New Rig OC Issues

Devoid20

Solid State Member
Messages
7
Hello all,
I seem to have an issue with overclocking anything on my system at all. It seems whenever I try to OC even a tiny bit or use any of the OC profiles in the bios (I only have Normal, Xtreme low and Xtreme high) it never works. After my system restarts it always says "Overclocking Failed!" and tells me to enter the bios again to fix it. This is starting to get to me, my system has a lot of potential and right now everythings just sitting at stock.


My RAM is also sitting at 1333mhz when it could be 2133mhz but everytime I switch to XMP or Manual in the bios, change the speed, and then restart again it says it failed. I don't think Power (1200watt PSU) and cooling (Corsair H80) are really a problem. Also, Whenever I try to oc my HD6990 using Afterburner or CCC I'll get BSOD or total freeze in games or benchmarks (even if I just bump the core clock from 880 to 900) Wtf?

--SPECS--
Thermaltake Armor+ Case
WD 1TB HDD
1200w Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold
Asus Rampage IV Extreme (BF3 Edition)
12GB (3x4) 2133mhz Corsair Dominator RAM
Intel i7-3960x CPU (With Corsair H80 Liquid Cooling)
Diamond Radeon HD 6990 4GB (With Dual Arctic Fans)
Windows 7 64-Bit
Bios Ver. 0604
All the right drivers installed to my knowledge.
 
Last edited:
Hello all,
I seem to have an issue with overclocking anything on my system at all. It seems whenever I try to OC even a tiny bit or use any of the OC profiles in the bios (I only have Normal, Xtreme low and Xtreme high) it never works. After my system restarts it always says "Overclocking Failed!" and tells me to enter the bios again to fix it. This is starting to get to me, my system has a lot of potential and right now everythings just sitting at stock.


My RAM is also sitting at 1333mhz when it could be 2133mhz but everytime I switch to XMP or Manual in the bios, change the speed, and then restart again it says it failed. I don't think Power (1200watt PSU) and cooling (Corsair H80) are really a problem. Also, Whenever I try to oc my HD6990 using Afterburner or CCC I'll get BSOD or total freeze in games or benchmarks (even if I just bump the core clock from 880 to 900) Wtf?

--SPECS--
Thermaltake Armor+ Case
WD 1TB HDD
1200w Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold
Asus Rampage IV Extreme (BF3 Edition)
12GB (3x4) 2133mhz Corsair Dominator RAM
Intel i7-3960x CPU (With Corsair H80 Liquid Cooling)
Diamond Radeon HD 6990 4GB (With Dual Arctic Fans)
Windows 7 64-Bit
Bios Ver. 0604
All the right drivers installed to my knowledge.

Have you tried updating your bios ever or maybe reverting back to an older one? Maybe try re seating your ram and making sure they are in the proper dimm slots for triple channel. Seems weird that everything you try and do fails. I've seen people overclock the 6990's quite well but sometimes certain cards out of a bunch just don't overclock well or at all. I've never had this happen personally but the fact that you're CPU/RAM/GPU are all not overclocking or working properly is a different story. Try checking all your cabling and re seating things making sure there is nothing touching something it shouldn't. Try defaulting your bios also and changing all the settings manually to what you know is right. BIOS problems aren't anywhere close to my specialty so hopefully someone else can shine some light on your issue.
 
I can tell you right now you aren't going to get the RAM to run at 2133 unless you are pushing a ton of volts through your I/O. I've also never seen anybody run a tri kit in a quad setup before, but I do know it will run. Just for the sake of troubleshooting, try taking 1 stick out, set your XMP to 1600MHz, set your CPU Core volts to 1.25, and set your CPU multiplier to 40. I bet it works then.

The problem with OC profiles on these boards is they are trying to change the ratio gear, when all you need to do is simply raise your voltage and multiplier. Most manufacturers have these profiles geared for chaps that use the 3820 instead thinking that a person using a 3930k or 3960x can OC themselves with ease. When you use the profile it changes a lot of things that could potentially cause your rig to be unstable. So just try what I said and see what it does.

As to your Radeon OC, do you mean you have an Arctic heatsink per GPU? If so, try putting your stock heatsink back on and see what happens. When you try OCing a dual GPU card you really need a lot of cooling on the VRMs for it to keep up.
 
Thanks guys, well I reseated the RAM, took out 1 stick and set the VCore volts and the muiltiplier (or at least what I thought was the muiltiplier) to the settings you suggested and now the "overclocking Failed!" error doesnt pop up at the start but once I get into windows everything indicates that my cpu is still only at 3.30 and RAM at 1333mhz.

When I first bought the RAM there were 4 sticks but my H80 took up so much room I could only squeeze in 3. They are in the correct slots (the red slots 2nd and 4th on the right of the board). This is what I put on my 6990: Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 · VGA · Cooling · ARCTIC
And this should be much cooler than the stock fan, and the tests do say it does(Furmark at start of benchmark 45c at end 67c.

Still cant really overclock anything or itll says the settings are where I left them in bios but no evidence or performance boost.
 
If you set your RAM to XMP profile or at least 1600MHz and it isn't showing up at that then you are either not saving the settings upon exiting the bios or it is still setting to default.

For RAM location, set them to the 4 inner slots to fit all of them if possible. The 2 on each side closest to CPU. They will still work in quad channel and you can use all 4.

As for your GPU you didn't quite get what I was saying I suppose. Those cool each GPU, but the other components on the card need cooled too. More importantly, the power delivery. Those little square boxes that the coolers should have had heatsinks for. If these aren't being cooled properly then overclocking can cause them to overheat causing instability. Edit: Are you simply raising the core clock up, or are you also raising voltage to compensate?

Honestly though, there is absolutely no need to overclock this CPU. There is no noticeable difference between 3.3 stock, 3.3 with turbo (3.9), or 4.5GHz.
 
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