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mikeblunt2020 · ‎01-18-2015

Hi All,

I built an X99 rig with a R5E shortly after the platform was released with the ultimate goal of maintaining a decently mild 24/7 overclock for gaming. However, I am currently running my system at stock speeds because I'm encountering stability issues.

At first, my system had a very difficult time resuming from sleep, or during warm reboots and would report q-code BD or D6 (I believe those are the two). I slowly bumped up VCCSA from the "auto" setting and eventually worked my way up to 1.05v and now approximately 95% of the time the system will wake from sleep properly and be able to reboot successfully, but it doesn't always work. I've also had cases where the system will hard freeze or freeze followed by reboot in Windows, but the frequency of that also seemed to decrease a bit after raising VCCSA (although it still does happen).

I guess I have a few questions. Since I'm running at stock settings, should I really have to be playing with VCCSA, or do I perhaps have a defective component? Normally I would think auto settings should work at stock speeds which makes me wonder about the state of my system.

If I should be tweaking VCCSA, then should I go higher than 1.05 given that I still have the occasional hard lock/reboot issue? 1.05 seems significantly higher than the stock settings and I see people going this high on VCCSA to achieve DDR4-3000 settings where I'm just trying to get stable with memory at stock 2133 speeds.

Could anybody offer any insight or suggestions?

Here are my specs:

5960X
R5E with latest UEFI
32GB (4x8) GSkill DDR4-2400 (at stock 2133 settings)
Corsair AX1500 PSU
2x EVGA GTX Titans
Samsung 1TB 850 Pro SSD (SATA3)
Sound Blaster ZXR
VCCSA 1.05v
DRAM Voltage 1.25v (stock for these modules is 1.2 -- not sure if raising to 1.25v helped stability or not, didn't seem to hurt however)

Chino · ‎01-18-2015

Depending on the quality of your CPU, sometimes user interaction is required to tweak your VCCSA since the Auto value doesn't work for you. Are you using a single memory kit?

mikeblunt2020 · ‎01-18-2015

Chino wrote:
Depending on the quality of your CPU, sometimes user interaction is required to tweak your VCCSA since the Auto value doesn't work for you. Are you using a single memory kit?

Yes, it is a single 32gb GSkill 4x8 DDR4-2400 kit. I am not using XMP and have it at stock 2133 settings other than the tweak to DRAM Voltage and VCCSA.

mikeblunt2020 · ‎01-19-2015

After experiencing two lockups yesterday in windows, where a reset resulted in a BD error and I ended up having to hard cycle the machine, I ended up raising the system agent voltage 2 notches up to about 1.056v. Still looking for some feedback as to whether this is normal or not for a stock configuration or whether there is anything else I should be trying.

Chino · ‎01-19-2015

mikeblunt2020 wrote:
After experiencing two lockups yesterday in windows, where a reset resulted in a BD error and I ended up having to hard cycle the machine, I ended up raising the system agent voltage 2 notches up to about 1.056v. Still looking for some feedback as to whether this is normal or not for a stock configuration or whether there is anything else I should be trying.

System Agent voltage is a sensitive voltage. Too much or too little can cause a negative effect. Did you get to 1.056V gradually or did you just jump to it?

LiveOrDie · ‎01-19-2015

From my experience with my system and i also built mine just after the platform was released, If your CPUs IMC really does need you to bump up your VCCSA when running your memory at default speeds of 2133Mhz? Then i would be returning your CPU as that falls outside of Intel’s processor specifications, I also recommend maybe testing another memory kit as i was also getting bd codes when running my Corsair kit i upgrade my kit and never had a bd code again.

mikeblunt2020 · ‎01-19-2015

When I first started experiencing issues that seemed to potentially be memory (or IMC) related, I changed the SA voltage from Auto to 1.0v and worked up one notch at a time from there. Stability of the system definitely improved, and the system seems "close" to stable now, but given that I had to go up another two notches last night I don't think we can declare success yet.

I think LiveOrDie makes a good point. Shouldn't the system be able to run at defaults settings at stock? I'm concerned that even if I can find settings that work my parts aren't running "within spec". Do you think this is more likely memory or IMC related? I don't have a spare DDR4 kit (or a spare 5960X) so I don't have an easy method of testing this. I can go buy a new DDR4 kit but the CPU I'd have to RMA.

mikeblunt2020 · ‎01-19-2015

System just froze again while playing COD:AW. What happens is the machine freezes, sound stutters for a few seconds, and then the system reboots. Nothing in the Windows Event Log to indicate a crash of some sort, you just see events firing as the machine reboots back up. Sometimes when this happens the machine reboots and you get a BD or D6 code and have to hard-reset the machine, other times it successfully reboots and loads into Windows again.

I'm starting to think continuing to increase system agent voltage isn't the right move here. Are there different tunables I should be looking at? Perhaps VCore? Again this is all for stock operation. Or should I be looking at replacing memory, CPU, or something else?

LiveOrDie · ‎01-19-2015

mikeblunt2020 wrote:
System just froze again while playing COD:AW. What happens is the machine freezes, sound stutters for a few seconds, and then the system reboots. Nothing in the Windows Event Log to indicate a crash of some sort, you just see events firing as the machine reboots back up. Sometimes when this happens the machine reboots and you get a BD or D6 code and have to hard-reset the machine, other times it successfully reboots and loads into Windows again.

I'm starting to think continuing to increase system agent voltage isn't the right move here. Are there different tunables I should be looking at? Perhaps VCore? Again this is all for stock operation. Or should I be looking at replacing memory, CPU, or something else?

I recommend you test one stick of memory to see if you get the same problem it mite be a pain but it will be cheaper than getting a 2nd kit, Instead of VCORE you could try adding a offset voltage to your Cache as this also plays a part in memory stability.

mikeblunt2020 · ‎01-19-2015

Is there a better way of testing my memory or CPU beyond just seeing if the system locks up/reboots? It's pretty intermittent and sometimes goes a day or more at a time without symptoms (although the last few days have been particularly bad).

Stability Issues/Questions