How best proceed with overheating i7-4790K?

[REnso1]

I have an i7-4790K in a GA-Z97MX Gaming 5 mobo latest F4 BIOS.

I used a Noctua NH-L12 cooler rated at 95W for cooling the processor rated at 88W in a Lian Li PC V354 with 4 fans, 2 in 2 out, case closed and case open, ambient is 27-30°C.

Temperatures in BIOS and memtest86+ were high so I decided to try stress testing and in Prime95 small FFT cores 1&2 overheated to 100°C using Core Temp.

I tried reseating the heatsink and renewing the NT-H1 TIM and opening the case but it made no difference. I have a photo of the contact pattern here.

When I tested using the OCCT benchmark I was unable to complete a test due to the processor overheating so I underclocked the processor to 3.6 GHz, disabled turbo and manually set vCore to 1.1v.

With an underclocked processor I was able to get a heating and cooling curve using the OCCT auto capture, to enable me to study the problem.

Even when underclocked the processor was reaching high temperatures, rapid fluctuations in temperature with work load suggest a bottleneck in the thermal pathway. When I tested with the intel retail cooler which came with the CPU the cooling was much less effective than the NH-L12 (even when underclocked taking just over a minute of OCCT to reach the 85°C cut off point see below) indicating the NH-L12 was doing a good job of removing heat, which meant the processor was making the heat or the source of the bottleneck.

I have discussed it http://forums.hexus.net/cpus/327593-4790k-overheating-nh-l12.html elsewhere. Advice was to contact Intel due to an absence of information relating to my retailer's testing procedures. I have asked about these but am still waiting for a reply.

So my question is how should I proceed from here? Does this qualify for an RMA? If so is it possible to negotiate this with Intel direct or do I have to go through my retailer?

I have done my best to make sure I am not doing anything wrong and I would be grateful for any pointers to any mistakes I may be making.

[SPark48]

Ahhhh, now I see what you're getting at. So you had put 88 and 110 in BIOS and were getting the 704 and 880 in XTU. So you went back to BIOS and put in 11 and 14 to get 88 and 112? I have actually been wondering about the same thing. I don't have a Hero, but I have both Gene and Formula and they both read 704 and 880 in XTU even though in BIOS, I put in 88 and 110. I'll try putting 11 and 14 tonight and see how the computers run. Thanks!

[dadi]

Yeah, I saw one of your posts here where you talked about these values; now i had the same issue and somehow got the hang of it, and I came back here to share it

[DVu3]

Got some updates for you guys:

I decided to play with the setting a little bit today to see what happened. My Asus Z97AR and the 2nd CPU still not played nice with me. I tried reseating the cooler and changed to ken's setting, no dice. Temp are quite high as you can see in the pictures below.

First is stock setting (default BIOS)

Second: Ken's setting

As you can see, with Ken's setting, I got 100% current limit throttling. So I had to raise the limit higher than 110A to not have the throttling. I settled at 120A caused I like even number

The Intel Burn Test... really burned. At 92C I called it quit. Tried OCCT and Prime95 to see what happened...

93C and still climbing... shut it down, you hear!

FIRE! FIRE! EVERYBODY RUNS! Just hit start and it reached 100C. Totally BS! So I tried undervolt the CPU to see what will happen.

Oh, come on! Even with undervoltage, it still burned like crazy!

Anyway I called it quit here and brought out my Asus Maximus 7 Hero and the 3rd CPU from MicroCenter. Hook it up and installed the CM Hyper 212 EVO (hope for the best here, guys!). And started it up again. FINGERS CROSSED (TOES CROSSED, TOO)

HOLY KAMOLY! Golden, baby! Golden! Yes, that's what I want from the start!

Let's burn it with IBT! No cigar!

4.4GHz ran great! Last but not least! The smoking hot Prime95 test: let's go!

The moment I hit start, the fan revved up like crazy and it... blowed... hot air, indeed! 77C OMG! I felt so great at this point. Voila! I'm good to go with my computational chemistry setup.

By the way, you can see that in some pictures there were missing core temp, hwinfo, etc... cause it crashed too many times that I wouldn't bother to open them up again. The temp in XTU alone is enough to say that the previous CPU is sucked BADLY! Third time is the charm, baby!

Good luck with everybody out there to find the "one and only" good CPU.

[DVu3]

Oh, one thing that I felt really weird is the M7H doesn't show TDP in the XTU. So I had no clue how much it burned during those tests. But I should reinstall Linux for my research, wasted whole day today.

[ak25]

I'm confused by 'kens' setting comments and how to set the (I presume 110a) is amps. My motherboard seems to only have voltage settings. Also intel (via email) keeps telling me to set the involt (not core volt) to 1.5 (mb defaults to 1.71 and the spec sheet sez 1.65 is min and 1.70 is needed to boot) so I'm confused why intel tells me to set it to 1.5.

[SPark48]

jake1999,

What brand motherboard do you have? There should be a section in there that talks about CPU power management or power control. Specifically look for the phrases "Current Limit", "Short Duration Power", "Turbo Boost Power". If you see any of those phrases, you're in the right section.

[SPark48]

As for your other question regarding voltage, I'm assuming they want you to set Input Voltage to 1.5V. Did Intel mention if they want you to put the Initial Input Voltage to 1.5V or the Eventual Input Voltage? 1.5V seems a little bit low for Initial, but for Eventual Input Voltage, that should be fine.

[ak25]

On the 1.5V thing they were very confused; I said "do you mean ram" and they said no no cpu input; I said look at page 102 of the intel spec sheet. They said I was confused and they were talking about ram. They never did come back and say the correct voltage but they said just use motherboard default. For the record the spec sheet sez 165 is lowest; 170 needed for boot and I dont' recall off hand the high end but I think 18x; my mb default is 1.71 which is what I expected from the spec sheet.

--

I will check for the amp thing tomorrow morning and reply then. There are two tabs - one for overclocking and one for addiitional settings; I know it is not in the overclocking section but maybe the additional settings. I have an asrock z97e (mini-itx).

-

Thanks for the quick response.

[ak25]

My mother board does not have those options. It has options like: cpu voltage; cpu voltage offset; cpu load-line calibration; vcore override voltage; gpu voltage; I don't see anything like: "Current Limit", "Short Duration Power", "Turbo Boost Power"

-

The manual is here ftp://66.226.78.21/manual/Z97E-ITXac.pdf ftp://66.226.78.21/manual/Z97E-ITXac.pdf and I searched for terms boost and short duration. Btw it does have short duration power (page 76). Hum. It does have "Primary Plane Current Limit". What value should I set this ?

--

Hum. I'm currently being moderated; is that everyone or just me ?

[SPark48]

Short duration power should be 110. If they have Long duration power or Turbo Boost Power, set that at 88. Primary Current Limit I have mine set up higher than ken recommends, but he says 105. Most of us have noticed some current throttling with 105A. I currently have mine set at 166, but that's with overclock to 4.9GHz. I think people were having success with 110 at stock? Not sure. My suggestion would be to set it at 105 and do a stress test in XTU to see if you get current throttle. If you do, increase it little by little (maybe by 5 each time) until you're not getting any throttling.

[ak25]

Ok thanks. I'll give it a stab tomorrow morning when I have access to the machine.

[ak25]

Setting current to 110; has an impact. It reduces max temp by 13C (80c vs 93c when running mprime/prime95); it also prevents the processor from entering turbo mode when all 4 cores are running (well 8 threads; which is not quite the same thing). The processor oscillated between 3.8 and 4.0; but a single process did get to 4.2 or 4.3ghz.

-

The other values you suggested require watt setting which seemed a bit weird (it wanted to compute watts consumed as max duration for turbo mode) and I wasn't sure of a decent correct value.

-

The above tests were performed under linux since I had removed the disk with window and it would have taken a bit more effort to restore it. My earlier tests were with windows.

- I did not try 115 or 120 to see if I could get some turbo mode while controlling temp (this is with stock cooler). For now I've left it at 110 since it does provide some turbo with single process while capping temp.

[DBurn4]

Since you seem to be quite able to Benchmark everything on your system, I wonder if you might point me in the right direction. First my specs,

Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK

4790K

Asus STRIX 970 (x2)

EVGA 1000w P2 power supply

2 x G.Skill Trident X 16G(2x8) 2400Mhz (32G total)

Samsung 840 Evo 1TB

WD Black 3TB HD

Corsair H100i

First off, this is the first system I've ever built, and quite frankly really have no idea what I'm doing! but I'm eager to learn! I currently have everything set to Kens settings, with Proc Current Limit set to 269A as per someone else recommendation and my Vcore to 1.165 (I tried at Auto, 1.150 as well) so here are my questions,

1: MY XTU benchmark was 1078, is that in the realm of normal? I don't need to O.C. since really this is probably more computer than I need.

2: I have not been able to successfully complete the GPGPU Benchmark in Aida64, it gets all the way through the first column (2 GPUs) then gets to around the AES256 in the second column x64 CPU and crashes. Black screen, no error code, just tells me I need to reload optimised BIOS to restart. I've tried just going in and leaving it all the same, but it will not reload. Yet if I load optimized settings, boot up, then restart and re enter the BIOS and input all previous settings it works.

3: is there a way to simply reload all my settings as it is quite a pain to re enter all the fan setups and stuff just to run AIDA again and have it crash!!

4: I ran the stress tests on everything and they were fine, also ran Heaven Benchmark (High 194.7FPS Score 4904 min 9.5 max 372.2) (Ultra 196.6 FPS Score 4952 min 36.1 max 363.7), and Furmark said 7136 (I don't think that was very good) with no crashing. I didn't have everything cranked right up as far as settings go, but that's mostly because I had no idea what I was doing so it just had the default parameters in there. I also hadn't disabled my integrated graphics, so not sure if that makes a difference.

idle temps are 21-26C load temps 59-71C (core 3 is always the lowest)

5: I read some saying to disable the turbo boost in BIOS, what are your thoughts?

Any and all advice from any users is appreciated, (BoolyBooly, Ken, anyone else who has a clue and wants to help out an idiot!) haha

Thanks

[LCCF]

BUD, i'll try to help you but this is going to be like the blind leading the blind - this was my first build as well

My MB is an ASUS Z97M-Plus, so we're not talking apples to apples here

but, ken_intel recommended clearing CMOS which basically involves turning off your computer, removing the case cover and removing the small nickel (5 cent pc) sized battery for a minute or two

- check your MB manual for any other details. All it will cause you to do is to reset the date and time in your BIOS. All other settings in BIOS remained unchanged, for me. Then per ken's instructions, set everything to default and try that. That really helped me.

Also, personally, i'd delete or un-install any utility Gigabyte gave you to use - half of my problems were related to the asus utilities (performance monitoring utility primarily) creating havoc with the bios - and on a "fred flintstone" level, only reason i can assume, is cause the asus utility had the ability to change the power settings in the BIOS without booting into BIOS. Plus, with the asus performance utility installed, i had failures on the intel PDT utility (Processor Diagnostic Tool) - with them un-installed, i've passed 9 consecutive runs of the utility's tests. It doesn't make sense that a motherboard mfgr's utilites would be that buggy but apparently they are -0 i was talking to a bud about this, and he said he'd built 22 computers for his company in 2000 (he owns a large machine shop) and actually said it sounded like asus hadn't changed in 14 years as he'd had similiar problems using asus boards. this is the reality that i'm learning re the motherboard industry.

a benchmark of 1078 is great for my cpu, which is a 4790 (not a k, but a locked cpu), and i don't think it's too shabby for a 4790K but can't say with authority

have no idea what you're referring to re the GPGPU benchmark in AIda64 as i didn't run that test. I'd stay with the intel XTU program and use their stress test. DO NOT RUN PRIME95 or rather any version of it above v26.6 - any version above that contains instruction sets that are not applicable to the i7-4790K

with "idle temps are 21-26C load temps 59-71C (core 3 is always the lowest)" i'd say you were golden, don't over test with every program out there looking for an issue. I'd love to have those temps and hope to with a new cooler. If you're getting those temps with turbo boost enabled, leave it enabled.

Go back and read this thread from the very beginning as well as Ken's document he posted - there are a lot of settings gigabyte board owners posted that worked for them, but to be frank with what you're reporting in the way of temps, i wouldn't change a thing. reading the thread though will help give you some idea - it helped me climb up a couple of steps on the learning curve, even if it did take me 3 nights to read the entire thread.

hope that helps

[DBurn4]

Thanks for the response Larryccf!

I had thought about resetting the CMOS, mine actually just has a button to press, but didn't really understand what the purpose of this would be? Or what information it has stored in there that could possibly mess up the BIOS. Even though I did read Ken tell us to do it!! Haha funny, you have me a guy who knows nothing about what he is doing 'questioning' why I should do something, now that I've typed it out, guess I'll try that after work!

As for reading the topic, I've read and re-read it so many times it's just silly! That's probably one of my problems. I've read so many different adjustments that people have made from the recommended settings to help them that I forget which ones I've tried, so now I started writing them down.

As for the Gigabyte utilities, I learned my lesson quick with it. I was running fine, still couldn't do the Aida64 benchmark, but all else was good, so I clicked on the Easytune app and selected Extreme Overclock (I think it was 4.8 or something ) , instant crash BSOD code 124, nope won't do that again! So far the only thing the utilities have been helpful in, and maybe someone can help me with this, is trying to get my fans to work. I have a Corsair H100i set in pull(well actually p/p right now since I have the two fans that came with it sitting on top of the case. I have 5 SP120 quiet edition (3 intake up front, 2 pull intake on rad above) and an AF140 for exhaust. All 120's are PWM, but Corsair Link doesn't let me adjust through it. The 3 fronts are all plugged direct to individual fan ports, yet no matter what I do I can't get the 1 fan to go above 1050 RPM, and of course it's the one that blows directly on the gpu's! I've tried BIOS settings, speedfan doesn't let me adjust anything, and they were running at around 550 RPM until I was able to go into the Gigabyte utility and try to calibrate them, but they are 1450RPM fans. I have the 140 plugged into the CPU OPT fan port.

I actually am pleased with my temps, but I read the review on Overclock.net and he was maxing at around 59C under load, so didn't know if I should bother attempting to reseat the cooler or not. I left the original Thermal paste on that it comes with, some said it was good quality. I have some Gelid gc extreme and Arctic Silver 5 (bought the AC5, then read people saying it wasn't very good, so picked up the Gelid)

As for not needing to run every test known to man, I agree. I'm not looking for a record breaking attempt or anything, I just know that if it crashes in the middle of my wife doing photo or video editing, she'll KILL ME!!! Haha thanks for any and all recommendations!

[LCCF]

Bulldogsz24: "I had thought about resetting the CMOS, mine actually just has a button to press, but didn't really understand what the purpose of this would be?" - same here, i wasn't sure that it would do any good but i was getting desperate for a fix - surprised me that it sorted the overheating issue, dropping temps at 100% load from 99-100C down to low / mid 70c and giving me full clock speed on the processor. Whatever is locking your fan controls might be eliminated by clearing CMOS - i'm not software literate enough to explain what CMOS does, much less how it could.

as to "As for reading the topic, I've read and re-read it so many times it's just silly!" - trust me, i know exactly what you're saying - i actually toyed with the idea of coming up with an aspirin dispenser that people could integrate with their monitors, where they'd just tap it and drop a couple in their hand

good luck on the fan control issue

[SPark48]

Hey Bulldogsz24, welcome to the thread. First thing I want to say is that you're very ambitious. For a first time build, that system is STACKED. =) You must at least have some technology background for you to pursue such an ambitious build for your first system; either that or just have money to throw away, in which case we should be friends in real life!

Let's get to some of your issues:

"1: MY XTU benchmark was 1078, is that in the realm of normal? I don't need to O.C. since really this is probably more computer than I need."

- First of all, a 1078 XTU benchmark is right around where you should be for a 4790K on stock settings. However, it's that second part of your question that drives me crazy. If you don't need to overclock, then there should be no reason for you to buy this 4790K processor! You should have saved a little money and bought a 4790 (locked) or put that $40-$50 towards something else in your build. Especially since you mentioned that you have a Corsair H100i cooler. Why would you purchase an unlocked processor plus a overclocking cooler, if you're not going to overclock? Again, if you just have money to throw away, I can be a REALLY good friend. =)

"2: I have not been able to successfully complete the GPGPU Benchmark in Aida64, it gets all the way through the first column (2 GPUs) then gets to around the AES256 in the second column x64 CPU and crashes. Black screen, no error code, just tells me I need to reload optimised BIOS to restart. I've tried just going in and leaving it all the same, but it will not reload. Yet if I load optimized settings, boot up, then restart and re enter the BIOS and input all previous settings it works."

- This sounds like one of your GPU settings is incorrect. You have two GPUs so I'm assuming you have them in SLI configuration? With a SLI bridge or without? Honestly I would have to look at your settings or error logs to see what's going on with your crash, but this has more to do with your GPU than the 4790K. If you need help with SLI configuration/settings, I would search for that and see if you can find a fix.

"3: is there a way to simply reload all my settings as it is quite a pain to re enter all the fan setups and stuff just to run AIDA again and have it crash!!"

- Which settings are you talking about here? Settings in BIOS? XTU? I'm not sure which settings your talking about. If you can clarify this for me, I can help you better. Most of the time there are ways to save a profile and you can just load that profile instead of putting everything back in each time.

"4: I ran the stress tests on everything and they were fine, also ran Heaven Benchmark (High 194.7FPS Score 4904 min 9.5 max 372.2) (Ultra 196.6 FPS Score 4952 min 36.1 max 363.7), and Furmark said 7136 (I don't think that was very good) with no crashing. I didn't have everything cranked right up as far as settings go, but that's mostly because I had no idea what I was doing so it just had the default parameters in there. I also hadn't disabled my integrated graphics, so not sure if that makes a difference. idle temps are 21-26C load temps 59-71C (core 3 is always the lowest)"

- All of those numbers look really good. Your temperatures are exactly where they should be for 4790K on stock settings with a H100i. As larryccf said earlier, I wouldn't touch anything from where they are at now. Keep in mind that Intel's suggested case temperature or TCase (basically the maximum temperature that your CPU should run at) for this processor is 74C and they also say TCase of + or - 4C is completely safe so 70-78C would be where your temperatures should max out at on stock settings with stock cooler. So obviously 59, even 71 is perfectly fine.

"5: I read some saying to disable the turbo boost in BIOS, what are your thoughts?"

- If you're not having any issues with overheating, don't disable turbo boost. Why cripple your system for no reason?

As far as resetting your CMOS, if you're not having any overheating issues, then there would be no reason to reset CMOS. The reason why resetting CMOS was suggested is because strangely, many motherboards were set to unnecessarily high settings straight out of the box so resetting CMOS and bringing all settings down to "Default" was fixing many overheating issues people were having with this processor. So again, if you're not having any overheating issues, don't bother with CMOS reset. However, as larryccf said, if you're having other problems such as fan control or maybe changed a settings in there that you're not sure if you should have changed or not, or you just want to start everything from scratch, just reset the CMOS and get everything in there correctly.

"As for the Gigabyte utilities, I learned my lesson quick with it. I was running fine, still couldn't do the Aida64 benchmark, but all else was good, so I clicked on the Easytune app and selected Extreme Overclock (I think it was 4.8 or something ) , instant crash BSOD code 124, nope won't do that again!"

- What you're doing with the Extreme Overclock is exactly that, you're overclocking your processor to 4.8GHz. The theory behind those "Easytune" type of apps (every major motherboard manufacturer has something very similar) is that you can overclock "with a touch of a button! XD" Unfortunately, I have yet to find any of those apps work correctly. The problem is, they may set the multiplier to x48 or whatever they want to overclock to, but they don't change the voltage settings correctly, so just like you said, it will instantly BSOD. If you want to use this app to overclock, you're going to have to go into BIOS and up your voltage first. Every CPU is different, but for my 4790K, I need to have my VCore voltage at 1.32v for me to keep a 4.8GHz overclock stable and 1.35v to keep 4.9GHz stable. Again, if you don't plan to overclock (*cough*) then don't touch any of those settings and instead of changing your VCore to 1.165v or whatever, just set everything to auto. In fact, I would suggest resetting CMOS and just leaving everything alone. You should really only mess around with BIOS settings if you're planning to overclock something. Otherwise, there's no reason to. Honestly though, you purchased that nice system, paid good money on items to be able to overclock, don't you think it's fun messing with the settings a little bit and seeing what you can get out of your system? Why not overclock a little bit, even just to 4.6GHz or something? You can't really overclock this processor correctly anyway due to overheating issues, so it's not like you can get much. But you have everything you need, so why not get your money's worth?

<p style="font-family: intel-clear, ...

[DBurn4]

Haha, I have ZERO technical ability! I just do a lot of research and read a lot of reviews whenever I look at spending a decent amount of cash on something! Just ask my wife about the last time we needed new tires for the SUV!

As for why I went with the K version, the difference was so small that it seemed to be silly not to just get it. When you end up looking at $2-$3000, who cares about $30? Did I throw it away, no, I still have a processor that is able to do more than I need right now, and the K ability allows me to hopefully continue to use it should my processing needs increase. As for the H100i, well, it seems like a good idea since I had read previously about all the overheating issues, I figured I should just buy a really good cooler right off the start so at least that eliminates the possibility of the cooler being the cripple of the system. Now that I have a pretty decent system, maybe I will get into more gaming and comp related things to utilize what I have.

Yes I have them in SLI, I didn't change any settings to them, other than click the little box that says "run in SLI" haha, I know this isn't the right topic for that discussion though. I just wondered about the AIDA64 GPGPU test because at the top of the first row of columns it said 2 GPU's and that part completed successfully all the way down the row, it wasn't until it was doing the testing under the second column that said x64 that it crashed, so wasn't sure if it was something with my processor settings, or if others were able to complete it successfully.

Yes I was talking about saving the BIOS settings

To the resetting CMOS part, My motherboard did have all the settings cranked up, basically as high as it would go on XTU, but I worked my way around in the BIOS to figure out what I was supposed to change. First time I had ever knowingly entered a BIOS! haha, that's how technical I am!

As for the VCore setting, I had lowered it to 1.150 (that was listed in here by another member) and it seemed to be working fine. My auto setting was at 1.207. I did notice a temp difference by lowering it that little bit extra, I just recently increased to 1.165 just for the heck of it.

I wouldn't mind trying some overclocking, I just truly have no idea what I am doing so it makes me a little nervous since if something goes wrong, I really will have no idea how to fix it!

For the fans, they are all quiet editions, 1450 RPM, (120's) I think I will try plugging that one fan into a different fan header (or whatever the proper name for it is) and see if it persists. As for why I have the exhaust plugged into the CPU OPT port, well that's the only one it would reach!!! HAHAHA I have some PWM extensions and splitters on order, should be here tomorrow. I live in a small town and there is absolutely NOTHING here in the way of computer parts. Maybe something is different between the H105 and the 100i, I don't have my pump plugged into any separate thing. My radiator fans run into the actual part that is mounted to the processor, then there is one single wire (in a 3 pin fan plug) that goes on the CPU fan port.

I think I will try the overclocking like you suggested, once I know for sure that the settings I have are stable, and write them all down! haha

I really can't thank you enough for all the time and wisdom you have given me. I have been on many different forums, car, boat, stereo, and sure do enjoy when I find one that isn't full of jerks just trying to make people feel stupid. So thank you and Larryccf for your help and advice!

[SPark48]

Perhaps I needed to be a little bit more specific with the fan ordeal:

EVERY liquid cooling system has a pump. The pump for your H100i (and all Corsair's liquid coolers) is built into the waterblock (the thing that says "Corsair" on it that you have directly attached to your CPU). That waterblock should have a 3-pin wire coming out of it. This wire is to power your pump. This 3-pin wire should be plugged either CPU or CPU OPT. What I was suggesting is to put a splitter on the CPU port and attach two of your SP120 fans that are on your radiator and put the pump wire on CPU OPT. You can do it vice versa (pump on CPU, fans+splitter on CPU OPT), it would make no difference. The point is to put the fans/pump that are directly cooling your CPU onto the CPU or CPU OPT ports, not the exhaust fan. Putting the exhaust fan in either of those ports just doesn't make any sense. If it doesn't reach, like you said, get an extender and put the exhaust fan somewhere else, it doesn't belong on CPU OPT. Of course, this is just the "optimal" configuration. You can put whatever fan in whatever port you want and your computer will basically run fine. But the "best" way to do it is fans cooling CPU on CPU/CPU OPT ports and fans cooling other parts of computer (i.e. exhaust fan) on case ports. This is also much better if you're using a fan controlling software as the fan controller can better figure out how fast to run what fan to keep the best temperatures. Right now, your fan controller thinks your exhaust fan is cooling your CPU so it's running it accordingly. Not a huge difference, but probably not the best way to control temperatures.

If you are 100% sure that all fan models are exactly the same, then I have no idea why that one fan is running at slower RPM. For me, my SP120s all run in 1400+ RPM range and my AF140 runs in 1000-1100 RPM range. It's very possible your fan controller is confused and you need to clear CMOS and/or re-run your fan controller set-up to make it work right. You're probably doing the best thing by switching the fans around in different ports to figure out if that one fan is the problem or if it is that port you had it plugged into. Doubtful, but for all you know, this could be caused by your exhaust fan being plugged into CPU OPT.

For your GPUs, I just want to make sure, do you have them connected with a SLI bridge? The rectangular wire that came with your GPU or motherboard? You can run SLI without a bridge, but it won't run very well and it can cause some problems. You didn't specify that you had a bridge, so I wanted to make sure. Other than that, not sure why you're failing the GPU stress test. You would have to provide some more information, but this thread is probably not the best place for it - people may get angry. =P

I want to reiterate one thing... If you're not having overheating issues, do NOT put your vcore on a static setting! I know you said you saw a temperature drop by changing from auto to whatever setting you have it on now, but you weren't overheating, so what's the point? It's not like you were at 90C on auto and then it dropped to 50C by putting it on a static setting. You dropped from what, 63 to 59 by doing that? What's the point of that? By putting a static voltage setting, you're setting your system up for failure. You may not get the best turbo out of your processor, or your processor may not get enough voltage when it needs it and it will BSOD. Putting it on Auto lets your motherboard "adapt" to the voltage your CPU needs to run optimally. It's your computer, so you can do whatever you want, but if you're not overclocking, I HIGHLY recommend putting it back to Auto... If you don't and your computer crashes while your wife is video editing, don't blame me. I didn't kill you. She didn't either, you did!

That being said, don't be scared to overclock your CPU. Like I said, even if you do something wrong and your computer just won't boot up anymore, all you need to do is clear CMOS and you'll be right back to default. Trust me, it is VERY difficult to fry your system by trying a little overclocking. Your CPU and motherboard have built in safeguards that prevent such damage. In fact, that's exactly what a BSOD is - it's your computer's way of saying "something is wrong and running at current setting will destroy me, so change it". For beginners, all you really need to do is increase multiplier and vcore, leave everything else alone. All that other junk in BIOS is for professional overclockers to squeeze every little bit of juice out of their CPU for better benchmarks. For a daily computer, you don't want to overclock that much anyway. Like I said, just try putting your vcore to 1.25 and your multiplier to 46. If you are stable and your temperatures are still under 80C, raise to multiplier to 47. If you get BSOD, increase vcore by 0.01 (i.e. 1.26, 1.27, etc) until you don't BSOD. Keep playing with these two numbers until you get as high as you can on multiplier with your temperatures still controlled. Once it is feeling fairly stable (able to boot into OS and run some programs), run a stability test on AIDA for an hour or so to ensure everything is fine and dandy. You may not think it's a big deal, but I do my fair share of video rendering, and overclocking will shave a LOT of time off of it. Your wife will thank you and think it was worth you dropping that 3G's on that fancy new computer. She may actually think you ARE smart after all! =)

[DBurn4]

Thanks again! Sorry, I forgot to say that yes I have the bridge connected. I will try to change the VCore to the 1.150 and mark down my temps and XTU benchmark, then change to auto and repeat and see what the difference is. Also, for my current temps, core 0 + 1 are maxing around the 70, core 2 is around 63-65 and core 3 is the lowest because of the x44,x44,x43,x42 setting. Can't remember the numbers exactly, I'm on my phone and don't have available.

As for the H100i, there are 2 Y cables that come off the waterblock (thanks for the proper name!) that plug in the 4 fans attached to the rad, and the three wire ribbon cable that comes off splits into a SATA power, and a 3 pin fan connector, that only has 1 wire/lead into it, which gets plugged into the CPU fan port on MB. And yes, once I get my order that should be here today of my fan extensions and Y splitters, I plan on moving which fan plugs into where.

If I figure out how to post a picture later when I'm on a computer, I will try to post the AIDA64 test picture I took with my phone right before it crashed. I guess I should figure out how to take a screen shot on my computer, probably be a much clearer picture! Haha

[LCCF]

Bulldogsz24 - easiest way to capture screen shots is to use "snipping tool" in windows - go to start > all programs > accessories and you'll see "snipping tool"

clik on it and a small menu will open on your desktop - put your mouse on one corner of the area you want to capture a picture of, hit and hold left clik button, and then draw the mouse down one axis of the area, and then without lifting your finger move it along the other axis till the box you've created outlines the area on screen you want captured. It saves it as a png file and you can upload it to photobucket.com (free accts) and post from there. The snipping tool is faster than using a phone camera and saves from having to position the phone to avoid glare, plus it gives cleaner more legible shots

just a FYI