Hardware & Technical Dialing back an overclock

Dziondziak · Nov 5, 2018

Got my PC second hand with an I5 4690K overclocked from 3.5 to 4.5
It is running 1.35 volts. It was de lidded and the temp never gets above 60c.
I get the blue watchdog timeout error every few hours of playtime. I read the OC could be the culprit, so I am thinking of dialing back the OC. What is a good process for this? I was thinking of just leaving the voltage alone and bringing the GHz to 4.4 and seeing what happens.
I am not experienced in this. I have read just enough to be dangerous.

Shadowdancer · Nov 5, 2018

Run the system at stock everything, you cannot diagnose instability while running stuff out of spec. Although if the previous owner decided to go ahead and mechanically break the CPU, it may well be screwed anyway.

Morbad · Nov 5, 2018

You can often divine the likely cause for a BSOD by the error code. Watchdog timeouts are often, but hardly limited to, too low vcore for the CPU clock.

Anyway, I'd start from scratch, make sure it's stable at stock, and work my way back up from there. You'll want some software that will isolate errors more reliably than your daily apps though.

Patrick_68000 · Nov 5, 2018

Shadowdancer said:
Run the system at stock everything, you cannot diagnose instability while running stuff out of spec. Although if the previous owner decided to go ahead and mechanically break the CPU, it may well be screwed anyway.

Yes 4.5 is a lot.

Space Dandy · Nov 5, 2018

I would bring that back to 4 or 4.2ghz and I highly doubt you will see any difference.

Patrick_68000 · Nov 6, 2018

Space Dandy said:
I would bring that back to 4 or 4.2ghz and I highly doubt you will see any difference.

Yes 4.2 is the maximum for the medium-term survival of the CPU.

4.0 is the most reasonable and is very fast also.

I have not yet overclocked my CPU of 3.5 base.

But if I do, I will not go beyond 4 ghz.

Dziondziak · Nov 6, 2018

Threw it all back to (F5) stock.
Still plays ED on Ultra @60FPS.
Didnt have a blue screen last night. Maybe if I run into games that get FPS drop ill play with it. No need for now that I see.
Thanks community!

Dural · Nov 7, 2018

If everything checks out fine at stock, maybe just increase the clock speed until you hit instability on the std core voltage then wind it back a bit and see how you go.

If you want to just de-clock, set your desired clock speed and incrementally decrease the voltage and if you hit instability then increase slightly the core voltage. You may be able to run fine at your chosen clock speed on STD voltages which is not a bad place to be.