946.07

Sorry, but I'm not too familiar with prebuilt PC companies in the UK. If building it yourself is out of the question, consider looking at overclockers.co.uk? They seem to be well regarded.

 

[knitoe]

Hah, well - touch wood- but at least I'm not getting any more BSODs saying "MEMORY_INITIALIZATION_ERROR" or stuff like that. I'm pretty sure I'm fine on the cooling front (they changed it from a h100i to an asetek 360mm for free/by accident) and everything looks ok inside the PC. The memory is OC'd to 3000Mhz, apparently, but its a bit weird.

Have you updated the latest bios? My Asus X99 Deluxe took many updates for I could run my ram at the rated ram profile spec. Also, maybe increase your core voltage by 0.05V.

Considering how overboard the build my source listed was, I was just afraid that I might be sticking with components that were only necessary for other components I removed, like "Here's an identical motherboard without NVME SSD support for $30 less" or something. Very reassuring to hear, thanks!

LinusTechTips seems to really like 'IC Diamond' brand thermal paste. Would it be a good idea to splurge for it or do you just stick with the tube Cooler Master includes? (Or Arctic Silver or such, I read a few unnerving warnings about IC Diamond spreading a bit too far)

It might offer 1-3 degrees better, but not worth it unless you do extreme overclocking and need every little increase.

 

[BossDarkseid]

Have you updated the latest bios? My Asus X99 Deluxe took many updates for I could run my ram at the rated ram profile spec. Also, maybe increase your core voltage by 0.05V.


It might offer 1-3 degrees better, but not worth it unless you do extreme overclocking and need every little increase.

I haven't updated it myself but I'll try and check it out somehow later on. the core voltage would just be...pop into the bios + increase it, right?

Edit: Check on Asus' website...my bios version is...about 8 months out of date and there have been 4 updates in that time...including support for 16gb ddr4...which is what I have. Curious.

 

[knitoe]

I haven't updated it myself but I'll try and check it out somehow later on. the core voltage would just be...pop into the bios + increase it, right?

Edit: Check on Asus' website...my bios version is...about 8 months out of date and there have been 4 updates in that time...including support for 16gb ddr4...which is what I have. Curious.

Yeah. Go into the bios and increase the core voltage by 0.05. For example, if it's currently 1.22V under stress test load, increase it so it's equal to 1.27V. But, update to the latest bios first. You might not even need to increase the core voltage.

 

[BossDarkseid]

Yeah. Go into the bios and increase the core voltage by 0.05. For example, if it's currently 1.22V under stress test load, increase it so it's equal to 1.27V.

Cool. Well i've downloaded the latest bios update, put it on a usb, watched a video...so...see you on the other side pc gaf

 

[LilJoka]

I haven't updated it myself but I'll try and check it out somehow later on. the core voltage would just be...pop into the bios + increase it, right?

Edit: Check on Asus' website...my bios version is...about 8 months out of date and there have been 4 updates in that time...including support for 16gb ddr4...which is what I have. Curious.

There's a few reasons why high speed ram won't work at its rated speed.
1. Motherboard RAM timings are trained too aggressively (secondary and tertiary timings) - here a bios update helps.
2. CPU Intel memory controller cannot keep up - that can be helped by raising the memory controller voltage and/or CPU vcore.
3. RAM voltage drop, give the ram a bit more voltage.

Best way is to modify from XMP settings. XMP isn't garunteed to work since its relying on a good CPU and RAM training algorithm from the board.

Usually Asus has a setting near ram speed about its RAM performance, make sure it's set to normal rather than aggressive/extreme/performance type of setting.

People need to be aware that sticking 3000mhz ddr4 in their build sometimes isn't just going to work.

 

[Orbis]

Need some advice guys.. built a new PC with the following components and it has a fatal issue rendering it unusable:
Core i5-6600K
MSI H170 Gaming M3 motherboard
Corsair CX 750W Modular '80 Plus Bronze' PSU (overkill wattage but future proof)
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 2133Mhz

I also moved my old graphics card over from my old PC:
GTX 660Ti (3GB)

Turned on fine, but then froze during the W10 install. Rebooted and the installer continued without issue. But then the PC froze again during Windows updates. Reboot. Froze again using web browser. Reboot. Looked like a bad Windows install.

After reinstalling Windows, it freezes again. Starting to look like drivers or hardware.

Booted up to a live Linux USB. Froze again while doing nothing.

So I started ruling out components. Removed the graphics card. Still freezes. Removed the wifi card. Still freezes. Swapped the SSD, removed the optical drive, tested each stick of RAM and slot (and also tested RAM fully using memtest86). No issues found but still freezing. Interestingly it didn't freeze during memtest86, but the system uptime varies from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours so maybe it got lucky.

I have now replaced the motherboard (Gigabyte GA-H170-HD3) and the RAM, still the same problem.

Is this probably a dud CPU or a problem I can configure myself out of? The nature of the freeze is that the keyboard + mouse stop responding, everything on the display freezes exactly on one frame (clock stops, definitely nothing happening). If there is sound playing at the time it freezes on that tone. Nothing at all is logged to the Windows event log. It seems to happen more often at idle than under load (I played a game for over an hour without a freeze). Hard reboot is the only solution.

The only thing after the CPU is the power supply but it doesn't seem like the kind of behaviour you'd see from a dodgy PSU.

 

[Renekton]

http://overclocking.guide/overclocking-non-k-intel-skylake-cpus-performance-tests/

Boom! i5 6400 overclocked to 4.72Gigahz!

Btw you can use H motherboard to overclock too! The first discovered BCLK overclocking was done on Supermicro modesy H170M matx board.

Unless Intel decides to clamp down on all this, we could be in for an interesting time with Skylake and future revision.

Wow thanks, that is insane.

 

[Tiduz]

i built a new pc last month (skylake i5) and took my shitty R9 270 along

Wanted to upgrade to R9 390, should i do that or wait for AMD's next cards? I read that its smaller nm and prob coming in summer. that made me doubt what to do :/

 

[BossDarkseid]

There's a few reasons why high speed ram won't work at its rated speed.
1. Motherboard RAM timings are trained too aggressively (secondary and tertiary timings) - here a bios update helps.
2. CPU Intel memory controller cannot keep up - that can be helped by raising the memory controller voltage and/or CPU vcore.
3. RAM voltage drop, give the ram a bit more voltage.

Best way is to modify from XMP settings. XMP isn't garunteed to work since its relying on a good CPU and RAM training algorithm from the board.

Usually Asus has a setting near ram speed about its RAM performance, make sure it's set to normal rather than aggressive/extreme/performance type of setting.

People need to be aware that sticking 3000mhz ddr4 in their build sometimes isn't just going to work.

Ok, updated my bios (obviously working because I'm here), it reset my overclock but I haven't gone back into the bios to redo that stuff yet. To my detriment, I didn't note down the OC settings in terms of voltage etc before I updated the bios. I'm...99.9% sure it was an 5820k on a 4.1 or 4.2ghz OC. So apart from the ram xmp being set to normal rather than aggresive etc...is there a recommended "safe zone" for the overclock in terms of speed + voltage etc.

 

[MANGOD]

If you were willing to build it yourself, you could get quite a powerful PC. Do you have any preference on the color of the Bitfenix Prodigy M?

http://imgur.com/gxueEci
1 x Western Digital WD Blue 1TB, 64MB cache, SATA 6Gb/s (WD10EZEX)
1 x Intel Core i5-6600, 4x 3.30GHz, boxed (BX80662I56600)
1 x GeIL Dragon RAM white IC DIMM kit 8GB, DDR4-3000, CL15-17-17-35 (GWW48GB3000C15DC)
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Windforce 3X, 6GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, 3x DisplayPort (GV-N98TWF3OC-6GD)
1 x ASUS Z170M-Plus (90MB0M60-M0EAY0)
1 x Scythe Kotetsu (SCKTT-1000)
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M black (BFC-PRM-300-KKXSK-RP)
1 x Cooler Master G750M 750W ATX 2.31 (RS-750-AMAAB1)
Total of all best prices: £ 946.07

Sorry, but I'm not too familiar with prebuilt PC companies in the UK. If building it yourself is out of the question, consider looking at overclockers.co.uk? They seem to be well regarded.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!
I have zero experience about putting together pc's so I'd just prefer a prebuilt unit to plug in and play. I'll check out overclockers

 

[knitoe]

Ok, updated my bios (obviously working because I'm here), it reset my overclock but I haven't gone back into the bios to redo that stuff yet. To my detriment, I didn't note down the OC settings in terms of voltage etc before I updated the bios. I'm...99.9% sure it was an 5820k on a 4.1 or 4.2ghz OC. So apart from the ram xmp being set to normal rather than aggresive etc...is there a recommended "safe zone" for the overclock in terms of speed + voltage etc.

Keep it less than 80C and max 1.35V under stress test load. Depending on your hardware, you could do 4.2-4.7GHz.

 

[Kayant]

Thanks for taking the time to reply!
I have zero experience about putting together pc's so I'd just prefer a prebuilt unit to plug in and play. I'll check out overclockers

Also maybe worth checking out scan.co.uk.

 

[LilJoka]

Ok, updated my bios (obviously working because I'm here), it reset my overclock but I haven't gone back into the bios to redo that stuff yet. To my detriment, I didn't note down the OC settings in terms of voltage etc before I updated the bios. I'm...99.9% sure it was an 5820k on a 4.1 or 4.2ghz OC. So apart from the ram xmp being set to normal rather than aggresive etc...is there a recommended "safe zone" for the overclock in terms of speed + voltage etc.

There is no safe zone for speed, just voltage. As both are related, and your going to be temp limited before any dangerous voltage, start at stock and work your way up. Quick and dirty : offset vcore 0.0v, 41x multiplier, adjust till boots, adjust till stable.

 

[LilJoka]

Thanks for taking the time to reply!
I have zero experience about putting together pc's so I'd just prefer a prebuilt unit to plug in and play. I'll check out overclockers

Maybe from scan.co.uk along these lines, I chose the Node 304, Mini ITX build.
I would request the cooler to be swapped for a Hyper 212 Evo, and the PSU to a Coolermaster VS 550.
Price includes Win 10, so you could save £70 by removing and getting elsewhere.

 

[axb2013]

Thanks for taking the time to reply!
I have zero experience about putting together pc's so I'd just prefer a prebuilt unit to plug in and play. I'll check out overclockers

If you already had one built, I wouldn't find anything to object to but since you are still in the planning stage, I wouldn't pair a top of the line video card like the 980ti with a i5.

For a new build, 16GB RAM is a must and if you are considering a top of the line video card, get an i7. If I understood correctly, you are aiming for 1080p/60. 980TI will definitely get it done but an i7 will let you get most out of it.

 

[BossDarkseid]

Keep it less than 80C and max 1.35V under stress test load. Depending on your hardware, you could do 4.2-4.7GHz.

Cheers. I think before the bios update it was li ke 76c at absolute max...which it almost never seemed to get to in my short time with it. I'll do it after lunch I suppose.

There is no safe zone for speed, just voltage. As both are related, and your going to be temp limited before any dangerous voltage, start at stock and work your way up. Quick and dirty : offset vcore 0.0v, 41x multiplier, adjust till boots, adjust till stable.

Thanks! I'll keep this in mind and pop back to this thread just before I do the OCing. and hopefully post back later with success.

 

[Celegus]

Haha... just realized I threw out the shipping box that my case came in. I guess that's where the UPC was? So much for that rebate, ugh.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

Good to hear that you sorted out the problem. As far as I can see, that PSU is alright. There were also some issues with the initial release of AMD Crimson, but the latest driver versions were fixed quite a while ago.

Yeah I'm glad it wasn't the mainboard or CPU in the end! And okay glad to have some reassurance As for Crimson thanks for the info, this bug thankfully didn't affect me since my GPU fan is controlled by MSI Afterburner but I have installed the hotfix version anyway. I put the BF4 crash as a one off fluke, my GPU has a pretty hefty overclock (from 925mhz to 1110mhz core and 1375mhz memory to 1500mhz memory) but that was always 100% stable with my old PSU. I did put the additional power range at +20 in Crimson now though just as a precaution and haven't had any crashes so far.

Oh and a question, as far as I got it PC PSUs only produce the maximum wattage when absolutely needed right? So even though I have a 630w PSU now instead of a 550w one I shouldn't use more power since the components are absolutely the same and I doubt my PC comes anywhere near 600w power draw, right?

Woops, missed this. I do agree having an SSD for booting into Windows is easily a must for OC'ing lol.

4.3 is still very good. I personally just wanted to see how far I could comfortably go.

I used this guide. http://www.overclock.net/t/1198504/...-guide-sandy-bridge-ivy-bridge-asrock-edition

Our boards for OC'ing are trash, lol.

Yeah else you go crazy rebooting all the time And seems like you hit a very nice limit there! As for the guide, thanks that will come in handy although I'm a bit surprised that it mentions increasing the VCore afterall, atleast before I was told that for moderate overclocks I ideally want stock VCore values hence the offset calculation as most Intel CPUs can reach 4.0-4.3ghz easily without a Vcore increase o.o And are they?

 

[BossDarkseid]

Ok so I'm in the bios atm, found the core ratio limit stuff under Cpu Core Ratio > Per Core but when I scroll down to the cpu core voltage stuff fully manual mode is greyed out and it will only let me select Manual Moder (which leads to a cpu core voltage override), offset mode or adaptive mode. Is override what I want or do I need to turn fully manual mode on (it says the OV_CPU jumper needs to be switched on) or do I need offset mode etc..because I'm not really sure where to enter things in offset mode

 

[LilJoka]

Ok so I'm in the bios atm, found the core ratio limit stuff under Cpu Core Ratio > Per Core but when I scroll down to the cpu core voltage stuff fully manual mode is greyed out and it will only let me select Manual Moder (which leads to a cpu core voltage override), offset mode or adaptive mode. Is override what I want or do I need to turn fully manual mode on (it says the OV_CPU jumper needs to be switched on) or do I need offset mode etc..because I'm not really sure where to enter things in offset mode

Adaptive -> Offset mode, works like this.
BIOS has a hidden table of Vcore VS Multiplier for example
x40 - 1.25v
x41 - 1.27v
x42 - 1.29v

When you set an offset of +0.00v at x41 multiplier, the bios will set 1.27v, you might find its a bit different in Windows using CPUz under load. But that is how offset works generally.

Now use a positive or negative offset to tweak the voltage you see in Windows CPUz.

Using offset lets the BIOS scale the voltage under low to high loads as the CPU multiplier changes.

 

[BossDarkseid]

Adaptive -> Offset mode, works like this.
BIOS has a hidden table of Vcore VS Multiplier for example
x40 - 1.25v
x41 - 1.27v
x42 - 1.29v

When you set an offset of +0.00v at x41 multiplier, the bios will set 1.27v, you might find its a bit different in Windows using CPUz under load. But that is how offset works generally.

Now use a positive or negative offset to tweak the voltage you see in Windows CPUz.

Using offset lets the BIOS scale the voltage under low to high loads as the CPU multiplier changes.

Cheers. I would use it but...Damn this is so depressing but I exited the bios, discarding changes, because I wanted to check something. Now I get random error codes on the mobo's LED display and I usually get stuck on the Asus logo screen or just "Preparing automatic repair". And that sometimes just freezes.....eugh

 

[DieNgamers]

Sniff ;( I have the new PC now. According to the quality check, they tested the machine and pre-installed windows 10.

The huge f*cking problem: the slots for HDMI, USB etc are partly covered by the case. What the fuck? The whole thing is placed slightly too much of the left...I could cry right now!!! I searched for adjusting screws or anything like that but didn't find anything.

My motherboard is Asrock Z97 Anniversary and my Case is the Sharkoon T9 Value green edition.

What can I do? I hope there's a way around having to send it back. :O

 

[LilJoka]

Cheers. I would use it but...Damn this is so depressing but I exited the bios, discarding changes, because I wanted to check something. Now I get random error codes on the mobo's LED display and I usually get stuck on the Asus logo screen or just "Preparing automatic repair". And that sometimes just freezes.....eugh

There should be a button to reset the BIOS (CMOS reset), or pull out the CMOS battery. Usually after a few failed attempts/forced power offs its will figure itself out.

 

[LilJoka]

Sniff ;( I have the new PC now. According to the quality check, they tested the machine and pre-installed windows 10.

The huge f*cking problem: the slots for HDMI, USB etc are partly covered by the case. What the fuck? The whole thing is placed slightly too much of the left...I could cry right now!!! I searched for adjusting screws or anything like that but didn't find anything.

My motherboard is Asrock Z97 Anniversary and my Case is the Sharkoon T9 Value green edition.

What can I do? I hope there's a way around having to send it back. :O

Need a photo, possibly didnt install the motherboard standoffs (would be amateur hour - who built this?)

And does it have a GPU? because that wouldnt even line up if the stand offs were missed.

 

[Cheeseman Battitude]

Sniff ;( I have the new PC now. According to the quality check, they tested the machine and pre-installed windows 10.

The huge f*cking problem: the slots for HDMI, USB etc are partly covered by the case. What the fuck? The whole thing is placed slightly too much of the left...I could cry right now!!! I searched for adjusting screws or anything like that but didn't find anything.

My motherboard is Asrock Z97 Anniversary and my Case is the Sharkoon T9 Value green edition.

What can I do? I hope there's a way around having to send it back. :O

Able to post pics?

(Curses! Beaten!!)

 

[BossDarkseid]

There should be a button to reset the BIOS (CMOS reset), or pull out the CMOS battery. Usually after a few failed attempts/forced power offs its will figure itself out.

Yeah I'm gonna do that now. Still annoying but oh well.

 

[LilJoka]

Yeah I'm gonna do that now. Still annoying but oh well.

Welcome to overclocking, with some more time youll have enough experience to minimize this happening =) But shit like this isnt unusual, it can be a bit finicky at times.

 

[BossDarkseid]

Welcome to overclocking, with some more time youll have enough experience to minimize this happening =) But shit like this isnt unusual, it can be a bit finicky at times.

Hah, fair enough. I can imagine the bios update and then trying to overclock being a bit screwy at times but it still feels like "did they even run a stress test?" but anyway I took the battery out, leaving it for a little bit while I calm myself down. I'm assuming this will revert he bios back to whatever version it had when it left the factory? Is it possible the bios was bad?