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10700k overclock failed (it's not overclocked)

Man of Honour
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20 Sep 2006
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33,883
I'll be in a game when my PC either hard locks up and restarts to a BIOS message saying that my CPU overclock has failed and to press F1 to continue, or F2 to load defaults (can't remember the exact wording). Or it will BSOD and then restart to the same error message.

My BIOS is untouched with the exception of XMP profile set to enabled for my memory, so the CPU isn't overclocked. I ahve since removed the overclock from my GPU as well.

The PC well cooled, the GPU and CPU are under water. GPU temps are around 50 degrees and CPU spikes up to around 70 degrees. The motherboard is an MSI MEG Unify Z490, RAM is Corsair and passes memtest86 without issue. The PSU is 1050W.

I only seem to get this in Apex Legends, the only other game I play is COD Cold War which does occasionally crash however I think that's down to the game itself.

Any idea why I'm getting this message? I guess the next thing to try is to remove XMP from the memory.
 
Man of Honour
OP
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20 Sep 2006
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Is there an update for your motherboard's bios?
Do you have Game Boost enabled in your Bios?
Latest BIOS update was applied when I started getting this error about 2 weeks ago. I don't believe game boost is enabled, if it was it should have been disabled when I reset the BIOS to defaults.

I built the PC at the end of October and it was running (overclocked) without any issue up until I started getting issues about a fortnight ago.
 
Associate
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20 Jun 2013
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1,831
Can you revert the bios then? Otherwise, it looks like trying to adjust voltages a little for your memory. Or stepping down the speed in XMP
 
Associate
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sorry misunderstood it as you updated bios and you got the errors
Tried swapping the ram into different slots? How many sticks of ram is it and what speed is it supposed to be?
 
Last edited:
Man of Honour
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The only think that changed around the time it started happening was a Windows update but I don't see how that would affect things. The only other think of is that my PSU is quite old, 7 years I think.
 
Man of Honour
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I decided to run some stress tests and see if it was my PSU at fault, it's a 1050W unit but admittedly it is quite old, I bought it in 2013 I think. I soon saw my CPU temps hitting high 90's...

CPU spikes up to around 70 degrees
I'm not sure if Afterburner was reporting some dodgy numbers, or perhaps the game wasn't stressing the system enough so show that there was a temperature issue. I think what was happening is that the CPU reached max and then the system shut down without me noticing any spikes. I managed to tighten the CPU block around 1/8th of a turn and now under the stress tests I see maximum of 70 degrees. I'm guessing either the paste is past its sell by date or the face of the block and/or the IHS isn't that flat. I'll get some new thermal paste ordered and refit it all but it seems I've found the issue although I'll run some gaming tests as well to fully confirm.
 
Associate
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22 Oct 2012
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1,086
Your BIOS is bringing up those options because it believes you suffered a failed boot. Why it thinks this when you've booted in is one mystery although I've seen such behaviour from motherboards before, why your system is failing is the bigger issue.

Sorry I can't be of more assistance, but I thought I'd note why your board is giving you that message: it assumes an overclock failed due to the restart.
 
Man of Honour
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I just used everything default and also the MSI gamer profile. I've now set it manually to 1.175v, 4.8 GHz and LLC 3. Glad to hear they're still working. :D
 
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